The question almost answers itself–the press is in love with him. Glenn thinks that he has, but as his reader points out, it’s only been by the left. Interestingly, when the Clinton campaign attempted to go at him obliquely from the right, tainting his electability by talking about his race or past drug use, it was viewed with opprobrium. But in fact there are a lot of unanswered questions about him, and now that he’s looking like the likely nominee, the true vetting on the right is starting. For instance, was he a red-diaper baby? If so, should we care? Is to ask the question (and yes, I am asking the question) intrinsically dirty politics? Is it “McCarthyism”?

But here’s a more interesting issue that is just starting to surface. Michelle Obama hasn’t gotten a lot of attention, and particularly negative attention, to date. But that’s starting to change as well, with her apparent inability to come up with anything about which to take pride in America in the past quarter century. They’re supposed to be the first “post-racial” candidates. But are they?

…the evidence is plain that Barack and Michelle Obama both belong to that subset of educated black Americans to whom their own blackness is of obsessive interest, or at very least was up through their college years. Barack famously wrote “A Story of Race and Inheritance”, about his own long struggles with his racial identity.

Now here’s Michelle Obama in the current Newsweek cover story. She graduated from Princeton in 1985 with a major in sociology and a minor in African-American Studies. Sociology, huh? At first sight that’s encouraging — I mean, at least she didn’t spend her entire college career obsessing about her blackness. Then Newsweek tells us the title of her senior sociology thesis: “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community.” (I have this mental image of her thesis adviser saying: “Michelle, isn’t there some way we can squeeze another ‘black’ into that title?”)

Again, does it matter? At least in her case?

A little history is in order here. Once upon a time, a man ran for president. He had a law degree. So did his wife. Both from Yale, to be specific. In fact, the wife was lauded by an adoring press to be one of the most brilliant women in America, if not the world. But there were things about her that were not only not reported, but actively kept hidden (and we’re not just talking about the Rose law firm billing records). One of them was her college thesis, which only recently became available for the public’s perusal. Why was it secreted away for the eight years of the presidency? And why should we have cared?

Well, one of the themes of that presidential race was that the superwoman would be a “co-president,” that the fortunate nation would be getting “two for the price of one.”

So now enter Barack Obama, a charismatic young man with a message of, if not from, Hope, with a law degree of his own and a wife with a law degree as well (both from Harvard). Now he hasn’t been campaigning as a two-for-one special, but it’s very clear that his wife strongly influences him in his campaign, and there’s no reason to think that she wouldn’t do the same as commander-in-chief. So, even setting aside the issue of whether we want someone who values “feeling” over “thinking,” it seems reasonable to wonder about her political views and methods as well, particularly if we’re going to get a “co-president” by stealth.

And as we wonder, what do we discover? That (assuming the report is correct) her college thesis has been embargoed until election day. Like Jonah, I wonder why as well. What are they trying to hide? Something that can’t simply be laughed off as the naivety of youth?

I also wonder what other similarities to another aspiring first couple there are.

[Update a little later]

I hadn’t read that entire WSJ piece, but deeper down in it, we find this:

In her senior thesis in 1985, Mrs. Obama wrote that her college experience “made me far more aware of my ‘Blackness’ ” than ever before, adding, “I will always be Black first and a student second” on campus. At Harvard Law, Mrs. Obama, involved in the Black Law Students Association, pushed hard to improve the low numbers of African-American faculty and students.

“We got into big debates on the condition of black folks in America,” says Harvard classmate Verna Williams. “She’s got a temper.”

I guess someone read it before it was locked away.

Does she remain this aggrieved? Based on her very recent statement that her husband’s presidential campaign is the only thing praiseworthy about America, one suspects so.

[Update an hour or so later]

How do they do that? I only posted this an hour or so ago, and it’s already in the top ten of a Google search for “michele obama princetonn thesis.” And they didn’t even spell “Princeton” or “Michelle” right.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Someone just did a search on it spelled correctly (after reading this post?), and it was only in the top thirty, not the top ten.

Weird.

[Late afternoon update]

Per the commenter who answered my rhetorical questions above about “red diaper” babies. I agree. So does Andrew Stuttaford over at NRO. It will probably be a counterproductive avenue of attack.

But here’s something interesting in regards as to whether or not Obama is an empty suit. One of the questions was how effective his speeches are without a teleprompter. Now the issue is how effective his speeches are without his ability to plagiarize others’ speeches:

Speaking at a Town Hall in Texas, and the Deval things appears to already be having an effect. He was reading straight from a speech in front of him on the lectern, instead of the famous sweeping oratory, complete with hand gestures and eye contact. He stumbled a lot, and the ideas were awkwardly phrased. He was talking about the mortgage crisis, which I’ll admit, I don’t fully understand myself, but he clearly didn’t understand it either. I don’t know if he’s tired, or if he feels he can’t use his normal stump speeches for the time being, or if it was the format, or what, but it was weird for sure. I’ve grown used to the other Obama, the confident, consummate Obama.

