Wilson's blog: Goodbye grandma 

The news has just broken that Barack Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, the woman who played such a big part in his life, who helped raise him from the age of ten, has died of cancer.

That she should die on the eve of an election which -if you believe the polls, and I'm starting to - should install him in the White House is - to say the least - lamentable.
I imagine he feels very far away from the center of things at present.

I don't wish to offer too much sentimental nonsense (much of it possibly true) about the irony of this situation, except to say that it's a condition of adulthood that it often contains, in the heat of possible success, a particular kind of melancholy that, for the sake of sanity, we prefer to call an irony.

Obama's grandmother's death underscores the scattered nature of his story, which - for the sake of general consumption- has been Mid-West-ified. But Obama, who met his father only for about a month, who is American, who has a Kenyan family, who lived in Indonesia with his mother, isn't the stereotype he's trying to convince Americans he is.
Obama himself has said that he's a blank page onto which people project themselves.

The good news for Obama is that Americans are waiting for a messiah. The bad news is that he will have to be one, rather than a very astute retail politician from a very corrupt town called Chicago.

To get an idea of Obama's background, I visited Jay Stewart at Better Government Chicago in the Federal Building on East Adams Street.

Stewart, a transplanted New Yorker, described a city in which patronage, greed and money ruled. He's a realist. He doesn't expect to wipe out corruption from his small eighth floor office, he just wants to make it less the norm, less self-congratulatory.

Stewart said that while Obama was an extremely gifted politician, he wasn't very interested in cleaning up the graft that passes for politics in the Big Windy. "He was just a go-along kinda guy," remembers Stewart.

The Hope of Audacity, anyone?

As for Obama's role as a State Senator, Stewart was dismissive. "All the State Senators have to do is remember to show up on the day of swearing in," he said.

Stewart expected that Obama would win by a landslide. John McCain, he said, had too many things going against him, not the least of which was a campaign that has been ruled more by caprice, and shakeups, than by a consistent message.

John McCain, by the way, is a huge poker player, or as we civilians call it, 'gambler'. It's easy to see his campaign as one long roll of the dice.

Stewart was already looking beyond the election, to the next phase of Obama, when he had to disappoint someone. As a ruler, he would have to say no. Until now, he can only say yes, calmly.

But that's what Americans want, said Stewart. With a tanking economy, two wars, and fear and dismay abroad, they want to be assured, and told everything will be alright. They wanted to be comforted.

They want many of the things, no doubt that Barack Obama as a ten-year-old transplant in Hawaii, sought from the woman who died today.

About Tim Wilson

Tim Wilson is the ONE News US correspondent, based in New York City. He provides a regular blog on the goings on in the US ... more

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jackdoitcrawford ; 2009-09-11 @ 23:24 NZDT  

Please don't label all people you disagree with, and put them in the same camp. Ayn Rand was pro abortion, achievement, reason, freedom, capitalism and happiness. She was definitely neither a conservative nor a libertarian. She also didn't want to live under a dictatorship. I see nothing wrong with this at all.

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Kiwi in USA ; 2009-09-11 @ 17:58 NZDT  

I would have to disagree with Tim saying Bill ORielly is a right wing loon as if it were. He is defintly a independet and he always tells his viewers that. I know that there is plenty of loons like rush but come on, Obama is really turning America in the wrong direction. He has spent more money than all the presidents have combined. America is in trillions of dollars worth of debt.

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