Posted, Monday, November 5, 2007   

An Obama-nation ...

So who is this guy named Obama? What do we really know about him, anyway? Oh, yeah, he's written a book or two, but other than his complicated lineage, and his pseudo-Bill Clinton story of hope, what's this guy accomplished that he's running for President of the free world? I mean really.

It is as if Barack Obama emerged from nowhere one day -- sort of like he came from beneath the sea, or was it Lake Erie?—and, suddenly, there he was standing on that pre-9/11 platform at the 2004 Democratic National Convention doing his best President John F. Kennedy impersonation. Admittedly, he had the audience in the palm of his hand that night. Mine, too. Undoubtedly it was a moment the tall, lanky Abe Lincoln look-alike wouldn't soon forget.

Now this NOT-one-term Illinois Senator with his lake-shallow past is running for president, and the pundits, Hollywood and Oprah, are going goo-goo-gah-gah over the wannabe Bill Clinton, John Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln impersonator with a hint of Martin Luther King's oratory style.

I could say I don't get it, but I zip-be-de-do-dah DO!

Americans are longing for that my-oh-my-what a wonderful day feeling, the kind of feelings we can remember having had when our nation was young and naive even after having endured all the wars of the last century. We had been the victors in most of those wars and our ideals hadn't been compromised despite the challenges of the day. Of course, we look back at those times through Rose Kennedy-colored glasses. There were, after all, the Commies to contend with. And who could forget the air raid drills that were so terrifying? Even in those Camelot years, families were building bomb shelters beneath their own backyards then stocking them with enough food to survive what we were certain was the coming nuclear holocaust. Still, there was Korea. There remains Vietnam. And some would argue that ‘Nam was America’s turning point, though I disagree. I think Vietnam was the outbreak of the emotional illness that had been incubating in America since 1961. But I digress, or do I?

Now it's another century, and so many can remember life before November 22, 1961 -- the day our hero President John F. Kennedy took that fateful bullet in his head. Nothing was the same after that dismal Dallas day.

Which leads me back to Obama and candidates like him: the political neophytes who crop up every election cycle and become our latest hope. You know the faces: there was football hero Jack Kemp always compared to Jack Kennedy in looks if not style. Then there was pretty boy-toy what’s his name who served as vice president under Tush the Elder. He was so memorable his name escapes me. In the 1988 campaign, Democratic vice-presidential candidate, the poetic late-Senator Lloyd Bentsen did what’s his name in. In one of the most quotable political moments of the twentieth century he said in response to the candidates bragging that he had as much experience as President Kennedy had when Kennedy was elected, "I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy."

That was a moment seared on America's consciousness on two levels. The first, for the great gasp of sympathetic discomfort that emanated from us all watching that debate when someone was so artfully brought to his knees in the public eye. The second, and even more uncomfortable, was that was the moment that best reminded us that there is no John F. Kennedy on the stage of America's political arena and there hasn’t been and probably won’t be in a long while. They just don't make 'em like they used to, partners.

Still we keep looking for those glory days of hope and possibility, of youth and vigor. It is as if America has a national disorder; desperate, we search for our leaders in all the wrong places. Need I remind anyone of America's election of the Republican Party’s answer to Jack Kennedy, the handsome but callow George, now President Tush, who, like Obama, emerged from extremely shallow waters, he from the Texas Rio Grande.

Well, we‘ve just got to stop it. America needs national psychoanalysis . . .maybe if we had universal healthcare we could afford it!

But back to the ranch, or the lake, let us return to the latest national poster boy. In his desperate attempt to bring momentum to his decidedly disappointing campaign, Senator Obama has taken to piling on Hillary. Okay, he said he wouldn’t engage in the politics of destruction – that’s what they ALL say – but what’s the guy to do? He’s losing, big-time. So he calls a press conference and accuses Hillary of playing the gender card. Oh, please. We all knew that was coming. But who would’ve expected the Senator from Illinois to play the race card  . . . and get away with it! “Look,” Senator Obama said, “I didn’t come out and say, Look, I’m being hit on because I look different from the rest of the folks on this stage . . .”

Well, Senator Obama, you just did!

And that’s an Obama-nation.

                            ~ Halli