Apparently, if true, he’s not only lost without his teleprompter–he’s been using a lot of stock phrases as part of his magician’s patter that he’s no longer able to use, and his speeches are suffering for it.

[Mid-evening update]

The Anchoress is thinking along the same lines as I am–is Michelle Obama the new Hillary?

[Another update a few minutes later]

Is David Axelrod the man behind Obama’s curtain?

I would love to see this happen:

The word on the street is that the Obama campaign and New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg have already met and devised an incredible plan if Clinton wins the nominee [sic]. Mayor Bloomberg would give nearly $1 billion to Obama’s campaign after which Obama would bolt from the Democratic Party and run as an Independent candidate with king-maker Bloomberg as his running mate.

That would make it a walk-in for McCain. In fact, it would be deliciously ironic, because it was exactly that kind of situation (with nutty billionaire Perot) that allowed Bill Clinton to slip into the White House in the first place. If Bush had gotten all the votes that Republicans normally get, Bill wouldn’t have had a chance. So the justice would be poetic if Hillary’s nomination was torpedoed by an independent run that pulled a lot of the Democrat vote.

Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s likely. Even if Hillary does win (or steal) the nomination, much as I’d like to see it, I don’t believe that Mike Bloomberg is so politically stupid as to think that he can run as a “centrist” on an Obama ticket. And “centrist” (nannyism and all) has always seemed to me what he fancies himself as. But an Obama campaign, whether Democrat or Independent, isn’t going to pull centrists, particularly once his voting record gets highlighted. It would split the Democrats, not the Republicans or “independents,” and it would probably not only give McCain the presidency, but possibly give the Republicans the Congress back.

If Bloomberg really does something like this, it can only be because he deludes himself that McCain is a “right winger” and that there is plenty of room to his left. As I said, I’d love to see it, but I’d have to see a lot more evidence than “the word on the street” from Armstrong Williams.

An interesting comment from this post:

Me and my family used to be the biggest fans of Bill Clinton. Everyone in my community can’t stand to see Bill on TV anymore. I’m not sure if its his older age or maybe the lack of sleep lately, but I truly believe his lost his mind. He makes no sense anymore, cares about nothing other than attempting to get his wife elected, plucks words right out of the air while stating nothing, and now even goes against the voices of mass voters…

Bill Clinton is really not he same person I USED to respect and admire!

Sorry, he’s exactly the same person you used to (foolishly and myopically) respect and admire. He’s the same person he’s been his entire political career, going all the way back to the seventies in Arkansas. Anyone who has followed his career, or read non-hagiographic biographies of him knows this. The only thing that’s changed is that you’ve found a new empty vessel into which to pour your emotional political longings, and he’s attacked it, so now you see the Bill Clinton that the rest of us have seen all along.

As I’ve said many times, I don’t now, and never have “hated” Bill (or Hillary Rodham) Clinton. I find them far too trivial and unworthy subjects on which to expend such an intense and miserable emotion. I think that I’m in fact far more clinically objective about them than most Democrats have ever seemed to be able to be. The problem is not the “Clinton haters” (most of whom were merely pointing out the reality), but the far too many people who have loved him, far beyond reason, for decades. That was the source of his power.

And now that the scales have fallen from the eyes of many like the commenter above, the end may be very ugly, particularly if they are perceived to have stolen the nomination from Obama (something that they are surely plotting as I write this). Denver may make Chicago in 1968 look like a Sunday-school picnic.

They’ve never cared about the Democrat Party, other than as a convenient vehicle for the conveyance of their unlimited and insatiable ambition and lust for power, and they’ve been a disaster for it ever since they hit the national scene. They cost it the Congress for the first time in four decades, and the party couldn’t hold on to the White House at the end of their term, at least partly because of the stench of it in the minds of the voters in 2000. Having Bill Clinton campaign for a Democrat has generally been the kiss of death, but because of this irrational love of them, they’ve managed to keep on doing it.

When it comes to the Clintons, it’s always about them, and they always come first, and the national Democrats are finally starting to realize it, sixteen years later. If they’d been smart, and listened to Arkansas Democrats at the time, they could have had the much earlier epiphany, and spared their party a lot of corruption and embarrassment.

Oh, when the end comes, it won’t be as bad as the Ceausescus (this is America, after all), but it will certainly be as final. There will be no more comeback kids. If he’s still around in a couple decades, I suspect that Bill Clinton will be continuously enraged and deeply envious of the legacy of George W. Bush.

