Barack Obama: U.S. presidential election, 2008/Controversy

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Barack Obama, U.S. Senator (D-Ill.)
This article is part of the
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of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and
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The following is controversy (Part 1) regarding Sen. Barack Obama and the 2008 presidential election.

Also see Controversy (Part 2).

Contents

On homosexuality

  • See regarding Obama "Won't pull anti-gay bigot from campaign event."

On lobbyists

On patriotism

Obama, the American flag lapel pin and patriotism

Obama "no longer wears an American flag lapel pin because it has become a substitute for 'true patriotism' since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks", he said October 4, 2007, in Iowa.[1]

"My attitude is that I’m less concerned about what you’re wearing on your lapel than what’s in your heart",[2] Obama told Cedar Rapids, Iowa's KCRG-TV station.[1][2] "You show your patriotism by how you treat your fellow Americans, especially those who served," Obama said.[1]

"The truth is that right after 9/11, I had a pin," Obama said. "Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we're talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security. I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest; instead I'm gonna try to tell the American people what I believe what will make this country great, and hopefully that will be a testimony to my patriotism," the Associated Press reported.[1]

Related external articles

Claims

Arugula in Iowa

During his October 4, 2007, campaign stop in Iowa, Obama "revisited the topic of arugula," John McCormick wrote in the Baltimore Sun's The Swamp Blog.[3] Obama's "first mention of the leafy green came during the summer as part of his first high-profile visit to an Iowa farm. Then, he posed the following question:

"'Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?' he asked. 'I mean, they're charging a lot of money for this stuff.'[4]

"That comment came despite the fact that Iowa does not have any Whole Foods stores, nor do most of its farmers typically grow any arugula," McCormick wrote.[3]

Selective editing of past statements on opposing the war in Iraq

Obama has sought to distinguish his candidacy from that of his Democratic opponents by taking the pre-invasion of Iraq position that when Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and others voted for the resolution authorizing the Iraq war, Obama, "then a state senator, publicly opposed the war." [1]

However, in a May 2, 2007 posting at MoJoBlog, Jonathan Stein reported on Obama's "Selective Memory" on his anti-war stance. Stein received an email from an "old friend" who contacted Stein regarding a fundraising letter he had received from Obama in which was enclosed a quote from Obama's October 2002 speech. The friend "noticed two occasions of ellipses used in one of the paragraphs about Saddam Hussein."

Stein quoted the fundraising letter, as follows:

"Now let me be clear: I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butcher his own people to secure his own power.... The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him. But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors... and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls into the dustbin of history."

Although not in possession of the original, Stein cites what he found at Wikisource on Obama's Iraq speech:

"The first ellipse: 'He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He's a bad guy.'"
"The second: 'that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength'."

Next, Stein comments on the first ellipse: "Why the omission indeed? I'd bet the first the omission is all about one phrase: 'developed chemical and biological weapons.' Now, that could be referring to Iraq's production of WMDs in the late 80's and early 90's or the alleged production in recent years that turned out to be false, but either way it looks like Obama bought the administration's line about Iraq possessing WMD but wanted to avoid war anyway. Does America want a leader that is okay with rogue states possessing weapons of mass destruction? Obama obviously thinks it doesn't."

Peter Suderman at the National Review Online's the corner commented that, if the information is accurate, "Obama seems to be hoping that people don't notice that he opposed the war in Iraq despite believing that Saddam Hussein had developed chemical and biological weapons."

Perhaps the point is moot, since in July 2004 Obama said "I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports.... What would I have done? I don't know. What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made." [2]

Campaign financing

On fuel efficiency

"In addition to using a thirsty charter jet and SUV motorcade to ferry him to speeches ripping Detroit automakers for causing global warming by not building more fuel efficient vehicles, it turns out Barack Obama also chooses horsepower over fuel efficiency in his family car," Henry Payne wrote May 11, 2007. Mark Phelan reported in the Detroit Free Press that Obama "drives a 340-HP V-8 Hemi Chrysler 300C - the most powerful engine option for that vehicle, and one of the most powerful family sedans on the market. The 'C' gets a combined city/highway 21 mpg."

Related external articles

On federal coal subsidies and the environment and global warming

"In 2004, as a state legislator running for the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama came to this small town 300 miles from Chicago to pledge support for southern Illinois' struggling coal country," Alec MacGillis and Steven Mufson wrote June 24, 2007, in the Washington Post.

"Three years later, with Obama now a candidate for president, his embrace of southern Illinois and its dominant industry is showing signs of strain. Obama finds himself caught between his advocacy of huge federal subsidies for liquefied coal for transportation fuel, a technology that the Illinois coal industry views as a salvation, and environmental groups that reject it as a boondoggle that would set back efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the fight against global warming," MacGillis and Mufson wrote.

"After co-sponsoring legislation earlier this year for billions of dollars in subsidies for liquefied coal, Obama more recently began qualifying his support in ways that have left both environmentalists and coal industry officials unsure where he stands," MacGillis and Mufson wrote. "More broadly, Obama's contortions on coal point to the limits of the role he likes to assume, that of a unifier who can appeal across traditional lines and employ a "new kind of politics" to solve problems. In reaching out to the coal industry, some observers say, he may have been trying to show that he is a different sort of Democrat, but the gesture had the look of old-style politicking and put him in a corner, where he wound up alienating some on both sides of the issue."

Ethics questions

Michelle Obama and WalMart

Other

On religion

On ethnicity and Islam

Completion of 6-year Senate term

"When Obama was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, he said he would finish his first six-year term and not run for President or seek the vice presidency," Mai Martinez reported February 9, 2007, for CBS2Chicago. "But Obama then spent months tiptoeing around the question of whether or not he would run, but just last month, he announced he was creating an exploratory presidential committee."

Resources

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Art Golab and Abdon M. Pallasch, "'I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest'," Associated Press (Chicago Sun-Times), October 5, 2007.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Jeff Zeleny, "The Politician and the Absent American Flag Pin," New York Times, October 5, 2007.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 John McCormick, "Obama talks arugula - again - in Iowa," The Swamp Blog/Baltimore Sun, October 5, 2007.
  4. ↑ John McCormick, "Obama finds 'beer voters' hard to tap," Chicago Tribune, September 23, 2007.

External articles

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