American Thinker May 14, 2012 The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House By _Ed Lasky_ (http://www.americanthinker.com/ed_lasky) Edward Klein's new _book_ (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1455134767/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=amerithink-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&; creativeASIN=1455134767) on Barack Obama, The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House, is a _withering portrayal_ (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/05/08/obama_should_learn_from_lbj_114073.html) of a radical adrift, in over his head, drowning in his own incompetency -- while being weighed down by a small circle of "advisers" who are compounding the problem of the Amateur in the White House. Klein's book begins with a talisman-like quote uttered by Barack Obama when his recently appointed Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner tried to boost Obama's ego by telling him, "Your legacy is going to be preventing the second Great Depression." To which Barack Obama responded, "That's not enough for me As all of America knows by now, Obama has aggressively sought to "fundamentally transform" America -- one of the few promises he has kept from the days of 2008. Five trillion dollars of borrowing, ObamaCare passed over the objections of the majority of Americans through legislative legerdemain and special deals made with resistant politicians, failed stimulus, green programs failing left and right as taxpayers are left holding the bag, a recovery that is the most anemic on record, an America that has been sundered by the man who promises to unite us, America weaker abroad and at home -- yes, America has been fundamentally transformed. Mission Accomplished. But how and why did Obama succeed in such a catastrophic way? That is the question that Klein successfully answers in his extremely readable and enjoyable book, with enough spicy details to satisfy the craving of anyone interested in how President Obama and those closest to him have driven us to the condition we find ourselves in as we approach November. One of the motifs that runs throughout the book is Barack Obama's sheer level of incompetency. He has the fatal conceit of many politicians: an overweening ego. That may be a prerequisite for politicians and leaders, but when it is unleavened by a willingness to consider the views of others, it becomes a fatal conceit. And Obama has that trait in abundance. Stories tumble out that reveal a man who believes he is all but omniscient -- unwilling to give any credence to the views of others (especially but not limited to those across the aisle). Experts in management are interviewed who point out that he lacks essential qualities of leadership. Indeed, the book gets its title from an outburst from Bill Clinton, who was trying to encourage Hillary to take on Obama in the Democratic primary of 2012: Obama doesn't know how to be president. He doesn't know how the world works. He's incompetent. He's...he's...Barack Obama's an amateur. But Klein does not rest there. He delves into associates from Obama's career in Cook County politics, his stint as a state senator, and his rise to the United States Senate. There is a common pattern: Obama likes to campaign, but once he is elected and actually starts working, his interest flags, and he starts looking for the next "big thing" -- electorally speaking. He had few if any accomplishments or professional standing in any of his previous positions. Even when he served as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, he avoided any encounters with other faculty who enjoyed discussing the law. His reluctance to engage them is revealing in and of itself, suggesting he had a reason for his lack of confidence. His disdain toward working with others is manifest. He has gained a reputation over the last few years as being cold and distant, refusing to engage, as have other presidents, in the give-and-take of politics, in the social niceties that help grease the wheels in Washington. Liberal Washington Post columnist _Richard Cohen_ (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/05/08/obama_should_learn_from_lbj_114073.html) recently advised him to read Robert Caro's newest volume on the life of Lyndon Johnson as a primer on how to be president. Johnson, of course, was a master at pulling levers of power, but he also knew how to persuade individual politicians on both sides of the aisle to work with him on legislation. But, of course, LBJ also had the common touch and, having risen from humble beginnings, never considered it beneath him to work with those underneath him. Not so Barack Obama. He complained to foreign leaders that he had to waste time talking with "congressmen from Palookaville." At another time, he switched locales and said he was tired of dealing with people from "Podunk." His campaign trail comments regarding small-town America as being populated by "bitter" people who cling to guns and Bibles was not a one-off. They are reflective of his views. But the high and the mighty also come in for the Obama treatment. Klein reveals dismay among former Obama supporters who feel they have been mistreated, maligned, and