http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23643866-5013948,00.html
The illusion that is Barack Obama
by Fred Siegel
POLITICAL campaigning necessarily produces a wide gap between words
and deeds. This is the price of bringing together a broad coalition
with disparate interests. All effective politicians are at times
authentically insincere or sincerely inauthentic. Exaggeration,
embellishment, overstatement, doubletalk, deception and lies presented
as metaphorical truths are the order of the day.
So, of course, Barack Obama is no different. He exaggerates the credit
he deserves for a limited piece of ethics-reform legislation. He
embellishes when he presents himself as having had a consistent record
on the Iraq war when in fact he's done a fair amount of zigzagging.
He engages in doubletalk when, on free trade and Iraq, he tells the
yokels one thing and the policy people another. He overstates when he
presents his minimal accomplishments in the Illinois Senate as proof
of his stature. He engages in systematic deception when he says he
doesn't take money from lobbyists.