I frankly don’t get all the Obamamania. But then, I never got all of the talk about Bill Clinton’s charisma, either. And to be fair, I never understood what the big deal was with Ronald Reagan, the great communicator. I guess I’m more into substance than style. I’m more interested in what people say than in how they say it.

Anyway, given the nature of his career, it’s certainly a legitimate point to question his experience and qualifications as president (ignoring the minimal constitutional requirements of native born and thirty-five years old). His speeches remind me of Gertrude Stein’s comment about Oakland–there’s no there there.

So is there more to it than his speeches? Well, he’s apparently left no paper trail to discern his views on much of anything:

A simple question: Does anyone know whether Obama, while serving on the Harvard Law Review from 1989-91, published anything? The law students on the Review all have the right to publish at least one piece (typically they publish at least their third-year papers, which they have to write anyway), and many publish at least two pieces. It would seem surprising if Obama published nothing at all in the very Review over which, he has so often boasted, he presided as President.

If Obama published NOTHING, that would tend to reinforce the contemporaneous impressions of his fellow editors (at least those a year behind him) that while “likeable enough” (to borrow a phrase), he was basically lazy in carrying out his duties. See my earlier comments here and here. It would be interesting if he was so lazy he didn’t publish anything during the two years he served on the Review — not even a short case comment or book review.

(Apparently, judged by the objective results of his work (later scholarly citations to the volume which he oversaw), Obama was the worst president of the Harvard Law Review in the past 20 years — there was a huge drop in the citations to the volume he produced compared to the years just before, and just after, he served as president. See here.
In his recent interview on “60 Minutes” (see here, about 2:50 into the video), Obama conceded that other than his Review presidency he has no executive experience — that the Review is the only thing he’s ever run, setting aside his own senate office and his campaign. Analyzing his job performance on the Review thus seems like a legitimate, indeed important, task.)

(Follow my link to follow the commenter’s links)

So, his only executive experience is running a law school magazine, and not with any apparently distinguishment.

Here’s something else disturbing. He hasn’t performed that well in debates. His primary accomplishment, and talent, seems to be to make vaporous but inspiring (to some) speeches, that make (supposedly) grown men swoon and get funny feelings up their legs (are you sure that wasn’t something running down your leg, Chrissie?). And when he doesn’t have a teleprompter, apparently even his speeches aren’t all that great:

…the liberal commentators have gushed their praise nearly every time Obama has opened his mouth before a Teleprompter the past few months

It was thus interesting to see Obama climb to the stage at Virginia’s Jefferson-Jackson Dinner on Saturday night. As he strode to the podium, Obama clutched in his hands a pile of 3 by 5 index cards. The index cards meant only one thing–no Teleprompter.

Shorn of his Teleprompter, we saw a different Obama. His delivery was halting and unsure. He looked down at his obviously copious notes every few seconds throughout the speech. Unlike the typical Obama oration where the words flow with unparalleled fluidity, he stumbled over his phrasing repeatedly.

The prepared text for his remarks, as released on his website, sounded a lot like a typical Obama speech. All the Obama dramatis personae that we’ve come to know so well were there–the hapless family that had to put a “for sale” sign on its front lawn, the factory forced to shutter its doors and, of course, the mother who declares bankruptcy because “she cannot pay her child’s medical bills.”

The tone was also vintage Obama. The prepared text reached out to all Americans, including (gasp!) Republicans. It also evidenced Obama’s signature lack of anger. While his colleagues have happily demagogued complex issues and demonized the Bush administration, Obama always has taken pains to strike a loftier tone.

But Saturday night’s stem-winder turned out quite differently from the typical Obama speech. With no Teleprompter signaling the prepared text, Obama failed to deliver the speech in his characteristically flawless fashion. He had to rely on notes. And his memory. And he improvised.

I’d suggest reading the whole thing.

So, does he even write the speeches? If so, then he must be more aware at the time he’s writing them how important the tone is. It seems to me, though, if there’s a big difference in tone between a read speech and an extemporaneous one, that someone else, who better understands the nature of his campaign and appeal, is writing them. And when you take away the magic words, the magic candidate disappears as well, and his true voice emerges.

If this is the case, then we are on the brink of taking a cipher, with no notable accomplishments in running anything, who is persuasive and compelling as a speaker only when reading others’ words, and putting him in charge of the armed forces and other government institutions of the most powerful nation in the history of mankind.

Is this really a good idea?