thrown under the bus. Obama's most generous early donors have been all but ignored; early mentors in the black business community have been sidelined if not completely ditched; people don't hear from him or his staff unless a fundraiser is coming up. But there is more: Caroline Kennedy is angry at the way she and her family were used for campaign purposes in 2008 and then summarily dismissed and stored away like so many movie props have been (the latter is my description). Even Oprah Winfrey has been stiff-armed by the Obamas. According to the book, Oprah took a big risk in supporting Obama in 2008 and campaigning for Obama in Iowa, being a big boost in his campaign. The ratings for her show weakened significantly (and her new network has been a huge disappointment). But when she has tried to visit the White House, she has been all but treated as persona non grata. Apparently, Michelle Obama is a possessive person who fears the influence Oprah may have over Barack Obama (more on this below). Oprah blames it on Michelle's anti-obesity campaign. She is quoted as saying, "Michelle hates fat people and doesn't want me waddling around the White House." Klein digs up a quotation of Michelle Obama's from a White House source that seems to confirm Oprah's suspicion: Oprah only wants to cash in using the White House as a backdrop for her show to perk up ratings. Oprah with her yo-yo dieting and huge girth, is a terrible role model. Kids will look at Oprah, who's rich and famous and huge, and figure it's okay to be fat. Oprah, Caroline Kennedy, Pastor Jeremiah Wright (who merits a chapter), and Obama's _former long-time doctor_ (http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=51433) (who feels Obama is distant and lacks feeling, passion, and humanity) all join a long list of people whom the Obamas have used, abused, and then cast aside once they moved into the White House. A few have survived the winnowing process, of course. There is Michelle, who might be described as the living and real-life descendant of Lady Macbeth. The book provides some history of the early days between Barack and Michelle: marked by some tempests, yet also marked by Michelle's overwhelming push for Barack to win power and wealth. Insiders are reluctant to tangle with the First Lady, and with good reason. Michelle, like her husband, has a proclivity to blame others for her husband's failures. Former Press Secretary Robert Gibbs felt her sting when it was revealed that Michelle had complained about life in the White House to the then-first lady of France, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. Gibbs acted to control the damage by arranging for the Élysée Palace to issue a denial. But the response did not come quickly enough for Michelle, and she arranged for Valerie Jarrett -- close to the Obamas for years, and who has an omnipresence in the White House that makes the unelected and unconfirmed czar issue seem trivial -- to deliver a stern rebuke to Gibbs, who counter-attacked. Anyone heard from Robert Gibbs lately? The role of Valerie Jarrett has prompted much speculation. As Edward Klein notes, she has a mouthful of a title -- senior adviser and assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs and public engagement -- that "doesn't begin to do justice to her unrivaled status in the White House." Valerie Jarrett apparently has a role in most major decisions: she often appears in meetings the president has with major political leaders from Capitol Hill and with foreign leaders as well. She often stays behind to have private discussions with the president. Obama admitted that he ran every decision by her. That is worrying since, as Klein notes, Jarrett's own career is not one that would prepare her to assume such a prominent role. Hers is no rags-to-riches story that would give her the "chops" to have such a Svengali-like influence over the president of the United States. She was blessed with a wonderful set of advantages -- descended from a highly regarded political family in Chicago. Jarrett was a force to be reckoned with in the Daley administration and then capitalized on her political connections to land a job heading up a real estate company in Chicago where she oversaw, among other developments, properties that under her company's management degenerated into slums. Business leaders are aghast that she has such a powerful role in the White House. A donor is quoted as saying that not only is Valerie Jarrett a liability, but others in the White House concur with his views. Jarrett has butted heads with Rahm Emanuel, who felt that it was wrong to focus on passing ObamaCare when the economy and jobs should have been higher priorities. Who won that match? Rahm returned to Chicago and became mayor in 2009. The roles of Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett cannot be overstated. They are symptomatic of a larger problem in the White House decision-making process (one that I noted in "_How Obama Makes Decisions_ (http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/how_obama_makes_decisions.html) "). Barack Obama, to a greater extent than any modern president, refuses to listen to the views of others or consult with experts and advisers outside his own tight