What I Respect About Obama:

This is a guilt post:

I spend a lot of space on the blog hacking away at "Citizen of the World" Obama. I do this because I believe him to be a phony, untrustworthy liberal politician/lawyer of the worst sort who has closely associated himself for many years with shady characters that harbor hate in their hearts.

There are a few aspects of Obama’s life however that I greatly admire and in fairness I should mention them:

Through no fault of his own, he was born into uncertainty and borderline-poverty. His father left him at the age of two and he was raised by a single mother who moved him around quit a bit, including to foreign countries. Stability was not something that the young Obama could count on. Because he was half African American growing up in circles that included very few if any African Americans, he undoubtedly struggled with issues of self identity from a very young age. Yet, through all of this he was able to persevere, attend college, graduate with a law degree and build his own identity and life. He has married a woman who he clearly loves and has two wonderful children for whom he provides the kind of stable and sheltered environment that as a child he could never have dreamed of. He is a powerful orator and talented political operator that did the country a service by putting an end to the ugly Clinton political machine.

There, I said it.

Of course, none of this comes close to John McCain’s personal story of service, heroism, imprisonment and torture. But it is a compelling story non-the-less; one that I do respect. If Obama was a conservative without the kinds of 20-year affiliations that deeply taint his standing, I would certainly vote for him, and in some ways, I am jealous that conservatives have been unable to field an attractive candidate of the kind that Obama represents (without his personal baggage and liberal mindset of course).