Starting a Serious National Conversation About Barack Obama.(Book review)

The Case against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate, By David Freddoso, Regnery Publishing, 2008, 244 pages

If there is an overriding lesson to David Freddoso's meticulous, measured, and hugely important examination of the rise of a very unlikely presidential nominee it might be "don't embellish!" There is plenty, more than enough, in the record of pro-abortion Sen. Barack Obama that Americans will find unappealing.

But getting the truth out about the one-term senator is much easier said than done. "Our press normally fixes a critical eye on ambitious politicians who promise us the world," Freddoso writes in the introduction. "That eye just seems to well up with tears whenever it falls upon the junior senator from Illinois."

All of us have many first-hand brushes with that reality. For example, how many times have we heard that pro-life Senator John McCain's choice for vice presidentpro-life Alaska Gov. Sarah Palinis "short on experience"? Ask exactly what it is in Obama's time in the Illinois state Senate or the United States Senate that qualifies him to hold the most powerful office in the world, and you get variations of what I have often heard from starry-eyed friends: just look, it's all there. Where? On Obama's web page.

Truth be told, as Freddoso does so well in his book, Obama has a paper-thin bordering on non-existent list of accomplishments. If you listen attentively, most of the time the core of the case Obama makes for himself just glides over this inconvenient truth. Instead it's about being a "reformer" who is able to "reach across the aisle" to Republicans because he "transcends" humdrum partisan politics.

However, according to Freddoso, "the idea of Barack Obama as a reformer is a great lie." Obama "has silently and at times vocally cooperated with Chicago's Democrat Machine to preserve one of the most overtly corrupt political systems in the nation."

Too late for the book but in time to be mentioned in an interview with me (and to be included in a column written for nationalreview.com), Freddoso pointed to the Saddleback Forum which took place a couple of weeks ago. Rick Warren asked Obama to name one time when he had acted against his own or his party's interests for the good of the nation.