Roger L. Simon: Back to Watergate: Obama, Grandmothers and Charles Colson

Christopher Hitchens takes on Obama on Slate today ("Blind Faith") in way that tossed me back to Watergate (actually I had been thinking about this strange similarity of eras for a few days, but the article helped confirm my ruminations ). Hitch wrote:

You often hear it said, of some political or other opportunist, that he would sell his own grandmother if it would suit his interests. But you seldom, if ever, see this notorious transaction actually being performed, which is why I am slightly surprised that Obama got away with it so easily. (Yet why do I say I am surprised? He still gets away with absolutely everything.)

Of course Hitchens is referring here to Obama's throwing his own grandmother under the train during the candidate's recent vaunted speech "on race" by making the poor woman the equivalent of the execrable Jeremiah Wright. This in turn threw me back a few years to Watergate times when Charles Colson, in one of the most famous quotes of the period, said "I'd walk over my own grandmother to re-elect Richard Nixon." Many of us thought that was par for the course back then in Nixonland, because we assumed Tricky Dick would do the same. Not that he did, that I can recall. So this places Obama ahead of Nixon (or behind, if you will) and in the company of the sleazy Colson. Not a great place to be, in my book. So much, as I have written before, for the New Politics.

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Roger,
Check your email. I sent my phone number to your PM account. My cousin, David Klein The Famous Plumber™, taught me the value of wearing a belt and suspenders so I also used the email applet on your home page. However, it gave me an *error msg so I'm not sure it went through.

*Here's the error msgs. It looks like a php script error. You might want to pass them along to Charles.

Warning: file(/home/roger62/cgi-bin/gm-banlist.cgi) [function.file]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/roger62/public_html/lgfmail.php on line 91

Warning: strstr() [function.strstr]: Empty delimiter. in /home/roger62/public_html/lgfmail.php on line 97

Roger, for a guy who's always complaining that liberals are stuck in 1968, why is it that just about everything reminds you of some bygone era?

Or is this just another quick 'n' easy opportunity for a cheap shot at an insufficiently-militant politician with whom you disagree?

we can agree to disagree on many things... and perhaps this is one of those times...

the comment above "So this places Obama ahead of Nixon (or behind, if you will) and in the company of the sleazy Colson. Not a great place to be, in my book." regarding Mr. Colson is troubling... His life and service since the time of his conversion and time in prison seems to be one of selfless sacrifice... Unless I am missing something... You may not agree with his world view... but I would think it would be hard to argue that he hasn't made a very positive contribution to society in the time since Nixon and Watergate...

For a guy who claims to be a Republican, why is every single of your comments indistinguishable from the Marxists who drop in here to fling poo?

There is a symmetry to it. Having elevated the African father and grandparents he never knew to mythical level in his life, he can roughly use and practically discard the actual grandmother who raised him; the poor old woman, however good-hearted she may be, serves no symbolic purpose. She's a typical white person; not a mythical African father. Obama made great ceremony of visiting the graves of his father and grandfather in Kenya, and thus "getting in touch with his racial roots"; but a visit to granny's condo in Honolulu offers nothing but comfy, drab, middle class humdrum, none of it in sepia tones, none of it of any political use.

All I can say is, if I were Obama's grandmother, I'd stay home for a while. Columnists are referring to her being thrown under a train, under a bus, in front of a truck...

Obama's grandmother could not be blamed if she disowned him for his disrespectful typical white person comment. All she did was step in and provide him with the foundation that got him to where he is today. But she probably has too much class.

Maybe if more folks took her view of responsibility and her value system, which obviously includes hard work and doing the right thing, we would have a better world. We certainly would have smaller government (because less people would be on the public dole) and more freedom.

In any case, all he cares about is getting power. So what if grandma has to pay the price. If he gets power, you can bet that lots of us will be thrown under the bus as he expands government to create dependencies to keep himself in power. Perverse!

pjbishop3, I agree that Colson has expiated himself to a great degree since Watergate. I was obviously going for the "grandmother thing."

I'm reminded more of Al Gore's use of his son's accident in the 2000 election. Trying to show his emotional side by describing how he suffered as he held his little boy's broken body.

March 24, 2008: Back to Watergate: Obama, Grandmothers and Charles Colson

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