and constricted circle from Cook County. There are many revelations of his faulty decision making uncovered by Klein. Indeed, one of Jarrett's roles is to shield Obama from dealing with people who don't agree with him or who may say something that deflates his ego When Bill Daley (the chief of staff) realized that the contraception and abortifacient mandates of ObamaCare might offend Catholics, he arranged a meeting without Jarrett's knowledge between Obama and New York then-Archbishop Timothy Dolan to deal with an issue that would offend many as violating the principle of religious freedom (as well as Catholic beliefs). Jarrett went to the president and vented her anger. Anyone seen Bill Daley lately? On issue after issue, President Obama remains his insular self, refusing to seek counsel or input from others with more experience. Critics believe he has made a mess of foreign policy precisely because not only does he have a dearth of experience in this area, but because, under our system, foreign policy is one of the few areas where a president enjoys almost unlimited power. Thus, he is free to formulate his own agenda regardless of the views of others and the damage these policies cause. When pro-Israel Americans met with Obama to discuss his actions toward Israel (that many, including myself, view as being counterproductive) he dismissed the ideas of Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, with the statement "you are absolutely wrong." The president, who has no compunction telling people that they are not only wrong, but "absolutely wrong" in public, needs to start feeling some of the empathy he accuses Republicans of lacking. According to veteran journalist Richard Chesnoff, quoted in the book, "Obama's problem in dealing with the Arab-Israeli conundrum" comes "from his one-man style and his inflated view of his own leadership talents[.] ... [P]erhaps, even more egregiously, he seems to have an exaggerated sense of his own depth of understanding of the Middle East, which is simply not borne out by his background or experience." There may be more to it than that to explain the pressure he has put on our one true ally in the Middle East, Israel. American Thinker published numerous articles in 2008 covering not only Pastor Jeremiah Wright, Junior's views of Israel as an apartheid state, but Obama's associations with anti-Israel Palestinians in Chicago, his own suspect language regarding Israel, and his close relationship with _Samantha Power_ (http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/03/samantha_power_unplugged.html) (now playing a key role on his National Security Council), who not only has a long anti-Israel history but also made an anti-Semitic remark that was smothered by the media in 2008. There were good reasons for the _Los Angeles Times_ (http://articles.latimes.com/2008/apr/10/nation/na-obamamideast10.) to run a column during the campaign that "Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Obama." Readers will thoroughly enjoy Klein's book on Obama. There are substantive issues raised about Obama's leadership abilities that are enhanced with interesting digressions regarding life inside ObamaWorld and how those dynamics effect decisions made from the Oval Office. Klein concludes the book with doubt that Obama could ever change his approach toward governing and suspicion that his agenda is to impose a vast redistribution scheme upon America that has worked so well in the decaying and disintegrating European Union. He wonders if Republicans are up to the task of pointing out to the public the truth about Obama's agenda, given the overwhelming media bias in favor of Barack Obama. Klein's book could serve as a roadmap for Republicans. BR Note : Mitt Romney was too stupid to do any such thing. ================================================ OpEdNews Op Eds 8/7/2012 at 06:22:09 Review of Edward Klein's Book "The Amateur" By _Herbert Calhoun_ (http://www.opednews.com/author/author2637.html) The book begins with an analysis of Barack Hussein Obama (BHO) made by Bill Clinton in a private rump session held at the Clinton home, in which Bill (with Chelsea's support), was trying to urge Hillary to break ranks with BHO and run against him in 2012. Bill's analysis, as usual was as cold-blooded as it was sound: He argued (rather convincingly in my view) that although BHO was smart, and could made great speeches, he was not a communicator. He and his staff spoke and acted in sound bites. And had flubbed their own policies without even trying. They know how to run a good campaign but do not know how to engage in retail politics, or how to govern. In short, BHO is incompetent; in over his head; a rank amateur. On the other hand, as Bill ended his soliloquy, Hillary he said is seen as tough, experienced and tested. Now was her time to go for the brass ring. After Hillary rolled her eyes in disgust and asked him about loyalty, Bill answered by saying that loyalty in politics is a joke. There is no word for it in the rulebook. Plus, where was BHO's sense of loyalty? Although other presidents (including Republican ones) had called on him for advice, BHO had ignored him. The guy simply does not know how to be president. He does not know how the