Daily Mail (UK): "Does anyone know the real Barack Obama?"

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Sun Feb-03-08 01:00 AM
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Daily Mail (UK): "Does anyone know the real Barack Obama?"

Disturbing piece in the British press by a journalist who did some digging into Obama's years in Chicago politics:

The Black Kennedy: But does anyone know the real Barack Obama?

By PETER HITCHENS
Last updated at 20:46pm on 2nd February 2008

America is about to fool itself for the third time in a row. Sentiment and star quality seem likely to trample on common sense and experience, and we will all suffer for it. Having fallen - twice - for the Southern-fried charm of Bill Clinton and - twice - for the corny, fake patriotism of George W. Bush, the people of the great republic are now overpowered by the beauty and sweetness of Barack Obama, a glimmering TV star with the power to make them feel at ease with themselves, and about whom they know only what he wants them to know.

I make no predictions about the huge political contest that will take place across much of the United States on Tuesday, with 22 states voting in a national dress rehearsal for the real thing in November. Nobody really knows what will happen. But I think Mr Obama will still be in the fight, with a more than reasonable chance of winning the Democratic nomination and then the presidency....

So who really is this Obama who can reduce knees and brains to jelly, whose books are read with reverence by normally pungent critics, and who, we are told, is the new JFK? I travelled to his home city, Chicago, to see if I could find out. I recalled how we had all been fooled in the early Clinton years by the twaddle about the "Man from Hope" - a legend in which Bill had grown up among poor, denim-clad folks in a small country town. Years later, when someone bothered to check, it turned out Bill had barely been in Hope at all but had instead been raised in great comfort in Hot Springs, Al Capone's favourite holiday resort and still full of good-time girls, big Chevrolets and sleaze. With Obama the problem is a little different, though Capone still comes into it. He has written his own sunlit, often rather purple account of his life, with just enough revelation to persuade us that we know all we need to know. The book, Dreams From My Father, is a much-praised bestseller (though I suspect many of those who praised it didn't stick it out to the end). It contains a confession of drug-taking, carefully limited - marijuana and cocaine but no heroin. It is sometimes moving but often exasperating....

Crucially, the story stops just where things get interesting - when Obama first entered politics in Chicago, that mythical city of gangsterism, corruption and one party-state politics. He did this as an Illinois State Senator, representing a largely black and liberal section of Capone's hometown. Now, Obama has the devil's luck, which among other things means he has a boyish smile that disarms suspicion or hostility at 50 paces. But he is no child, and no innocent. Despite a childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia, Obama knows Chicago well - and from underneath, too. He threw over a good corporate job in New York to toil in the dismal South Side as a "community organiser", getting up campaigns about asbestos in council flats but also getting to know this place's grimy, snaggled web of power - churches, property developers, professional politicians, fixers and money men. He also revealed that he was the sort of person who goes into a revolving door behind you and then comes out of it in front of you. And, of course, he is a lawyer who knows the rules all too well. As one veteran of Chicago politics who very much did not want to be named said to me: "Thank God for Louisiana - their politics are even dirtier than ours." He clearly remembered Obama's first steps on his political career. This involved merciless cunning. Somehow, all of Obama's challengers made a mess of their nomination papers. They were all disqualified. Only Obama's papers, miraculously, were perfect. So he won the Democratic nomination, which in this part of the world means he won the seat....

More: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=511901&in_page_id=1811