In a news conference Wednesday in Sderot, an Israeli city subject to frequent rocket
attacks by Palestinian terrorists, Sen. Barack Obama addressed the doubts many
Israelis have about his commitment to their security.
"In terms of knowing my commitments, you don't have to just look at my words, you
can look at my deeds," Mr. Obama said. "Just this past week, we passed out of the
Senate Banking Committee, which is my committee, a bill to call for divestment from
Iran, as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don't obtain a
nuclear weapon."
Sen. Obama is not a member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs
Committee. He had nothing to do with the advancement of the bill he referred to.
Barack Obama has the thinnest resume of any major party candidate for president in
history, and this isn't the first time he's tried to pad it. But his false claim in
Sderot goes beyond puffery.
"For him to fabricate the claim, out of whole cloth, that the Senate Banking
Committee is his committee strikes me as another sign of Obama's megalomania," said
Web logger John Hinderaker (Power Line). "That, plus more evidence that he is
totally at sea without a teleprompter."
Megalomania and dissimulation are shared by Sen. Obama's staff. The highlight of
his foreign tour was his speech Thursday at the Siegessaule (Victory Column) in
Berlin, attended by two hundred thousand adoring Germans.
"It's not going to be a political speech," a senior foreign policy adviser to Sen.
Obama had told reporters Tuesday. "When the president of the United States goes and
gives a speech, it is not a political speech or a rally."
After a reporter reminded the adviser that Sen. Obama isn't president of the United
States, the adviser said: "he is going to talk about the issues as an
individual...not as a candidate, but as an individual, a senator."
But senators traveling abroad on fact-finding missions haven't in the past held
massive outdoor rallies. The Obama campaign printed up leaflets urging people to
come to the event. Film makers were on hand to record it for possible use in
television commercials.
Sen. Obama traveled with the largest entourage of any non-president in history. The
foreign policy advisers, campaign aides, advance staff and Secret Service agents
filled 20 vehicles in motorcades. And that doesn't count the more than 50 American
journalists ‘ including the anchors of all three television network news shows ‘
who accompanied him in Europe, Israel and Jordan.
Sen. Obama's foreign tour has received massive, overwhelmingly favorable news
coverage, but it isn't clear how much he's benefiting from it. In the Gallup and
Rasmussen tracking polls, his slim lead over Sen. John McCain actually shrunk a
little during the week.
This may be in part because the news coverage of the trip has been so over the top
that other journalists have remarked critically about it, and comedian Jon Stewart
lampooned it in a skit. A recent Rasmussen survey indicated twice as many Americans
think journalists are trying to help Mr. Obama win than think journalists are
offering unbiased coverage.
And it may be in part because of what Sen. Obama has been saying. He was
spellbinding in his Siegessaule speech, as he customarily is when working from a
prepared text. But he often stumbles without one.
In an interview with Lara Logan of CBS broadcast July 20, he said he expects to be
dealing with foreign leaders "over the next eight to ten years." As ABC's Jake
Tapper noted, this would require repeal of the 22nd Amendment.
The most dangerous thing about having a narcissist in a position of power is his
unwillingness ‘ perhaps his inability ‘ to ever admit error. In response to
questions from ABC's Terry Moran and CBS' Katie Couric, Sen. Obama acknowledged the
troop surge in Iraq has produced dramatic improvements, but said he still would
oppose it. He acknowledged Gen. David Petraeus and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al
Maliki oppose the rigid 16-month timetable he's set for withdrawal of troops from
Iraq, but said he'd stick to it. This brought rebukes from the Washington Post,
which described his strategic vision as "eccentric" in an editorial Wednesday, and
by USA Today Thursday:
"Why can't Obama bring himself to acknowledge the surge worked better than he and
other skeptics, including this page, thought it would?" the editorial asked. "What
does that stubbornness say about the kind of president he'd be?"
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