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SEIFFE:  Disqualifying Experience

Wednesday, October 8, 2008 

By Ralf Seiffe

One of the recurring themes of this year’s presidential campaign is experience.  Fingering Obama’s short public career was a winner for John McCain until he tapped Sarah Palin who has better, but still limited experience.  Since then, we haven’t heard much from McCain about experience.  But, to stop disparaging “that one’s” experience is a mistake because Barack Obama does have a record of “accomplishment” and it is damning.  So, rather than abandoning the experience issue altogether, the campaign should change focus from highlighting what Obama hasn’t done to directly criticizing what Obama has done.  It’s a record that richly disqualifies Obama to hold the office he seeks and if the public became familiar with it, they would reconsider John McCain.

Here are several points on Barack Obama’s resume that present a tremendous opportunity for the Republicans.  Perhaps the best place for McCain to begin is with Bill Ayers, an issue where he’s already beginning to make some progress.  The McCain/Palin position seems to be limited to asking, “what do you know about him and when did you know it?” But, that should be the starting point, not the objective.  Obama’s string pullers are right to diminish Ayers’ career as a bomber and real conservatives should recognize that the aging radical escaped the consequences because the government exceeded its authority.  For one, celebrate a government that observes limits to its power.

There is one facet of this issue that is worth examining and hammering: the activities Ayers and Obama pursued together.  The unrepentant terrorist was able to convince the Annenberg foundation to invest $50 million into the future of Chicago schoolchildren.  As a professor at Circle Campus, Ayers was apparently credible and the project attracted another $50 million in matching grants.  One would think that a prudent steward of such a fortune would only appoint someone who was well-known to him and someone in which he had great confidence. Nevertheless, Ayers put Obama in charge of this treasure at a time Obama claims he didn’t know Ayers.  Obama's representation is simply not credible.

What’s worse, however, is how the duo apparently diverted the money to favored “community organizations” rather than to spend it on children in the classroom.  No doubt they informed their benefactors but, this “for the children” project’s assets were looted to create a political constituency on the south side of Chicago.  We can understand this sort of behavior from a man who bombed the Pentagon but, what about “that one” running for president?  Women in the suburbs will re-think their support of Obama when they come to understand how Obama/Ayers hijacked the money meant for schoolchildren.  A huge black spot on Obama’s resume.

Another place to point to Obama's "experience" is the candidate’s connection to both ends of the financial crisis.  On one extreme, Obama writes that he's a failed community organizer who worked and lawyered for ACORN.  Multi-state raids on that organization’s offices are just coming into the public’s consciousness and Republicans should remind voters that ACORN’s purpose is to hijack elections.  Between elections, the organization became one of the largest advocates for deadbeat mortgagors who are the source of the pollution in the credit markets. 

At the other end of the crisis, Obama’s friends and advisors include those who formerly managed Fannie and Freddie during the time they were decimating their credit standards.  These friends hijacked the GSE’s cooked the books, paid themselves fabulous salaries and looked at the secondary mortgage market like a fois gras chef regards a goose.  Our current financial distress is a direct result of his advisors' oversight default .

More practically, the effect of this hijacking has been to destroy values in the housing market and equity prices, a phenomenon Senator McCain recognized in his off-the-cuff proposal at last night’s debate.  This means that these selfish men and women who destroyed Fannie and Freddie--now Obama’s advisors--were willing to destroy most American’s two largest assets, their home and their retirement account, to become federal banking bigshots and take Lehman-like salaries.  This experience is another blot on the candidate’s resume and a disqualifier for president.

Another opportunity to illuminate Obama’s experience is his political upbringing by the Chicago machine.  Most Americans probably think Chicago politics consists of an adversarial relationship between Democrats and Republicans but that the Dems are just better.  Those of us who live here know  there is an arrangement between the parties.  This "combine" has enabled them to hijack the state and local governments and to make sure characters like Obama get elected.  The candidate's frame of reference is a one-party system that he believes entitles him to high office and the emoluments that Federalist Number One warns us about.  This system is most certainly not about change--it’s a political monopoly that is specifically designed to preserve the status quo first, last and always, regardless of Obama's phony message.  Such a monopoly provides the means and manner for the looting, hijacking and realized self interest that is Chicago Machine politics. 

The Chicago Machine would hardly be germane except for the a high price it extracts from the very people Obama's resume claims he's helped.  Just look at the conditions of Obama’s State Senate district: rampant murders, failed schools, gangs and drugs and all sorts of other pathologies.  Looking at a resume claiming such “success” would instantly earn it a trip to the round file.

The key to capturing the undecided and the normally Republican voters who have fallen under Obama's spell lies on the candidate's resume.  Nevertheless, one wonders whether the McCain campaign has the capability to change tactics in the time left.  He must do something different, especially in light of Obama’s instant reaction to the polls from last night’s debate.  It cannot escape notice that Obama won on health care and already has commercials touting his next hijacking on Chicago’s “conservative” radio station.  This sort of agility is hard to beat, as the McCain campaign must be learning.

Ralf Seiffe advises business start-ups and product launches from Chicago, Illinois and is a political analyst and columnist for the Illinois Leader and Illinois Review.

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