SOWELL: Obama’s track record on so-called “real issues” is no better than his record on issues of character and judgment.
Barack Obama’s supporters often try to sidestep questions about his character and judgment by saying that we should stick to what they arbitrarily define as “the real issues.” But Senator Obama’s record on specific issues is as bad as his record of repeatedly allying himself over the years with people who make no attempt to hide their hatred of America.
Among the so-called “real issues” are earmarks for Senators’ pet projects, like the “bridge to nowhere.” These are among the most indefensible parts of the inbred Washington political culture, which Obama has so often claimed to be against, as part of his promise of “change” to “clean up the mess in Washington.”
Yet Senator Obama not only voted in favor of the bridge to nowhere, he voted against anti-earmark amendments proposed by Senator John McCain.
Obama has had more than two dozen of his own earmarks in the past fiscal year, and he knows the Senate well enough to know that, if he voted against the bridge to nowhere, his own earmarks might get nowhere.
Those earmarks, incidentally, included a million dollars of the taxpayers’ money for a facility where his wife works at the University of Chicago. Her salary rose by nearly $200,000 when her husband became a United States Senator— no doubt a shrewd investment by the university that paid off.
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In the world of rhetoric— the world in which Obama is supreme— he is a moderate, reasonable man, reaching out to unite people and parties, dedicated to reform, opposed to special interests and a healer of the racial divide.
It is only in the real world of action that Barack Obama is the direct opposite.