world works. He is an amateur. Bill Clinton's short soliloquy urging Hillary to run against Obama, is how the book got its title and is perhaps the best possible summary of the book, for it gets to the core of what the book is about: What exactly is lacking in the Obama administration? Using Bill's soliloquy as a launch point, we see through the author's eyes that what is missing is a sense of how to govern, a lack of passion and a lack personal interest and of action or ownership of his own policies, the feeling that the man in the clock tower is a cypher, a ghost, a dispassionate technocrat, that he is not really there and that if he is, he is lacking a normal humanity. And while it is clear to everyone that BHO is a good campaigner, a great speaker, a shrewd triangulator, and among the best Machiavellian operators we have seen in recent years, he is not a leader. He lacks a clearly defined character. Thus from this platform, the author goes in search of the answer as to why Mr. Obama is not a leader. He begins to decode the Obama enigma by trying to fill in the blanks. He scrounges into BHO's past, touching all of the familiar signposts in BHO's history -- from his defeat by Bobby Rush for the Illinois Senate race, to the spiritual tutoring by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, to honing his speaking abilities at operation PUSH by the Reverend Jessie Jackson, to his eventual ascent to the U.S. Senate and then on to the Presidency. But as important as these events and these two men were in helping to shape the Obama identity, the key that eventually unlocked the BHO mystery lay at the foot of another Chicagoan: Valerie Jarrett, the Obamas' Consigliore, their Svengali and their self-appointed gatekeeper into the minds and hearts of Obamadom, and into the U.S. Presidency under the Obamas. Klein makes a strong case that Ms. Jarrett, a holdover from the Daly machine days, and affectionately known in White house circles as "VJ", is the key to understanding most of the dysfunction that has become the Obama administration. VJ has used her power of the ability to deny access to the President jealously, sometimes mean-spiritedly and often capriciously. Due to her lack of political training and inexperience, VJ has no clear sense of the lay of the political landscape that the president has to deal with, and thus of what is needed to protect the president from outsiders as well as from himself. The author concludes that with VJ and Michelle leading the pack as BHO's primary palace guards, those whom he himself says he trusts implicitly, the Obama white house has truly become a case of the blind leading the blind. The U.S. presidency has been channeled down, and imprisoned in, a narrow alley carved out by inexperience and sycophancy; and as a result, its vital blood supply has been cutoff from serious critiques, from fresh ideas and from the outside world generally. As a result, BHO hears only what Michelle and VJ want him to hear. They both also weight in heavily on his decisions, his appointments, who he sees, and where he travels. In short the U.S. presidency, the leader of the Western World, is being overseen and tended by a couple of inexperienced "mother hens." The leadership vacuum we see at the center of the oval office begins with Obama's failure to break away from these two mother hens that have turned the presidency into their own private preserve. And although there have been a few triumphs in the Obama administration under this arrangement, on balance the result has been unnecessary dysfunction, inconsistent policy formulation, a failure to engage Congress or lead the Democratic Party, untimely and unnecessary turnovers in key positions, a failure to learn from experience, disloyalty and gratuitous political insults and slights to contributors and backers in the democratic political base. This includes supporters as close as Oprah Winfry, Caroline Kennedy, the Reverend Jessie Jackson, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Jewish donors, Black leaders, and the whole left end of the political spectrum. All in all, it all adds up to a dismal failure in presidential leadership. The only complaint I had with an otherwise, first-class analysis and well-written presentation was the inconsistent attempt by the author to gratuitously and repeatedly tag BHO with the label of being a left-wing radical (a left-leaning ideological wolf in sheep clothing as he put it). In trying so desperately to tag BHO with this label, the author obviously has missed BHO's main stratagem: to fake out his base with left-leaning rhetoric, while at the same time moving decidedly and decisively to the right of center on most of his policies! May I suggest that the author presented not a scintilla of evidence to back up his insinuations that BHO is a freewheeling, leftwing ideologue. Quite the contrary in fact, there is much presented here that is overlooked by the author suggesting that BHO is not much of a left-winger at all, but if anything is an avowed right-of-center politician. Foremost among the pieces of evidence presented in this book is the author's own characterization of BHO's economic policies as being "State Capitalism," and the fact that BHO's policies