Some comments from England
Gerard Baker in the Times of London discusses the Michelle Obama matter:
In what might be the most revealing statement made by any political figure so far in this campaign season, Mrs Obama caused a stir this week. She said that the success of her husband Barack’s campaign had marked the first time in her adult life that she had felt pride in her country. This, even by the astonishingly self-absorbed standards of politicians and their families, is a remarkably narrow view of what makes a country great. And though she later half-heartedly tried to retract the remark it was a statement pregnant with meaning for the presidential election campaign.
Now, to be fair to Mrs Obama, she would surely have a point if she had said that it was a source of incomparable pride to her and all African-Americans that in a country with a long and baleful history of racial discrimination, one of their own was within serious range of becoming president. All but the most irredeemably racist Americans would surely agree with that. But that was not what she said. She said this was the only time in her adult life that she had felt pride in America.
It was instructive for two reasons. First, it reinforced the growing sense of unease that even some Obama supporters have felt about the increasingly messianic nature of the candidate’s campaign. There’s always been a Second Coming quality about Mr Obama’s rhetoric. The claim that his electoral successes in places like Nebraska and Wisconsin might transcend all that America has achieved in its history can only add to that worry. Secondly, and more importantly, I suspect it reveals much about what the Obama family really thinks about the kind of nation that America is…
if you listen to Mr Obama’s speeches, it is not the lack of substance but the quality of it that ought to worry Americans…He plans large increases in government spending on health and education. He wants to tax the rich more to pay for it. He is against companies using the opportunities of free markets to restructure their operations in the US. He is vehemently protectionist. He continues to insist, despite the growing evidence that this left-wing nostrum would be lunacy, that the US must pull its troops out of Iraq with the utmost dispatch…it’s not really an accident that he has been endorsed by the likes of Ted Kennedy and Jesse Jackson.