Blogging David Freddoso’s “The Case Against Barack Obama”

I purchased David Freddoso's "The Case Against Barack Obama" tonight and plan to blog it as I read through it. There are 11 chapters, so it shouldn't take very long. My hope is that I can learn more about who Barack Obama is, what he really believes, and get the facts on troublesome areas of his past. Unlike some other conservative books that have been written about Obama, I believe Freddoso's book to be accurate, and can see that it is thoroughly documented.

Chapter One - Chicago

This chapter deals with Obama's political life in Chicago. It begins with his very first-ever election, to state senator. In this election, in 1996, Obama was to run against three other opponents, including the heavily favored incumbent. So how did Obama win? He basically cheated. He hired a guy whose job it was to disqualify each of Obama's opponents from the ballot. This operative examined every single signature in the petitions of each of the candidates, looking for any technicality that could be used to disqualify that signature. Since each candidate was required to have at least 757 signatures to be qualified to run, all he had to do was discredit enough signatures to get that candidate below 757 signatures, and the candidate would be disqualified from running in the election. Somehow, Obama's operative was able to do this. All three of Obama's opponents in this, his first election, were disqualified from running, and Obama thus won by default. The really scary thing about this episode is that, when asked about it in 2007, Obama felt no remorse about winning in this fashion. Instead he said, "I think they ended up with a very good state senator." In other words, the ends justified the means.

The next section of this chapter deals with the infamous "Chicago Machine." Freddoso is making the point that Obama is not just a lone liberal trying to get elected using these types of tactics. In his short time in Chicago politics, Obama was part of the Chicago Machine, supported it, and was even involved in saving its life in 2006. The Machine has always been about maintaining a pyramid of corrupt politicians in power in Chicago by providing good government jobs and contracts to constituents willing to sell their votes for a little piece of the pie and some upward mobility. Freddoso runs down the most recent history of John Stroger, the head of the Machine, and his son Todd, who took over for him after a stroke. He describes how, in 2006, when Obama was very popular nationwide, a "friend" of his, a popular liberal reformer, was running against the head of the Machine and looked like he might win the election, knocking down the empire. Barack "Change We Can Believe In" Obama not only didn't lift a finger to help his friend (and Chicagoans), but instead co-authored a letter with fellow lib senator Dick Durbin, heaping praise on Stroger and encouraging voters to cast theirs for this "good progressive Democrat, who will bring those values and sensibilities to the job." Showing just how gullible Chicago voters are, Stroger won and the chance for reform died.

Freddoso continues this theme by next focusing on Richard Daley, the 20-year mayor of Chicago. He demonstrates that Daley is even more corrupt than Stroger by running down several funny anecdotes about the administration, then describing how Obama has supported Daley politically, endorsing him for re-election as recently as January of 2007, in the midst of a federal investigation of his office for cronyism and corruption, complete with indictments. Again, taxpayer representatives work for reform, Obama interferes with it. We even learn that Michelle Obama briefly worked in the mayor's office. Freddoso winds up this section with the story of Obama chief strategist David Axelrod, who apparently has worked for Daley for over 15 years. As Freddoso runs down a number of the kind of corrupt government scams you see in movies actually happening in Daley's administration, he quotes Axelrod in what are just patently deceitful statements defending Daley. Here you have friends and contributors of Daley's setting up front operations to secure hundreds of millions of dollars of city funding by faking minority-run operations. Or, in the infamous "hired truck scandal," trucking contracts were literally sold for bribes by a Daley appointee, and Daley and his brother apparently received some of these bribes. Again, in the midst of all this craziness and corruption, Senator Obama the Reformer chose not to reform anything, but to instead endorse Daley, "as somebody who is constantly thinking about how to make the city better."

Implied, but left un-asked in this chapter, is this: How much more powerful could a guy like Daley become with a friend like the President of the United States on his side? But of course, this book is about Obama, and this summary quote from Freddoso is excellent: "If Barack Obama is a reformer, he may be the first reformer ever to become president of the United States before doing anything serious in the name of reform."

Has anyone in the national media bothered to investigate Obama's claim to be a reformer? Or have they just accepted it as a legitimate talking point and moved on? In a race where they send legions of investigators to Alaska to dig up dirt on Sarah Palin, who's not even running for president, you would think that an unbiased, legitimate news organization would put somebody on Obama's past.