Early Obama Letter Confirms Inability to Write

American Thinker ^ | 8/29/11 | Jack Cashill

[American Dream 246]

On November 16, 1990, Barack Obama, then president of the Harvard Law Review, published a letter in the Harvard Law Record, an independent Harvard Law School newspaper, championing affirmative action.

Although a paragraph from this letter was excerpted in David Remnick's biography of Obama, The Bridge, I had not seen the letter in its entirety before this week. Not surprisingly, it confirms everything I know about Barack Obama, the writer and thinker.

Obama was prompted to write by an earlier letter from a Mr. Jim Chen that criticized Harvard Law Review's affirmative action policies. Specifically, Chen had argued that affirmative action stigmatized its presumed beneficiaries.

The response is classic Obama: patronizing, dishonest, syntactically muddled, and grammatically challenged. In the very first sentence Obama leads with his signature failing, one on full display in his earlier published work: his inability to make subject and predicate agree.

"Since the merits of the Law Review's selection policy has been the subject of commentary for the last three issues," wrote Obama, "I'd like to take the time to clarify exactly how our selection process works."

If Obama were as smart as a fifth-grader, he would know, of course, that "merits ... have." Were there such a thing as a literary Darwin Award, Obama could have won it on this on one sentence alone. He had vindicated Chen in his first ten words.

Although the letter is fewer than a thousand words long, Obama repeats the subject-predicate error at least two more times. In one sentence, he seemingly cannot make up his mind as to which verb option is correct so he tries both: "Approximately half of this first batch is chosen ... the other half are selected ... "

[Still Thinking]

I agree. He’s the source of much disastrous.

[Tax-chick]

LOL! Halfway through the sentence, a child wandered by with a nag, and I stopped typing (but imagined I’d continued) while responding, “Of course not, and don’t ask again!”

[Still Thinking]

At least you have a viable reason. When I do that, it's usually the result of an abrupt change (or sometimes derailment) of the train of thought!

[lonestar]

Why? Why is this the case for a graduate from one of the most elite universities in the world?

Because it is so elementary?

[Tax-chick]

My train gets bumped off by children or pets. Oh, dear. It looks like my 5-year-old is going to eat a caterpillar! He’s probably pretending to be a bird.