Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal:

To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers, would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a bit extreme, he was given a pass.

Let that sink in: Obama was given a pass -- held to a lower standard -- because of the color of his skin. Podhoretz continues:

And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also so articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) "non-threatening," all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?

Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of the Obama phenomenon -- affirmative action. Not in the legal sense, of course. But certainly in the motivating sentiment behind all affirmative action laws and regulations, which are designed primarily to make white people, and especially white liberals, feel good about themselves.

Unfortunately, minorities often suffer so that whites can pat themselves on the back. Liberals routinely admit minorities to schools for which they are not qualified, yet take no responsibility for the inevitable poor performance and high drop-out rates which follow. Liberals don't care if these minority students fail; liberals aren't around to witness the emotional devastation and deflated self esteem resulting from the racist policy that is affirmative action. Yes, racist.

Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the color of his skin -- that's affirmative action in a nutshell, and if that isn't racism, then nothing is. And that is what America did to Obama.

True, Obama himself was never troubled by his lack of achievements, but why would he be? As many have noted, Obama was told he was good enough for Columbia despite undistinguished grades at Occidental; he was told he was good enough for the US Senate despite a mediocre record in Illinois; he was told he was good enough to be president despite no record at all in the Senate. All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was good enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary. What could this breed if not the sort of empty narcissism on display every time Obama speaks?

In 2008, many who agreed that he lacked executive qualifications nonetheless raved about Obama's oratory skills, intellect, and cool character. Those people -- conservatives included -- ought now to be deeply embarrassed. The man thinks and speaks in the hoariest of clichés, and that's when he has his teleprompter in front of him; when the prompter is absent he can barely think or speak at all. Not one original idea has ever issued from his mouth -- it's all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that has failed over and over again for 100 years.

And what about his character? Obama is constantly blaming anything and everything else for his troubles. Bush did it; it was bad luck; I inherited this mess. It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise his own powerlessness, so comfortable with his own incompetence. But really, what were we to expect? The man has never been responsible for anything, so how do we expect him to act responsibly?

In short: our president is a small and small-minded man, with neither the temperament nor the intellect to handle his job.When you understand that, and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of liberty and prosperity make sense. It could not have gone otherwise with such a man in the Oval Office.

Matt Patterson - Washington Post

From: The Heritage Foundation's "Morning Bell"

TUESDAY, MAR 3, 2009

Describing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s message in a private meeting with the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates Monday, a U.S. official told the Washington Post: “She said we are under no illusions about Iran and our eyes are wide open.” Well someone in the Obama Administration is under a huge illusion, because the Moscow newspaper Kommersant also reported yesterday that President Barack Obama sent a secret letter to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev weeks ago suggesting that he would halt development of the United States’ missile defense program in Eastern Europe if Russia helped resolve the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran has strongly resisted international efforts to pressure it to abide by its legal commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and halt its suspect nuclear activities. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, defiantly proclaimed last year that “Iran has obtained the technology to produce nuclear fuel, and Iran’s move is like a train…which has no brake and no reverse gear.” But we must be careful not to personalize the problem. Iran’s nuclear program began under President Rafsanjani and flourished under President Khatami. Both were considered “moderates,” extolled by some observers as leaders with whom the West could do business, but both also practiced diplomacy by taqiyyah, which is a religiously sanctioned form of dissimulation or duplicity.

Meanwhile, Russia has long been an enabler of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Not only have they provided Iran with uranium, supposedly for peaceful purposes, but they have even supplied Iran with anti-aircraft missiles, presumably to be used to stop Israeli forces from attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities.

With these facts in mind, the Obama Administration quid pro quo raises some troubling issues:

First, what the U.S. wants for not deploying systems to protect us is Russian diplomacy that ensures the Iranian ballistic missile and nuclear programs are terminated. That could take years and then it could only be verified with inspectors on the ground in Iran–an unthinkable concession. In the interim, Iran could easily build and test and we would have no defense. Indeed, not building defenses now may encourage the Iranians to speed-up their program. That’s a bad deal. Second, Russia’s complaints about missile defense are rooted in their belief that they should be able to control and threaten the countries on their borders. Agreeing to negotiate on missile defense concedes that point–that is a bad idea. Finally, if hitting the “reset” button on US-Russian relations means the United States has to make itself intentionally vulnerable to a potential Iranian threat–that’s a really bad deal.