in almost every respect, fall just short of being identical to those of his predecessor, the radical right-winger, GW Bush. Despite this habit of occasionally (and disingenuously in my view) tossing a few chunks of red meat to his right wing readers, Ed Klein may have penned the best and most serious critique of the Obama administration yet. His conclusion is the same as that of Bill Clinton's: that while BHO is smart in the policy wonk sense, he is temperamentally unsuited to be president; that although Mr. Obama can make a fine speech and is a better then average University teacher, he is no communicator, and is inept in the fine art of retail politics, management and governance. It should be noted that in this context, the author offers this assessment of BHO by comparing Mr. Obama with at least two past presidents, JFK, and Woodrow Wilson, who in similar circumstances learned, improved and were successful for the rest of their respective terms. But the author's analysis is also based on more than 200 interviews of those close to Mr. Obama, on the author's own assessments of BHO's management style and the results of what the author sees as his failed policies. Of the twelve or so books I have read and reviewed on Mr. Obama, this one gets closer to the truth of Mr. Obama than any of the others. Five stars. ================================================== Accuracy in Media Obama, The Amateur—Interview with Edward Klein (Double-issue) Roger Aronoff — June 21, 2012 Edward Klein’s new book, _The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House_ (http://www.amazon.com/The-Amateur-Edward-Klein/dp/1596987855/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF 8&qid=1340315088&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Amateur) , is a devastating portrait of America’s 44th president. The book is based on more than 200 interviews, many of them on the record. The title comes from remarks made by former President Bill Clinton back in August of 2011 at his home in Chappaqua, New York. Klein describes an ongoing conversation that went on for “days, if not for weeks,” in which Bill was pushing hard to convince Hillary Clinton to leave her post as Secretary of State to run against Obama in 2012. The conversation was in front of several close friends, at least one of whom obviously spoke to Klein. “The economy’s a mess, it’s dead flat,” Clinton told Hillary. “They don’t know what they’re doing. They govern in sound bites.” Hillary brought up the issue of loyalty. Bill replied that “loyalty doesn’ t exist in politics.” He said he has no relationship with the President whatsoever. “Obama doesn’t know how to be president. He doesn’t know how the world works. He’s incompetent.” Finally, Clinton stated, “Barack Obama is an amateur.” While this has been denied by Clinton staffers, Klein defines this amateurism as “a president who is inept in the arts of management and governance, who doesn’t learn from his mistakes, and who therefore repeats policies that make our economy less robust and our nation less safe. We discover a man who blames all his problems on those with whom he disagrees (‘Washington,’ ‘Republicans,’ ‘the media’), who discards old friends and supporters when they are no longer useful (Democrats, African-Americans, Jews), and who is so thin skinned that he constantly complains about what people say and write about him. We come to know a strange kind of politician, one who derives no joy from the cut and thrust of politics, but who clings to the narcissistic life of the presidency.” Klein says that “this portrait of Obama is radically at odds with the image of a centrist, pragmatic, post-partisan leader that his political handlers have tried to create. And it is a far cry from the Obama most Americans remember from four years ago.” “How did he turn out to be the most divisive president in recent American history?” asks Klein. It is that question that is at the heart of this book. Some of Obama’s critics don’t accept the notion that he is an amateur. Instead, they see him as clever and manipulative, a left-wing ideologue who knows exactly what he is doing. Klein certainly doesn’t dismiss that idea. “ Based on my reporting,” writes Klein, “I concluded that Obama is actually in revolt against the values of the society he was elected to lead. Which is why he has refused to embrace American exceptionalism—the idea that Americans are a special people with a special destiny—and why he has railed at the capitalist system, demonized the wealthy, and embraced the Occupy Wall Street movement.” Klein sees what he considers both aspects of Obama’s character: “Not only is Barack Obama an amateur, unable to function in the job of the Presidency,” he told Accuracy in Media, “but he is, at the same time, a creature of Chicago politics, and a very radical left-wing member of the Democratic Party who wants to use his time in office to engineer a transformation of our society, and make us a much more socialistic country. This is the toxic mix of incompetence and radicalism, and we’ve seen the results in many ways, most dramatically, perhaps, in the terrible economic fix that we find ourselves in today, thanks, in large part, to Obama’s boneheaded policies.” Edward Klein