"Obama knows what con men have long known"

Babe keeps cozy and warm on a cool autumn day atop the TV tuner.

"Liberals love to poke fun at Sarah Palin's past history as a runner-up in the Miss Alaska Competition, but it is one of many of the features of Palin's life that I can truly identify with," writes blogfriend Laura Lee of The WIde Awake Café in a must-read autobiographical snippet that we herewith publish in full. Her insight illuminates, like nothing else we have read, why Sarah Palin drives Northeast Corridor Conservatives and their fellow travelers on the left side of the aisle to distraction:

I also was a runner-up in a local Miss Fort Smith competition, and what I learned in the whole pageant deal was how superficial some people are, how to answer both tough and dumb questions and how incredibly back-stabbing some females could be. I learned that beauty contestants were required to put vasoline on their teeth in order to smile. I learned that I swung my arms too much when I walked down the ramp. All sorts of discoveries about myself made me realize I was too much of an introvert to be comfortable out in the center of the stage. The main thing I learned though, was that the dream I had as a little girl was not, in reality, anything at all that I wanted.

The day before the pageant we were interviewed by a local radio station host. The questions were so asinine I found myself very impatient with the questioner. One of her questions was, "If you could speak to anyone you want to, living or dead, who would it be?" I thought a little while about it, and not wanting to insult any of my favorite artists, musicians, writers or relatives, I went for the One that I spoke to every night. I said, "God." Now, I think I would say, "Sarah Palin." Sarah Palin has been able, throughout her life, to take everything she has been through and make something better of it. She has stepped out in the center and taken the tough and dumb questions with grace and patience. She knows her guy, McCain. These two are a great team.

Grace under pressure, the very definition of courage. As we blogged three weeks back, "It's the character, stupid," quoting our own email response to Fox & Friends' viewer question "Which is more important in this election, character or an economic plan?":

While Obama's stealth radical agenda, Alinsky-style thuggish tactics and hysterical followers frighten me, I'm no big fan of McCain's either, what with Soros-seeded McCain-Feingold "finance reform" and McCain's scientifically challenged views on anthropogenic climate change.

Sarah, on the other hand, floats my boat.

McCain is the far lesser of two evils. Neither of the presidential candidates knows the first thing about economics, so all we have LEFT is character, and for a Beltway pol, McCain's got it way over Barack "Whichever-way-the-wind-blows" Obama.

Outside on the terrace, Tiny keeps the side yard safe for democracy.

Speaking of "Which is more important in this election, character or an economic plan," Thomas Sowell, as always, is not afraid to call a con a con in his latest:

People who think that talking points on this or that problem constitute "the real issues" that we should be talking about, instead of Obama’s track record, ignore a very fundamental fact about representative government.

Representative government exists, in the first place, because we the voters cannot possibly have all the information necessary to make rational decisions on all the things that the government does. We cannot rule through polls or referendums. We must trust someone to represent us, especially as President of the United States.

Once we recognize this basic fact of representative government, then the question of how trustworthy a candidate is becomes a more urgent question than any of the so-called “real issues.”

A candidate who spends two decades promoting polarization and then runs as a healer and uniter, rather than a divider, forfeits all trust by that fact alone …

Some people take solace from the fact that Senator Obama has verbally shifted position on some issues, like drilling for oil or gun control, since this is supposed to show that he is “pragmatic” rather than ideological.

But political zig-zags show no such moderation as some seem to assume. Lenin zig-zagged and so did Hitler. Zig-zags may show no more than that someone is playing the public for fools.

Some people who see the fraud in what Obama is saying are amazed that others do not. But Obama knows what con men have long known, that their job is not to convince skeptics but to enable the gullible to continue to believe what they want to believe. He does that very well.

Pol and media spin about "the real issues" has always stuck in our craw. Thank you, Dr. Sowell, for explicating the real, real issues.

Comments

[goomp]

If the con man so well described by Tom Sowell wins, the "Shining City Upon a Hill" is in real danger, as pointed out by Dr. Sanity in her Oct. 25 post. Character is always more important in the end than style. A socialist government that suppresses freedom leads to disaster, not security.

[Laura Lee Donoho]

Ahhh, thanks, Sissy.

[Jon Brooks]

I have been trying to condense in my mind who obambi reminds me of in a charachter out of classic literature. The shining city on a hill illusion in the article finally zeroed it in for me..Mordred. The bastard son returned, using the very law of the land to destroy the city from within and convert it to his warped sense of vengence.

[Gayle Miller]

If ANYONE planning to vote for Obama would really just look at his campaign's behavior vis-a-vis people who ask him any kind of tough questions - whether a Joe the Plumber or that female reporter in West Palm Beach. The sheer jackbooted overreaction!

When I apply for a job, my entire life history is required by the potential employer: college transcripts, certificates, even my credit report (which I find offensive) and I must sign an I-9 certifying that I am eligible to work in this country. And the potential employer has the right to check every single document - as they should! But for the job of the most powerful man in the Western hemisphere - a man who will be possessed of the nuclear football and all manner of sensitive intelligence data - we are supposed to ask nothing? Horse puckey!