Barak Obama Exposed By His Own History

The baby Senator from Illinois, Barak Obama, enjoys being something of a cypher. His soothing and hypnotic public voice as a presidential candidate is significantly at odds with his actions as community organizer and state legislator from South Side Chicago's mean streets. Obama would rather keep his legislative and activist record a secret--at least until after the election. Stanley Kurtz investigated Obama's record as public servant in Illinois, and his expose in The Weekly Standard is worth a read for anyone who wants to understand their choices for November.

...extensive and continuous coverage in both the Chicago Defender and the Hyde Park Herald presents a remarkable resource for understanding who Obama is. Reportage in these two papers is particularly significant because Obama's early political career-the time between his first campaign for the Illinois State Senate in 1995 and his race for U.S. Senate in 2004-can fairly be called the "lost years," the
period Obama seems least eager to talk about, in contrast to his formative years in Hawaii, California, and New York or his days as a community organizer, both of which are recounted in his memoir, Dreams from My Father. The pages of the Hyde Park Herald and the Chicago Defender thus offer entrée into Obama's heretofore hidden world.

What they portray is a Barack Obama sharply at variance with the image of the post-racial, post-ideological, bipartisan, culture-war-shunning politician familiar from current media coverage and purveyed by the Obama campaign. __WeeklyStandard

It is easier for me to understand now why Obama doesn't mind being perceived as a Rorschach ink blot--vague and shifting. In Obama's case, it is far better to be seen as ambiguous than to be known for what one actually is.