Obama: Elitist or insightful?

by Carl Golden | Sunday April 13, 2008

A gaffe, it's been said, occurs when a politician inadvertently blurts out the truth.

The recent comments by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama fit that rather cynical description perfectly.

In an effort to plumb the depths of frustration on the part of people in small towns in particular, Obama said these folks often turn to religion, guns, and illegal immigrant bashing to vent their anger over economic uncertainty and fear.

Sen. Hillary Clinton pounced on the man she's been steadily losing ground to and denounced his comments as "elitist and condescending."

Presumably, she crafted her response while sitting in the kitchen of one her two multi-million dollar homes in Westchester County and Washington, D. C., after taking a break from checking on the $110 million she and her ex-President husband raked in the past seven years as he ran around the globe selling the presidency and crafting dubious business deals with equally dubious individuals.

Hillary Clinton lecturing someone else on the evils of elitism is like Eliot Spitzer self-righteously holding forth on the evils of cheating on one's spouse.

Obama's slip also gave Clinton's beleaguered campaign an opportunity to change the subject from her embarrassing tale and explanations about being under sniper fire on a visit to the troops in Bosnia. Or from repeating her horror story --- untrue, as it turned out --- about a woman who was left to die in a hospital because she lacked health insurance.

For the Clintons, the latest flap is a chance to escape what has become the mantra of her campaign; namely, "If the truth doesn't fit, lie."

Obama retreated from his remarks, terming them, among other things, "inartful." Sorry, Barack, but at the level you're playing at, inartful doesn't cut it. Neither, of course, does lying as Hillary can attest.

While being inartful, Obama was also accurate. In trying to explain the frustrations and resentments felt by people who have come face to face with an uncertain future and feel powerless to do anything about it, Obama said they sought refuge, comfort and protection in familiar places (churches) and things (guns) while seeking to blame their plight on others (illegal immigrants).

Far from being elitist, Obama was being rather insightful --- albeit, clumsily so. He would have been far better served if he had said he not only understood the frustrations and where they led people, but that he intended to do something substantive about it.

Hillary's suggestion that Obama was poking fun at religion and faith while stomping all over the Second Amendment is silly in the extreme. Her reaction is typical of a candidate stuck in second place and besieged by calls from former friends and colleagues for her to abandon her campaign and avoid dividing the Democratic Party so deeply that its' chances for a victory in November evaporate in a bitter chaos of accusations and finger-pointing.

Obama touched a nerve with his comments and raised an issue that others --- including Clinton --- are fearful of discussing. His remarks were somewhat analogous to those uttered by Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a huge Hillary backer, when he said there are a great many people in his state who simply aren't ready to vote for a black man for President.

The Governor's remarks didn't hit the same nerve as Obama's did, but they struck the one right next to it. If Obama suffers from elitism, Rendell has a touch of the same ailment. His comments attributed a latent racism to small town and rural Pennsylvanians, individuals who lack the cultural sophistication of their big city counterparts --- elitists, in other words.

Clinton will, of course, ride this horse until it drops. She'll try to put Obama on the defensive and keep him there because it frees her from her pathological need to shade the truth as she seeks to convince voters she and Bill are entitled to move back into the White House.

Obama, for his part, needs to remind people that inartful is a curable condition, but that the Clinton brand of dissembling and hypocrisy is a very long term ailment.