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Why can't Obama just tell the Truth ?
Obama's Trouble With The Truth
By Richard Cohen
John Edwards lied about the cost of his haircuts. Fred Thompson lied about lobbying for a pro-choice outfit. John McCain insists that the U.S. was founded as a "Christian nation." Mitt Romney concocted the story about how his father marched with Martin Luther King Jr. And Rudy Giuliani is one-man fib machine -- everything from why he had to provide police protection for his then-mistress to the cure rates for prostate cancer in Britain. Yet it is something Barack Obama said that bothers me most of all because Obama is a new kind of politician. He is supposed to be coolly authentic.
What concerns me is the lie or fib or misstatement -- call it what you want -- that involves Obama's assertion that more young black males are in prison than in college. It is a shocking statistic -- and it is wrong. But when The Washington Post's lonesome but formidable truth squad, Michael Dobbs, brought this to the attention of the Obama campaign, he not only got the brush-off but the assertion was later repeated.
You can appreciate the usefulness of this false claim. It says something compelling about the plight of young, black males that is essentially true -- their condition amounts to a calamity and something has to be done. But this particular comparison is wrong, and Obama must know it by now. Ought to be true is not the same as true.
After all, it ought to be true that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. It ought to be true that he had ties with Osama bin Laden. It ought to be true that aluminum tubes were intended for a nuclear weapons program and it ought to be true, really, that none of this mattered since what mattered most of all was a larger truth: Saddam had to go and the Middle East had to be urban renewed for the sake of democracy.
In a recent provocative essay for The New Republic's Web site, Princeton historian Sean Wilentz coined the phrase "the delusional style in American punditry." He applied it to Obama's fans in the American press. His argument is that certain journalists are so enthralled by the sheer Obamaness of Obama that they are willing to overlook everything they know about the fundamental value of experience.
In this regard, Wilentz cites a Boston Globe editorial that used Obama's memoir "Dreams From My Father" to extol Obama's real-life experiences. Wilentz is not persuaded. To him, the book is "not exactly a portrait of sterling honesty or authenticity."
I and others have written that Obama -- as he himself says in the introduction -- invented composite characters and altered chronology. But as The Chicago Tribune also reported, some of the events Obama passionately details seem not to have happened at all. Maybe his memory played tricks on him. Mine sure does.
But I am not running for president. And if I were, I'd pay particular attention to the truth -- to the nagging facts that sometimes get in the way of a good story. After all, it is not only Iraq that has been destroyed in the last several years -- so has whatever trust the American people still had in their government. I have been at this game a long time, but for sheer manipulation of the facts, for a fudging of the truth, for the occasional bald lie, the Bush administration takes the cake. Cheney and truth cannot be found in the same sentence.
So the cavalier dismissal of Dobbs, the Post's truth-hunter, is troubling. Since he writes that the Obama campaign would not comment, it is reasonable to assume that it doesn't give a damn -- that this is a little matter and the candidate is engaged in something grand. The phony statistic is, in its way, like a composite. There's a larger truth here, get it?
No. When John McCain sticks to his insistence that the Constitution established the United States as a "Christian nation," I don't like it, but I know McCain and I know his character. He has a record in public life going back, essentially, to 1967 when he was shot down over Vietnam and repeatedly tortured by his captors. Back in 2000, I might have gotten a bit "delusional" over him, but I had my reasons.
I am a bit enamored with Obama as well. But the man's public record is thin and the glow from him is distracting and my intuition tells me that sometimes intuition is no substitute for experience. So, I'll sit back and watch some more -- and wait to see if Obama or anyone in his campaign calls back Dobbs and corrects the record. "Facts are stubborn things," John Adams once said. So, to our regret, we keep learning the hard way.
23 Answers
- SusieLv 51 decade agoFavorite Answer
Why can't Obama tell the truth? Because if he did, no one would vote for him.
It is hard for me to understand why people are so enamored of him. The only thing I can think of is that he is a con artist. I have some experience being conned by con artists, so I can sometimes recognize one when I see him. One sure way to tell a con artist is that he will tell the exact opposite of what is true. So if he is farther left and more divisive than any other candidate, he will claim to be the one who can unite the country, and if his resume lacks substance, he will claim that the less experience a candidate has, the better able to lead.
It is amazing that so many of us are willing to vote for the "change candidate" without knowing what the change will be. Will we leave Iraq only to engage in another civil war in Kenya defending Obama's uncle, grandmother, and half-sisters against the factions who oppose the faction that Obama's relatives support? Obama's church is a church that preaches Africa first. Are we willing to give all our military secrets to a president who puts Africa before America? I am afraid of what change Obama might bring.
But many in this country are so blinded by his colorful speeches, that they follow him like lemmings. Let us hope that the electorate will see the cliff before the pied piper leads them right over the edge.
By the way, if the worst thing you can say against McCain is that he thinks this country was founded as a Christian nation, then maybe he is the candidate I should vote for..
Source(s): http://www.tucc.org/about.htm - Anonymous5 years ago
Do cons ever ask real questions that could be resolved through debate? Or, do they just disguise Obama bashing as questions? Such as: Isn't Obama the worst President ever? Can you believe how stupid Obama is? And, now Does Obama ever tell the truth? Similarly, you could see questions on Bush with the same effect: Was Bush the worst President in history? Why did Bush lie so much? My point is this is not a real question. It's a rant. Break it down to smaller points, cite examples of individual issues and start a debate. For example, you could say: Yesterday, Obama said X about issue Y. But, then he did something else. What was his motivation? Without making a point, your question is pointless. Sorry.