CUTTING DEFENSE IS NO SOLUTION TO ECONOMIC WOES

A core principle of the political left in this country is that our current levels of defense spending have harmed, and will continue to harm, our economic prosperity. So last month while he was defending the $700 billion Wall Street bailout program, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) said: “The biggest ongoing threat to fiscal sanity in this country, I believe, is an open-ended, ever expanding military budget that goes far beyond what is necessary.” Frank’s assertions about the scope of defense spending in the United States are just flat out wrong.

At the height of World War II we spent 46% of our GDP on the military. By 1945 that number had dropped to 34.5%. Throughout the Cold War, defense spending averaged 8% of GDP and since 1962 the average spending level has fallen even further to 5.5% of our GDP. Today we spend less than 4% on defense. Our economy has boomed multiple times in the past despite our government devoting much higher levels of our GDP to national security. Currently, there is runaway spending in Washington, but it is coming from President Barack Obama and the left. Congress spent more in just one bill–this year’s “stimulus” bill–than it spent on Afghanistan and Iraq combined since 2001.

Eager to mollify his leftist base while still making it appear he is serious about responsibility, President Barack Obama has recently begun laying the groundwork for deep cuts in defense spending. Last week, he promised to only “invest in technologies that are proven and cost-effective…If a system isn’t ready to be developed, we shouldn’t pour resources into it.” This may sound sensible but it ignores the fact that developing and deploying cutting-edge technologies is far more complex. Many of today’s military programs are a “system of systems” (like the Army’s Future Combat Systems modernization effort and ballistic missile defense) that have integrated components that must be deployed individually before they can be tested together as part of the larger network. Placing undue requirements on these programs will only further generate a risk-averse culture and will inevitably slow the acquisition process and raise costs.

More worrisome, the previous week President Obama said he wanted to “reform our defense budget so that we’re not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don’t use.” It would appear this is a further attempt to lay the groundwork for cutting necessary core-capabilities from America’s military, not just by associating them with the Cold War and a bygone era, but by identifying them as wasteful and a potential area for cost-savings.

Defense contracting is far from perfect. And the Heritage Foundation has been a leader in identifying ways to make it more efficient. But neither is defense spending a burden on our economy, or exploding in size. There has been an explosion in spending that has cratered our national deficit. But Congressman Frank and President Obama must understand that the explosion in entitlement and non-defense discretionary spending are the real culprits.

FROM: THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION

GOVERNMENT POWER AND CONTROL: THE ONE TRILLION DOLLAR TAKEOVER OF HEALTH CARE

Posted March 5th, 2009 at 11.30am in Health Care.

A Down Payment on Nationalization

Trillion Dollars Down: In less than two months, the President has already budgeted nearly $1 TRILLION on his health care proposals—SCHIP, the stimulus, and now the budget.

A Bottomless Well: President Obama’s FY 10 budget proposal offers a $634 billion “down payment” on health care reform. The only truth to this number is that it will continue to grow, and they openly admit it in the President’s budget proposal: “The budget calls for an effort beyond this down payment, to put the nation on a path to health insurance coverage for all Americans. However, additional funding will be needed.”

Squeezing Water from a Stone: The President’s budget depends on typical liberal tax hikes while rearranging the deck chairs for Medicare and Medicaid to produce “savings.” There is only so much you can tax or squeeze before you hit rock bottom. Fast-Tracking a Flawed Process

Taking Your Own Pulse: A bipartisan health care summit may be nice window dressing, but the test of real bipartisanship is found in policy, not in photo ops. So far on health care, the President’s promise for bipartisanship is more hope than change. Since January, President Obama has signed into law over $200 billion spending to advance his health care agenda—$136 billion alone on in the stimulus—with little, if any, notion of bipartisanship.

Consolidated Power: To achieve his goals, President Obama’s health plan will need to depend on a massive top-down infrastructure to control health care dollars and decisions. Instead of empowering patients and doctors, Washington will be in charge.

Loss of Private Coverage: At a time when Americans are worried about losing their health care, the promise of a new government health plan will only undermine the private health insurance that million of Americans depend on today. Not only do government programs cost more than they project, but they also promise more than they deliver.