has had a long, distinguished career as a journalist and author. He was editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine for more than a decade, and was the foreign editor for Newsweek. He has written numerous historical books, many of which have been bestsellers, including The Amateur, which at this writing has been number one on The New York Times bestseller list for four straight weeks. In an exclusive interview with Accuracy in Media, we discussed Klein’s politics, his years at The New York Times, and his research about President Obama. What has received the most attention from Klein’s latest book is his interview with the controversial Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who was the pastor of the church in Chicago that Obama attended for more than 20 years. Wright told Klein of an offer of money from the Obama camp in return for his silence during the 2008 campaign. Wright has changed his opinion of Obama, rather significantly, and was very willing to talk about it, knowing the tape recorder was rolling. We also talked about Obama’s record on national security issues, and his relationship with the government of Israel and the Jewish community. Whatever one thinks of Obama, they will gain new insights upon reading this book. Klein has done an excellent job of reporting. Not surprisingly, The New York Times and Washington Post have both written about the book in unflattering terms, questioning the veracity of some of Klein’s reporting. The Post quotes a Hillary Clinton aide as calling Klein “a congenital liar.” The article says that Klein is reviled by the left and has not yet been embraced by the right. You can read excerpts from the interview below, or you can go online and read or listen to the complete interview _here_ (http://www.aim.org/podcast/take-aim-ed-klein/) . KLEIN: The New York Times, when I was there—which was almost 25 years ago now—was under the editorship of the late A.M. Rosenthal, and my editorship of the magazine, a—what I would call a “straight newspaper.” In other words, it was neither liberal nor conservative. It tried to be balanced and fair, and I think Abe Rosenthal did a fantastic job keeping it that way. Unfortunately, when he left, and others took over, the entire paper, including the magazine—which I left in 1987, 1988—started drifting to the Left, and now, of course, it’s all the way over to the Left. So my association with the magazine doesn’t, ipso facto, mean that I was some sort of a wild-eyed liberal while I was there. KLEIN: I looked at [Obama], I said to myself, “Here is this African-American senator who comes out of nowhere, has accomplished nothing during his time in public life, who hypnotizes millions of Americans into voting for him, gets into the White House, and turns into something that we have never seen in the modern day, which is an amateur in the White House—someone who does not know how to do the actual day-to-day job of the Presidency. I thought that was not only a very good story, but also a very important story, because we need to avoid electing people like Barack Obama in the future. In order to do so, we need to see what the consequences of having elected not only an inexperienced guy—he was certainly inexperienced—but a guy who did not have the temperament to do the job—and, as we’ve seen, he hasn’t been able to do the job. KLEIN: I think the most important indicator that I got was from both the Democratic and Republican sides in the Congress when I did a lot of reporting in Washington for this book, The Amateur, and discovered that it wasn’t only the Republicans who found it difficult to the point of impossible to work with him because there was no give on Obama’s side, but the Democrats themselves had no respect for this President. They didn’t think he had the executive leadership ability and skills that are required in a President. For instance, again and again people pointed out that Lyndon Johnson, who couldn’t give really a decent speech, or read well from the teleprompter, knew how to operate the levers of power in Washington, whereas Obama, who’s good on the podium in front of a teleprompter, who looks good with his neckties and so forth, hasn’t the first clue that politics requires the president to have personal relations with his colleagues in the equal branch of government, which is the Congress. In order to do that, he has to reach out and create these relationships. Barack Obama has been totally incapable of doing so. KLEIN: I did tape-record this conversation with the Reverend Wright’s approval…The tape recorder sat on the table between us. He approved that. I think he understood, very clearly, that this was his opportunity to tell his side of the story, and get back at Barack Obama. I think he understood exactly what he was doing. On the one hand, he was trying to clear his name by claiming that he had been taken out of context, and he really didn’t mean the things that people had heard him say—which I found unconvincing, I must say. But, on the other hand, he also wanted to use the opportunity—and did so— to indicate that Barack Obama was no better than any other politician, and, in some ways, worse, because Obama didn’t even stop at using his best friends to offer