- devilishblueyesLv 71 decade ago
Maybe the info that Obama was given was wrong. The following article states in generality the same thing as the article you provided states that Obama said. I'm not saying the article is right or wrong, but every candidate runs the possibility of being fed bad info.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0881455.html
Here's a second article which I would regard as being more correct since it was published by a university.
http://uwnews.org/article.asp?articleid=4393
As far as our country being founded on Christianity, that can be debated. In some manner of speaking, the statement is true. But in another manner of speaking it is not. If you look back as some of the writings and speeches of the founding fathers some of them do look more like a Sunday preacher's sermon than a politicians speech. On the other hand, I had read in a biography on Benjamin Franklin that he once proposed bringing in a preacher to give a morning prayer or sermon during the political gathering, knowing that hardly no one would like it just to attempt get them to stop bickering. I believe he did that when they were trying to put together the Constitution.
As a college history professor told me one time, "Truth is relative." History is viewed from millions of different perspectives and each perspective is influenced by the environment that person grew up in. Even events that are recorded by a video camera are relative as far as truth because they can never see the whole picture. They only show the facts as they happened from that visual angle.
- labken1817Lv 61 decade ago
It wasn't Obama that got the statistics wrong it was a 2002 study by the Justice Policy Institute. You see the study compared the total black population with those of Males in college and prison. Certainly there are far more Black Males in Prison then there are in college as the prison population includes those of any age while overwhelmingly the majority of the college population is young adults. So the study itself was flawed.
In case your wondering, here are the actual statistics.
Black American Men between the ages of 18-24
Enrolled in college: 500,000
Incarcerated in prison: 200,000
If this is the worst "lie" Obama has told, then I think we may be seeing the most honest politician ever.
Source(s): Rumbler_12: Here is a direct quote from Obama. "I don't want to wake up four years from now and discover that we still have more young black men in prison than in college." --Barack Obama, fund-raiser in Harlem, NY, Nov. 29, 2007. Grumpy Old Man: Why don't you take a look at his record, How much legislation had Obama sponsored to help the Black men. Obama is not the black candidate like Al Sharpton. Obama is the American Candidate. ********************************************************************** I also want to notate that similar articles to this one were floating around about Kerry in 2004. Evidently Kerry made the same comment Obama did. - How do you think about the answers? You can sign in to vote the answer.
- 5 years ago
You can keep your doctor. You can keep your plan. Tell me that's the truth. Obams stood in front of millions of people and made that statement. You liberals have or don't have the alls to say he doesn't lie. You are sick SB's. except the ladies they are just sick.
- rumbler_12Lv 71 decade ago
A distortion by Cohen.
Obama said a higher percentage of people in prison are black (about 44%) than the percentage of blacks in colleges (about 11.5 %)
That equals about 10.5 to 11% of the total black male population in Prison and about 6% of the total back male population in colleges accrding to studies I've seen.
http://www.backspace.com/is/in/the/house/work/imag...
http://www.jbhe.com/news_views/48_blacks_higheredu...
He (Obama) is telling the truth. That is what he said. The evidence has been provided.
Also that article is an editorial from a conservative columnist, not a news stroy or study with references. The links i gave are referenced.
- 1 decade ago
Personally all of these candidates from both sides tell stories of their "experience", "greatness", etc. I believe they all have one agenda- and it is to win and get into office, to fufill the debts they owe to the corporations and special interests. And notice they all never tell you what they really are about, or really want to do once they are president. It is all generalities.
How do you think they get so much press? It costs $$$$$$$ to be on Fox, CNN, MSNBC, etc. They are paying for it w/ their special interests "donations".
Don't fall for the wolf in sheep's clothing. That is why I'm voting for Ron Paul. He is honest, fair, truthful and tells you like it is. His only special interest is America.
Vote Ron Paul 2008!
- 1 decade ago
Barack Hussein Obama is the least qualified candidate running for the Presidency. In addition to his gross lack of experience (Obama has only 3 years of experience in the U.S. Senate), this anti-American individual has refused to wear the U.S. flag pin, and in the following video, even refused to pledge allegiance to the United States of America. Should the U.S. even consider electing a president who refused to pledge allegiance to this nation? I think not. You can view evidence for yourself at http://youtube.com/watch?v=Fwog6E08CFU For additional information, all concerned citizens and patriots should read further materials available at www. barackobamacandidate .org
- Anonymous1 decade ago
The important message is that we all know most politicians speak with forked tongues but that some people get wrapped up in celebrity, charisma or what have you and go into denial about their saviors deceit. The only thing "new" about Obama is that he has been able to get so far on nothing more than the superficial and that people will defend him because of the superficial yet know little to nothing about who he really is and what he stands for. I know I will take heat for it but to me he is the worst of the worst not the best fresh new thing
- BeckssteinLv 51 decade ago
This is an interesting piece, and more people should pay attention to it rather than shrugging it off. The writer brings a valid point.....if something is not a large matter, then it is unimportant. I do not want a President who feels that way.