Real Health Care Solutions for America

Consumer Choice: Give Americans the consumer-choice system available to Members of Congress as a true model, not as a façade for government-run health care.

Take Bold Steps, Give States the Power: Allow states to experiment with better ways of reaching the nation’s health coverage goals rather than imposing a national plan on states and families.

Be Bipartisan: In such areas as the tax treatment of health care, federal-state cooperation, and other critical pieces of health reform, there are thoughtful and well-developed approaches. Build on these important developments; do not ignore them.

Below this edition of the Heritage Foundation's Morning Bell provides such a perfect shapshot in time as of this date of April 28, 2009, we are simply compelled to provide it here for you. Such is now the heartbreaking state of our nation.

The Heritage Foundation's "Morning Bell"

TUESDAY, APRIL 28, 2009

A 9/10 Security Mindset

Yesterday the citizens of New York and New Jersey who lived through 9/11 were witness to an ominous flashback. A massive aircraft, trailed closely by an F-16 fighter jet, descended towards the city and flew so close and low to Manhattan skyscrapers that office building windows rattled. Fortunately this was not a terrorist attack, but a poorly thought out photo-op by White House Military Office Director Louis Caldera. Before being appointed by President Barack Obama to his current post, Caldera most recently served on the board of directors for the failed bank IndyMac, which is currently under investigation by the federal government for fraud.

This breach of common sense is all too typical of the Obama administration’s approach to national security. Just 99 days into office, Obama’s performance has already raised serious questions about his national security strategy.

Apologizer in Chief: In his first 100 days in office, President Barack Obama completed two whirlwind tours of Europe and Latin America. His message on both continents was simple: America has made many mistakes in the past, but we’re now ready to listen to others and be more flexible. It was a hugely popular message, particularly when he criticized or apologized for America. But the results were paltry. The problem with this type of “engagement” is that, at some point, foreign leaders begin to see it (correctly) as pandering. President Obama’s apologies for U.S. policies are interpreted in North Korea, Iran and Venezuela not as an honest act of attrition that should elicit reciprocity from them, but rather as an apology demanding more concessions from the United States.

Gutting the Defense Budget: While the numbers for the FY 2010 defense budget are debatable, President Obama’s 10-year budget blueprint is crystal clear: in every year beyond FY 2010 there will be negative real growth for the defense budget. The deep cuts will come in procurement programs for systems like the F-22 and the next generation Navy destroyer. The decisions were driven not by national security needs but by a desire to rein in Pentagon spending. Projected Administration defense budgets over the next five years may underfund defense spending by over a trillion dollars.

Dumbing Missile Defense Down: The President approved a cut of roughly 15 percent of the Pentagon’s missile defense budget and abandoned deploying defenses in Western Europe. In addition, the White House failed to obtain any meaningful response from the U.N. Security Council on ballistic missile launches by Iran and North Korea. With Pakistan teetering on the edge, the ballistic missile threat has not diminished; in fact it is growing.

Detainee Dithering: The Obama administration continues to send mixed signals about how America will detain our enemies in what they now call “Overseas Contingency Operations.” The recent partial release of CIA memos was particularly unhelpful and betrays a complete lack of a coherent administration detainee strategy.

Border Blunders: Is it a crime to enter the U.S. illegally? Have terrorists routinely entered the United States through Canada, including the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks? Are our veterans a threat to national security? Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has been an absolute disaster since she took office. She should face tough questioning from Senate Judiciary Committee next week.

There have been some bright spots for the Obama administration in national security. President Obama has largely continued to implement the strategic course laid out by the Bush Administration in Iraq and Afghanistan. But even there, the left is pressuring the White House to change course.

QUICK HITS

The Obama administration is pushing for a deal that will make the United Auto Workers union the majority owners of Chrysler LLC.

The Obama administration is pushing to partially nationalize General Motors in a deal that will make the government majority owners and give United Auto Workers 39% of the company.

The Obama administration’s defense cuts will put more than 100,000 jobs at risk.

Lobbyists are working around the Obama ban by sending company executives, lawyers or consultants to meet with federal officials.

President Barack Obama got ahead of his teleprompter yesterday and began to name the members of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, even though he had already introduced them.