Pulling at the Thread: The Ever-Changing Narrative of Barack Obama

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid continues his battle against Mitt Romney and has not yet backed away from his remarks, outright accusing Romney of not having paid taxes in ten years. It’s a bold accusation and the kind of accusation one might expect a senator to make only after he has solid proof. But, as the real goal of Reid’s accusation is merely mud slinging to form a smoke screen for our failure of a president, baseless accusations seem to suffice.

However, this whole thing has me thinking; if the Democrats are really so concerned with knowing everything about a candidate, if they really insist that a candidate must endure what amounts to a political proctology exam, then shouldn’t they focus those same inquisitive minds to our incumbent candidate, Mr. Obama?

If we are to know every facet of our candidates’ lives, here is what we should start with for Barack Hussein Obama:

1) We would love to see some information regarding the murky history of Obama’s association with radicals. While there is absolutely no shortage of radicals with whom Mr. Obama has associated, a “filling in of the gaps” is definitely needed. What was his relationship with Derrick Bell? What about his communist mentor, Frank Marshall Davis? We already know of his relationship with the America-hating radical, Jeremiah Wright. What, exactly, is his relationship with Bill Ayers? The Obama administration has become quite skilled at dodging these kinds of questions, but, quite frankly, I care quite a bit more about who has helped shaped Obama’s ideology and the company he has kept over the years with multiple radicals, than I do about how much Romney has made.

2) For that matter, we should also see the Rashid Khalidi tape. In 2003, Obama attended an event with his friend, Palestinian scholar Rashid Khalidi. The event featured virulent, radical anti-Israel rhetoric. The L.A. Times broke the story, but has refused to release the footage; likewise, Obama and Khalidi have refused as well. During his 2008 campaign, many feared that his association with such radicals signaled an unwillingness to stand with our longtime ally, Israel. Obama, however, called his commitment to Israel “unshakeable”, but has since abandoned Israel on several key issues.

I should be clear, this is not about Israel or our foreign policy, per se; this is about evidence of an association with a radical which Obama and the liberal media refuse to release or even discuss in any meaningful way. Meanwhile, we are left with the onus being placed upon Romney to dispel rumors not founded on any kind of evidence other than hearsay.

3) This “administration of transparency” makes the former Politburo look like an open book by comparison. While Obama has released the “official” White House guest log, the White House has actually withheld “tens of thousands” of visitor logs, according to congressional testimony of Tom Fitton, the President of Judicial Watch. However, in the wake of the revelation that the White House had been sneaking in lobbyists and “community organizers” (read: activists), they fixed the problem and have just met in locations other than the White House. If the White House wants to maintain a secret list of who comes and goes, then fine. However, they can’t publish a partial or otherwise manipulated list and try to score points for transparency.

4) We need Obama to fill in the gaps for us on his college years. He touted his academic credentials to make up for his lack of political experience, and the mainstream media gave him a pass. However, we still have some questions. Where are his transcripts? Where are his admission records? If he was on the Harvard Law Review, where are his contributions? Obama’s own narrative paints the picture of a poor, black youth, struggling to find his racial identity amongst a crowd of various relatives passing him around, each more poor than the last. If that is the case, how did he pay for Occidental College? Columbia? Harvard? If one of the main selling points of this “community organizer” is his academic career that is supposed to serve as a substitute for his political experience, I think we need to see the facts surrounding his academic career.

5) Before we scrutinize Romney’s tax information, we should first scrutinize the different presentations of Obama’s background. We should start with Obama’s original book proposal for his first proposed book, Journeys in Black and White, a book about exploring his racial identity that he abandoned to write Dreams From My Father. This book proposal has not been released by Obama or his literary agents; however, his literary agents Dystel & Goderich, listed Obama’s birthplace as Kenya for 16 years. In fact, as late as 2007, dystel.com, the literary agents’ website, contained a biography of Obama that claimed he was born in Kenya. By late 2007, his birthplace was changed to Hawaii.

It should be noted that I am not renewing “birther” claims. I am merely illustrating a fundamentally wishy-washy narrative Obama has painted for different occasions. He’s born in Kenya sometimes, Hawaii, others. He was middle class, he was poor. He’s black, he’s white, he’s Muslim, he’s Christian. He’s the studious black child, struggling to get out from the ghetto one minute, he’s the weed-smoking, troubled youth who only found peace when he came to terms with his racial identity the next. Meanwhile, we have an, albeit plain, presidential candidate that has been pretty straightforward with what he has done, and the left is calling for more and more ammunition information to use against him without questioning any one of the thousand inconsistencies of our sitting president’s past.

6) I have saved the most important for last. If we are even remotely concerned with either truth or justice, we need… no, demand to see all files pertaining to Operation Fast and Furious. While everything else on this list is subject to debate as to who deserves to know, the details of Fast and Furious are not. Our government has mounted an illegal, international operation without the cooperation or knowledge of the Mexican government, purposefully enabled guns to get into the hands of Mexican cartels and allowed them to be used against Mexican citizens and our own Border Patrol Agents, who were equipped with bean bags to defend themselves. This illegal operation left Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry dead and instead of coming clean, the ironically-named Justice Department tried to cover it up and scapegoat American gun owners and dealers as the source of violence as a means to justify stricter gun laws. As if that were not bad enough, in the eleventh hour, as Congress circled in on the head of the Justice Department, Eric Holder, Obama exerted executive privilege to protect him from the consequences of his illegalities. We need to see all documents, and on this issue there can be no compromise.

Though I have not seen them, I can guarantee you that nothing on Romney’s tax returns caused anyone’s death.

The left clamors for candidates to be an open book. They look upon Romney’s wealth as a electoral weak-spot on which to focus, because in Obama’s America, “success” is a dirty word. Romney has released the tax returns required. He has assured us he has paid his taxes, but not more than that which is required. He also donates almost as much money to charities as he pays in taxes, but that is not discussed. Instead, we are left with an asinine discussion and baseless, hearsay accusations by a backroom-dealing senator. If the left ever wants to gets serious about getting to know the truth behind candidates, then they should start by playing catch-up and begin vetting the incumbent, which they should have done 4 years ago. When this sketchy, radical, race-baiting, mudslinging embodiment of dirty Chicago politics finally comes clean, then we can have a discussion about the ins and outs of Romney’s taxes. Until that day, however, those in glass houses should not throw stones.