Obama's Lost Years

wall street journal ^ | 9.11.08 | Editorial Board

[BurbankKarl]

Barack Obama makes his first campaign visit today to his alma mater, Columbia University. Just don't ask the prolific self-diarist to talk about his undergraduate days in Morningside Heights.

The Columbia years are a hole in the sprawling Obama hagiography. In his two published memoirs, the 47-year-old Democratic nominee barely mentions his experience there. He refuses to answer questions about Columbia and New York -- which, in this media age, serves only to raise more of them. Why not release his Columbia transcript? Why has his senior essay gone missing?

Now in our view, the college years shouldn't normally be used to judge a politician's fitness for office. We're not sure the transcripts of Al Gore, John Kerry and George W. Bush -- which showed them to be C students -- illuminated much for voters. The McCain campaign won't release his records, but we know he graduated at the bottom of his Naval Academy class.

But Mr. Obama is a case apart. His personal story, as told by him, made possible his rise from obscurity four years ago to possibly the White House. He doesn't have a long track record in government. We mainly have him in his own words. As any autobiographer, Mr. Obama played up certain chapters in his life -- perhaps even exaggerating his drug use in adolescence to drive home his theme of youthful alienation -- and ignored others. What's more, as acknowledged in "Dreams From My Father," Mr. Obama reconstructed conversations and gave some people pseudonyms or created "composite" characters.

Voters and the media are now exercising due diligence before Election Day, and they are meeting resistance from Mr. Obama in checking his past.

[GOP Poet]

Sounds like the National Enquirer needs to move on from Alaska—where it sounds as though they have found absolutely nothing noteworthy or even true—to NY and Chicago.

God knows the 'real' journalists are doing any digging.

[GOP Poet]

I mean aren't doing any digging.

[trumandogz]

We must demand to see all the transcripts of both Obama and Biden.

[goldstategop]

Its too elitist. That's Obama can't tell much about his young adult life.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[Nonperson]

The USA's largest Marxist organisation, Democratic Socialists of America has consistently supported Barack Obama-particularly through its influential Chicago branch.

But as Ronald Reagan famously said of the Ku Klux Klan "just because they support me, that doesn't mean I support them."

While Obama has mixed with DSA members for many years, socially and politically, he has only occasionally been publicly identified with DSA sponsored events.

Obama makes an apparent, if obscure reference to DSA in his 1995 autobiography "Dreams From My Father".

Discussing his time studying political science at New York's Columbia University, in the early 80s, Obama reveals that he"went to socialist conferences at Cooper Union and African cultural fairs in Brooklyne.”

"Cooper Union" is the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, a privately funded college in Downtown Manhattan.

For many years, from the early '80s until 2004, Cooper Union was the usual venue of the annual Socialist Scholars Conference-almost certainly what Obama was referring to.

New Zeal

[CaspersGh0sts]

I’m still somewhat amused by the way people tend to gravitate towards the school someone attended or the grades earned there when talking about politicians. If school is but the earliest preparation for the real tests that lie ahead, why so much emphasis, particularly from liberals? Granted, it can be a very formative process and one that I see as crucial in many ways to personal and professional development (over and over again you see successful results).

But still, what’s this nonsense about castigating Palin for attending Northern Idaho and Idaho? I’ve seen it posted earlier, but it’s a bit like benching Brett Favre because he went to Southern Miss or Jerry Rice for going to Mississippi Valley State. COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT given their accomplishments afterwards.

Speaking as someone who attended and graduated from a top 10 university in this country and who later attended a state college, if I had to do it over, I’d go state U the whole way. An education is but what you make of it and to which ends you apply it. God gave us all talents. It’s for us to develop them.

I just look at how much I changed from a cluelessly idealistic kid who voted for Al Gore in 2000 to a poster on FreeRepublic at this day and age. Maturity, success, and life happen.

Sure, go over the Columbia years. But Obama’s later dealings interest me far more.

[goldstategop]

Its not like he could tell the country about his involvement with fringe leftist politics back in the 1980s.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[KJC1]

Fox News had a special the other day where they covered the candidates and their histories. In the part about Obama they said that NONE of his classmates from Columbia (I think) remembered him. If that’s true, that is just weird beyond words.

They also said there were lots of holes in his places of residence around that time (some were off-campus apartments while he attended Columbia), where all he’d been able to supply over the years were street names but no street numbers.

[FormerACLUmember]

I know next to nothing about Obama.

What LITTLE I DO KNOW, they are desperately covering up.

[goldstategop]

Obama as I said, has a life story. But if Americans heard about it, much of the favorable opinion that they have of him would quickly vanish. He is a fraud whose political success is dependent on concealing as much of the truth as possible from the American people.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[Lancey Howard]

I have always wondered what Obama did between the ages of 12 and 30.

[leadhead]

I have always wondered what Obama did between the ages of 12 and 30.

Don't all Messiah's have "hidden years"?

[cricket]

Voters and the media are now exercising due diligence before Election Day, and they are meeting resistance from Mr. Obama in checking his past.

Media? Jack Diamond and Stanley Kurtz? Has either been on Larry King or interiewed by Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson or even Katie, Chris or Keith? I might have missed a Fox News appearance. . .

[television is just wrong]

no the liberal press is protecting obamama.

[television is just wrong]

he really believes he is something special?

[jerod]

...Earlier this year, the AP tracked down Mr. Obama's New York-era roommate, "Sadik," in Seattle after the campaign refused to reveal his name. Sohale Siddiqi, his real name, confirmed Mr. Obama's account that he turned serious in New York and "stopped getting high." "We were both very lost," Mr. Siddiqi said. "We were both alienated, although he might not put it that way. He arrived disheveled and without a place to stay." For some reason the Obama camp wanted this to stay out of public view....

Maybe he reacquainted himself with Islam under an assumed name... Apparently he enjoys making names up for other people, maybe he made one up for himself.

I used to know a kid something like Barry O when I was younger, he could have written books like Barry, not that he ever did. He was intelligent and always had a great story to tell you... mostly because he was a pathological liar.

[AmericaUnited]

"IN SEARCH OF BARRY OBAMA"

What a great story to run on the same day that the NY Slimes runs a "In Search of Sarah Palin" story.