HALLI CASSER-JAYNE - bio
RED, WHITE 'N TRUE™
BARACK OBAMA_| WHO'S YOUR DADDY?
* For my father, 90 and going strong!
Posted, August 4, 2008,  12:01 p.m. est

    

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have a lot in common, but it is that both men grew up without their fathers that could be the tie that binds.

Yet despite sharing similar backgrounds there is no love lost between the former President and the presumptuous Democratic Party nominee.

And it may be because while the rest of the world was dazzled by the glitz and glamour of the Obama persona, Bill Clinton saw through his wife’s rival for the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, and he wasn’t afraid to say it.

For the months of the primaries, Bill and his wife former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, warned the Democratic Party that they were making a huge mistake in anointing Barack Obama the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. Their warning was not just campaign rhetoric. But no one wanted to listen to the former President considered by some to be the most talented political operative alive today.

In a country where Democrats have had a big problem getting elected to the White House, Bill Clinton managed to get elected twice. So one can’t help wondering why a party would diss the former two-term president’s advice (the only in years) and throw him and Hillary Clinton off the Democratic Party’s train.

On the other hand, there’s a reason why Democrats haven’t made it to the White House since Bill Clinton left the Oval Office.

Now the Democrats are facing the reality that Barack Obama may not be the Party’s savior. All that glitters is not gold and black may already be last season’s color. In our celebrity-driven culture the shelf-life of a celebrity isn’t what it used to be.

Despite the brilliant pr campaign executed by the Obama Campaign, and maybe because of it, Obama in the year of hating Republicans, can’t seem to pull substantially ahead of Republican presumptive nominee, John McCain.

In comparison to where Al Gore and John Kerry were at this time in the election cycle as measured against their Republican counterparts -- Gore and Kerry being the most recent Democrats whose trains didn’t quite choo-choo it to Washington -- Obama is way behind. Rasmussen actually has McCain ahead.

The numbers should be terrifying to the Democratic Party leadership and must be causing Barack Obama not a small amount of angst. Obama was so sure of his victory that he had his own presidential seal created, and has fitted his new glamorous plane with his chair labeled “president.”

Which leads to the obvious question: OMG, could Bill Clinton be right? Is Barack Obama unelectable?

The answer is that if he continues to run his campaign on the same track, Barack Obama is going to be on that list of little choo-choo’s that couldn’t.

And it’s time Mr. Obama made peace with Daddy Clinton and started taking some of the former president’s seasoned advice. Clinton has managed his way out of a few train wrecks of his own. And besides, Father Knows Best.

Unfortunately, it appears that Barack Obama has serious “daddy” issues. As a neophyte in the Senate he immediately latched onto Daddy John McCain to help him jumpstart his Senate career. He wound up making an enemy of his Senate senior, McCain. He’s gone a round or two with Joe Lieberman, as well. Dare we mention his troubling relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright?

On the other hand, Obama doesn’t seem to have issues with women. Nancy Pelosi, Claire McCaskill, Donna Brazile, Katherine Sibelius, Caroline Kennedy, Oprah Winfrey, Maria Shriver, Michelle Obama seem to be at his beck and call-girls.

So for Barack Obama to reach out to a father figure, most notably to reach out to a former Father of Our Country, seems unlikely. Not to mention the fact that Obama did to Clinton in the primary what he probably wished at one time to do to his own deadbeat father, beat him to a pulp, which means Clinton may have answers to Obama’s current dilemma the former president is not quite willing to reveal to his party’s favorite son.

In his first substantial interview since his wife, Hillary Clinton, abdicated to the Anointed One, it is clear that Clinton’s wounds have not healed. Although he said that he wouldn’t discuss the primaries until the election was over, he still managed to toss off a few zingers to Obama and others in the ABC interview.

Nevertheless Clinton says that he has no hard feelings towards Obama, the man who defeated his wife.

"I'm not and never was mad at Senator Obama," Clinton said.

On the other hand when ABC’s Kate Snow asked Clinton if he thought Obama was ready for the job, Clinton didn’t say yes. Instead he asked a emblematic question, Is anybody?

Since Hillary Clinton left the race both Clintons’ have been anything but magnanimous in their support of Barack Obama. The Obama campaign hasn’t exactly been trying to smooth over the rough edges with the Clintons’, or for that matter Hillary Clinton’s loyal supporters.

The audacious Mr. Obama may think that it is the Clintons’ who need to do the groveling to he, The Anointed One. But Mr. Obama is wrong. And it may be because without a real father of his own, Barack Obama never learned that no matter how big you get in life your parents' will always be your parents, your father, your Big Daddy, the wisest man there is, if for no other reason than he’s lived a whole lot longer than you.

It's time, Mr. Obama to make peace with your Daddy, Bill Clinton. He, and maybe only he, can help you engineer your choo-choo train to victory.