As I’ve said before, the Dems grossly overestimate their chances of regaining the White House this year. Both of their remaining candidates are seriously flawed, in different ways. If you look at the last few decades of presidential elections, the Democrats have won resoundingly only once–in 1964, when the Republicans ran someone perceived to not only be, but someone who was proud to be, an extremist. Since then, the few times the Dems have won have been in very close races. Jimmy Carter might have lost in 1976 if Ford hadn’t pardoned Nixon, and made the foolish faux pas about Poland in the second debate. Bill Clinton couldn’t have gotten into the White House without the help of Ross Perot. People forget that he only got 43% of the vote in 1992. The only reason he won was because George Bush only got 39%. Even in 1996, he couldn’t muster a majority–even in beating Bob Dole, he only got 49+%.

Maybe that long jinx is about to be broken, but it sure doesn’t look to me like they have the candidates to do it this year.

[Late afternoon update]

Is Obama a liberal fascist?

I think the most obvious place to start is whether Obama is promoting something like a political religion. The messianic nature of Obama’s campaign has been noted by many for a long time now. He often sounds like he’s reviving the social gospel. There’s even a website called “Is Barack Obama the Messiah?”

Many of the tropes of a political religion/liberal fascism are evident. He exalts unity as it’s own reward. His talk of starting new and starting over often sounds like more than merely “turning the page” on the Bush-Clinton years. It sounds a bit like starting at Year Zero.

But what I find most intriguing is his rhetoric of destiny and “choseness.” He often makes it sound like he has been selected by forces of providence or God or simply history for this moment. He is, in Oprah’s words, “The One.” But even more interesting, he tells voters they are the ones. “This is it,” Obama proclaimed on Super Tuesday. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change that we seek.” That’s pretty oracular stuff.

Well, there’s little doubt that Hillary is.

[Early evening update]

Leon Wieseltier has some related thoughts:

…into this unirenic environment strides Obama, pledging to extract us promptly from Iraq and to negotiate with our enemies. What is the role of a conciliator in an unconciliating world? You might think that in such conditions he is even more of an historical necessity-but why would you think that all that stands between the world and peace is one man? George W. Bush was not single-handedly responsible for getting us into our strategic mess and Barack Obama will not be single-handedly responsible for getting us out of it. There are autonomous countries and cultures out there. The turbulence that I have described is not caused by misunderstandings. It is caused by the interests of powers and the beliefs of peoples. Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang, Islamabad, Gaza City, Khartoum, Caracas-does Obama really believe that he has something to propose to these ruthless regimes that they have not already considered? Does he plan to move them, to organize them, to show them change they can believe in? With what trick of empathy, what euphoria, does he hope to join the Shia, the Sunni, and the Kurds in Iraq? Yes, he made a “muscular” speech in Chicago last spring; but I have been pondering his remarks about foreign policy in the ensuing campaign and I do not detect the hardness I seek, the disabused tone that the present world warrants. My problem is not with “day one”: nobody is perfectly prepared for the White House, though the memory of Bill Clinton’s “learning curve” is still vivid, which in Bosnia and Rwanda cost more than a million lives. My problem is that Obama’s declarations in matters of foreign policy and national security have a certain homeopathic quality. He seems averse to the hurtful, expensive, traditional, unedifying stuff.

Indeed.

The inevitability about Hillary Clinton seems to be becoming an inevitability of her defeat in the primaries. Ron Fournier has a piece about her abandonment by her former allies/cronies/sycophants as Obama continues to build momentum:

“If (Barack) Obama continues to win …. the whole raison d’etre for her campaign falls apart and we’ll see people running from her campaign likes rats on a ship,” said Democratic strategist Jim Duffy, who is not aligned with either campaign.

Actually, I think that a better analogy would be a sinking ship abandoning a pair of rats.

But I think that he underestimates both the power and the ruthlessness of the Clintons. Perhaps after losing enough primaries, she’ll bow out, but if so, I’ll be very surprised. She’s been working for this for decades, and I don’t think that she’ll give up without a very vicious fight, including a convention fight to seat the Michigan and Florida delagates, and a lot of behind-the-scenes pressure. In addition, we don’t know how many FBI files they actually had access to back in the nineties, or whose they were, or what was in them. It’s certainly conceivable that this is a weapon that they can hold over the head of the super delegates.

And even if she ends up not getting the nomination, I suspect that the Democrats will still have an ugly election in the fall. There are many ways that Billary can sabotage Obama’s run without it being obvious that that’s their intent (just as in fact Bill may have sabotaged Hillary’s primary campaign, perhaps out of fear of being shown up by his wife as president). After all, if he wins, it makes it a lot harder for her to make another attempt in 2012. No matter who wins the nomination, I won’t be surprised, nor will I be displeased, to see the civil war within the Democrat Party (that was started by the Clintons) continue.