Jeremiah Wright money to remain silent during the 2008 campaign. KLEIN: I said, to the Reverend Wright—it’s on the tape, and by the way, I released the entire three hours, not just the edited snippets, but the whole thing, so it’s out in public for anyone to listen to—“Did you convert Barack Obama from Islam to Christianity?” I asked that question to the pastor who ministered to Obama for over 23 years, and his answer was, quote, “ That’s hard to say.” Now, that’s quite a statement. KLEIN: Once Obama became a national politician, he became like everybody else. Up until that point, Wright thought that Obama was a special politician …But he said he changed his mind about Obama after Obama became a national politician and started to behave just like every other politician. ARONOFF: You write about how Brian Ross of ABC News broke what you called the “media’s gentlemen’s agreement” not to air the Jeremiah Wright videos during the 2008 campaign. Ross talked about how it aired on Good Morning America, but they wouldn’t put it on the evening news, and people at the network were quite annoyed with him. How does a “gentlemen’s agreement” like that occur? Is it spoken? Unspoken? How high up? What are we talking about here? KLEIN: Roger, that’s a wonderful question. I wish I knew the answer. I’ve been asked that question in various forms ever since The Amateur was published, because everyone figures I would know the answer, since I was there at Newsweek, there at The New York Times, there at Vanity Fair, and all those publications, of course, are part of the mainstream media. These things are often done in informal wink-and-nod kinds of ways. It’s rare that somebody would come out and say, “Let’s not run Brian Ross’s videos of the Reverend Wright ranting and raving against America, against whites, against Jews, and against Israel, because we don’t want to embarrass Barack Obama. I can ’t imagine any producer saying that. But I can imagine a producer saying, “ These tapes are incendiary and one-sided, they’re unfair”—coming up with some lame excuse for not putting them on the evening show which everyone in the room would understand: Instead of his saying out and out, “We’re in the tank for Obama”—which they all are—he’s using code words. I think that happens most of the time. People in the mainstream media see a lot of each other at lunches, cocktail parties, dinners. They go on vacations in the same places, the Hamptons or Martha’s Vineyard. They have an opportunity to talk to each other, e-mail each other, and, you know, they make comments, snide comments about Republicans. I can’t tell you how often in recent days I’ ve heard Democrats say to me that Mitt Romney is an idiot. Now, here’s a guy who went to Harvard Law School, Harvard Business School, top of his class, brilliant businessman, a successful governor—they said the same thing about Ronald Reagan, by the way, back in the 1970s and ’80s—all of which is typical of the kind of conversation that goes on among these people. It has its effect because if you want to remain part of the club, and don’t want to be shunned and excommunicated, then you go along with it. KLEIN: Yet everyone in this group thinks they’re doing the right thing because they’re on the side of the poor and the oppressed, and they’re doing charitable work on behalf of people who need help. They think of themselves as very enlightened, whereas, in fact, they’re not doing their job—and their job is a very simple job, which is to tell the truth on all sides, and not pull any punches. KLEIN: Other than the very snarky _Janet Maslin review_ (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/books/edward-kleins-invective-laden-obama-book.html?_r=1) in The New York Times of my book, The Amateur, which was really not a review of the book at all, but an attack on me personally—there are all kinds of adjectives to describe me, such as “arrogant,” and things like that, “ ideologue,” “invective,” what have you—the mainstream media has not largely, but entirely, ignored and avoided writing about this book, which has become quite a phenomenon. It has shot up to the number one spot on the Times’ list three weeks in a row, and it has done so without getting any attention at the morning shows on ABC, NBC, or CBS; the evening shows; any of the talk shows, such as The View or Live! with Kelly; or any of these places—but it has received a warm reception at Fox News Network, thanks to Roger Ailes, I must say. I’ve been on Hannity twice, on Fox and Friends, on Lou Dobbs. My friend Larry Kudlow over on CNBC has had me once but that’s an unusual break with the phalanx that’s been against me. But, you know, radio—thank God for radio in this country, because radio shows—I’ve done probably a hundred or more radio shows. KLEIN: So people sometimes snigger when one talks about the mainstream media, as though, “Oh, come on, there is no, there’s no conspiracy among the mainstream media.” Well, there is! It’s as simple as that. I’ve experienced it. Other people have experienced it. Accuracy in Media, of course, has been on that case for a long, long time—doing God’s work. And if you hadn’t been, I mean, God knows where we would be today. So, it is possible to get out a message without the