By Staff
Americans say they want truth from their government and politicians. But when a politician actually tries to tell the truth they can't handle it. We can't have it both ways. Either we want honest assessments or we don't.
No matter what happens next in the race for the White House, we don't think Barack Obama should be punished for his blunt assessment of the sense of betrayal felt in America's struggling heartland. He seems to be a candidate with a desire to unite our divided nation.
But heading into the crucial Pennsylvania primary, Obama was fending off attacks from both John McCain and Hillary Clinton and the media because he tried to be truthful about middle Americans fed up with government in general and Washington in particular.
In one poll, a record 81 percent of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, which is why the professional political class seems to take more umbrage at his remarks than the working class.
Maybe instead of worrying whether every politician wears a flag pin on his lapel, we should be more concerned that the nation lives up to its ideals in the face of greed, intolerance and imperialism. Demonstrating love for country by actually working for change ought to count for something, too.
Republicans heaved a palpable sigh of relief at this sudden turn of events. Rather than have to defend President's Bush record on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or the mortgage-market collapse and recession, the GOP message men can go back on offense with their favorite wedge issues, God and guns.
Obama's choice of words will be a distraction the rest of his candidacy.
Hillary Clinton, who with her husband have made $109 million in seven years since she was first lady, knocked back a shot of sippin' whiskey, Crown Royal, that comes in a velvet pouch, with a beer chaser at Bronko's restaurant in Crown Point, Ind., to assure us she's one of us. Obama bowled a 37.
"Bitter" small-town voters "cling" to their faith, along with their guns and their "antipathy to people who aren't like them," Obama said. The national media blasted these remarks coming from a candidate who should know better than any the sting of being lumped into a stereotype and dismissed.
The fact he made them in San Francisco, which some regard as the capital of secular condescension, didn't help.
The controversy reinforced Democratic doubts about whether Obama can withstand a full-court Republican press this fall. Unlike incendiary comments by his minister Jeremiah Wright or his wife Michelle's February observation that "for the first time in my adult lifetime I am really proud of my country," this rhetorical crisis was of his own making.
Not surprisingly, early polls showed little movement in Pennsylvania, where some working-class Democrats said they understood the point he tried to make. One disabled veteran at an Obama town hall meeting near Pittsburgh who admitted he's bitter, said, "I went to church when things were bad, and I went out and I hunted for my family food, where I didn't know whether to put the gun in my mouth or to shoot an animal. So, yeah, he was right on the money."
A former Chicago Tribune reporter, Richard C. Longworth, wrote a book, Caught in the Middle: America's Heartland in the Age of Globalization." His 11,000-mile odyssey brought him as near to us as Warsaw and North Judson, Ind.
Longworth, who grew up in a small central Iowa town, wrote before Obama ever opened his mouth about "great cities that had become empty shells and workers, adrift in communities consumed by denial, bitterness and real political anger."
In Michigan, where John Kerry won by 3.4 percent in 2004, white working-class voters make up 59 percent of the electorate.
They are a shrinking segment of the U.S. population overall, though, accounting for 86 percent of adults 25 and older in 1940, compared to 48 percent by 2007. They are concentrated in swing states such as Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Obama is perceived by many of these voters as an elitist, though he is the only candidate in the race whose mother collected food stamps. He and his wife took out student loans to finance their law school educations.
"If John McCain wants to turn this election into a contest about which party is out of touch with the struggles and the hopes of working America, that's a debate I'm happy to have," Obama said.
"I may have made a mistake in the words that I chose, but the other party has made a much more damaging mistake in the failed policies that they've chosen and the bankrupt philosophy they've embraced for the last three decades."