mainstream media, but it’s a sad, sad comment on our society that the most powerful organs of communication are in the control of people who censor any point of view other than their left-wing point of view. KLEIN: The Clintons and the Obamas are the Hatfields and McCoys of the Democratic Party. They’ve been feuding now for several years—bitter feud, nothing but hatred on both sides. They come from two different wings of the Democratic party—Clinton from the center-Left, Obama from the far Left. They don’t agree on practically anything—well, they not only don’t agree but they hold grudges about what happened during the 2008 primary campaign, when Hillary and Obama went at each other. But as you just pointed out, Bill’s chief goal in life is to get Hillary elected president of the United States, and one of the main reasons he’s campaigning for Obama is to show that he’ s a loyal Democrat, in order to be able to say in 2016, “I expect to be paid back for my loyalty by the Democratic machinery.” But Bill being Bill, he seems not to have been able to contain himself. His real feelings have kept popping up. And as we’ve read, even his own people, in his own camp, are appalled by these comments of his, which have been very detrimental to Obama —and you can imagine how the Obama people must feel, using this guy and then being abused by him. ARONOFF: Now what do you make of this brochure from Obama’s literary agency that was brought to light recently by Breitbart’s website, that for 17 years, and through three or four changes, up through when Obama was a U.S. senator, it said he was born in Kenya—and the person from that firm, from that agency, said it was a “fact-checking error.” Have you looked at that? KLEIN: Yes, of course. As you know, and as we all know, these biographies that are put out by literary agencies are not made out of thin air. They’re created by the subjects themselves. The authors provide the material for these biographies. The agencies have no way of writing the biographies without the author sending in his biography. So clearly, you can’t believe that this business about him being born in Kenya was a typographical error, or some kind of error. It clearly came from Obama himself. What are we to make of that? I, personally, make of it that he felt being perceived as a foreign-born person would make him more exotic and appealing as a writer in that atmosphere, and the kind of books that he was talking and thinking about writing, and that he was leading people to the assumption that he was an exchange student from Kenya the way his father had been. KLEIN: There has been tension from day one between the Obama political team, in particular, and the military brass. There’s also been tension between some of the policy people, but a number of these policy people are, at the same time, political people. I mean, [Thomas] Donilon, for instance, who is now the National Security Advisor, was part of the Obama 2008 campaign. He, in fact, prompted Obama, and prepared him for the debates. So number one, to answer your question, the relationship between the Obama administration and the military is not a good one. There are a lot of nasty comments being made on both sides. Number two, General Jones was treated with contempt by the people around Obama. Even General Jones’s wife refers to the people around Obama as “A bunch of Chicago thugs.” Number three, I think that it is clear that the Obama foreign policy is run directly from Obama, not in the State Department, and not even from his experts… KLEIN: Samantha Powers is a former Harvard professor who believes, and has written, that the United States is responsible for a lot of bad things in the world, and that we should go and apologize to the rest of the world. She has said so. She thinks that Willy Brandt getting down on his knees in front of the Holocaust Museum, or whatever, in Germany was the way the President should behave—and we’ve seen the President doing just that. She is in the National Security Council; she is one of his chief political advisors— very, very far left, and very anti-Israeli. Until his Israel policy blew up in his face, and he had to back off, Obama was following in Samantha Powers ’ footsteps. KLEIN: Dr. David Scheiner, who is an unreconstructed old Lefty and doesn’t make any bones about it, sat down with me and told me that, number one, he thinks that Obamacare is an abomination and isn’t going to work—it’s too big, it’s too expensive, it’s too complicated—and, number two, that Obama himself, whom he treated for over 20 years, was one of his most cold, distant patients, whom he could never get to know because he was a person who had very little human contact with other people. So when the inauguration came around, Obama invited his barber to the inauguration, but didn’t invite David Scheiner, his physician. The doctor said he was very hurt by that.• -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
[RC] Reviews of Edward Klein: The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House
BILROJ via Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community Sun, 16 Nov 2014 15:43:21 -0800
- [RC] Re... BILROJ via Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
- Re... Lennart Johansson
