The Audacity to Learn about Obama

Digging into a candidate's past is part of the political game.

Opposition research is SOP.

For example, is Rudy Giuliani a draft dodger?

WASHINGTON -- If this presidential campaign is anything like the last, John McCain’s Vietnam service will inevitably be contrasted with GOP rival Rudy Giuliani’s avoidance of a war that he opposed.

“Any suggestion that he was dodging the draft is totally, factually inaccurate,” said a senior Giuliani campaign adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic. “He opposed the war on tactical and strategic grounds.”

But as far back as 1993, when he successfully ran for mayor of New York, Giuliani has been dogged by accusations that he pulled strings to avoid the draft.

Questions about what Giuliani did or did not do are fair. He's the candidate.

However, I am not comfortable with attempts to put a candidate in a negative light because of the behavior of his or her ancestors.

Such is the case with Mitt Romney and the lib media's persistence in dogging him about his Mormonism.

SALT LAKE CITY -- While Mitt Romney condemns polygamy and its prior practice by his Mormon church, the Republican presidential candidate's great-grandfather had five wives and at least one of his great-great grandfathers had 12.

Polygamy was not just a historical footnote, but a prominent element in the family tree of the former Massachusetts governor now seeking to become the first Mormon president.

Romney's great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, married his fifth wife in 1897. That was more than six years after Mormon leaders banned polygamy and more than three decades after a federal law barred the practice.

Romney's great-grandmother, Hannah Hood Hill, was the daughter of polygamists. She wrote vividly in her autobiography about how she "used to walk the floor and shed tears of sorrow" over her own husband's multiple marriages.

Romney's great-great grandfather, Parley Pratt, an apostle in the church, had 12 wives. In an 1852 sermon, Parley Pratt's brother and fellow apostle, Orson Pratt, became the first church official to publicly proclaim and defend polygamy as a direct revelation from God.

..."When you read the family's history, you realize how important polygamy was to them," said Todd Compton, a Mormon and independent historian who wrote a book about the polygamous life of the church's founder, Joseph Smith.

So what?

Is Mitt Romney a polygamist?

Just because his ancestors practiced polygamy, does that make him a polygamist?

Romney's great-great grandfather has nothing to do with Romney's qualifications as a presidential candidate.

Parley Pratt is irrelevant to Election 2008.

There's definitely a double standard at play. Romney is being bashed while the Dems tend to get a pass.

Think back.

Did the lib media consider Bill an abusive, alcoholic because his step-father was one?

Of course not.

Do the lib media suggest that Hillary Clinton would have oral sex in the Oval Office because her husband did?

(Eek! What a creepy thought! Sorry.)

The point is a candidate shouldn't bear the burden of some questionable branches on his or her family tree.

UNLESS, the candidate is LYING about his or her family's past.

Such is the case with Barack Obama.

From The Daily Mail:

It is a classic story of the American dream made real: an impoverished Kenyan goatherd rising to become a brilliant Harvard-educated economist.

On the way he fights racial prejudice at home and corruption at work, survives the heartbreak of a broken relationship and, despite it all, leads the fight to rid Africa of its colonial legacy.

This extraordinary story is told by US Presidential hopeful Barack Obama as he recalls the life of the man who inspired him to political success - his father.

Mr Obama's book, Dreams From My Father, is flying off the shelves of US book stores, exciting and astonishing readers in equal measure. It is a bestseller, and no wonder - because the story just gets better and better.

Mr Obama is already Democratic Senator for Illinois. Now he is in the running to be the first black President in the country's history.

"My story is part of the larger American story," he declared in the electrifying speech that won him his Senate seat just two years ago. "In no other country on Earth is my story even possible."

Many believe Mr Obama is a serious threat to Hillary Clinton's hopes of becoming the Democrats' choice for their next Presidential candidate - and his lovingly written account of the debt he owes his father, also called Barack Obama, will do no harm at all to his Presidential hopes.

Indeed, by offering up a conveniently potted account of his personal history in this way, he might even have made a pre-emptive strike on those sure to pose the awkward questions that inevitably face a serious contender for the White House.

Yet an investigation by The Mail on Sunday has revealed that, for all Mr Obama's reputation for straight talking and the compelling narrative of his recollections, they are largely myth.

We have discovered that his father was not just a deeply flawed individual but an abusive bigamist and an egomaniac, whose life was ruined not by racism or corruption but his own weaknesses.

And, devastatingly, the testimony has come from Mr Obama's own relatives and family friends.

Read more. Very enlightening.

So why should Obama be judged by the type of man that his father was?

He shouldn't, and neither should Romney be held accountable for the lives of his relatives.

However, Obama should be held accountable because he lacks the audacity of truth.

That's not very "clean," is it?

Today, we're learning more about Obama's past.

From The Chicago Tribune:

Many people know that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's father was from Kenya and his mother from Kansas.

But an intriguing sliver of his family history has received almost no attention until now: It appears that forebears of his white mother owned slaves, according to genealogical research and census records.

The records, which had never been addressed publicly by the Illinois senator or his relatives, were first noted in an ancestry report compiled by William Addams Reitwiesner, who works at the Library of Congress and practices genealogy in his spare time. The report, on Reitwiesner's Web site, carries a disclaimer that it is a "first draft" --one likely to be examined more closely if Obama is nominated.

According to the research, one of Obama's great-great-great-great grandfathers, George Washington Overall, owned two slaves who were recorded in the 1850 census in Nelson County, Ky. The same records show that one of Obama's great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers, Mary Duvall, also owned two slaves.

Has Obama been hiding the possibility that he descends from slave owners?

Who knows?

If he had knowledge of his family's slave owning past, it would have been wise for him to address it, to have been completely forthcoming with the truth.

It's certainly conceivable that he didn't know.

How many of us have a clue about our great-great-great-great grandfathers?

I don't; and if I did, I can't be held accountable for their actions. Accordingly, I can't take credit for their achievements nor can I be blamed for their sins.

What different does it make if Obama's has slave owning ancestors?

None.

The marriages of Romney's ancestors are irrelevant as well.

What's worse?

A candidate with polygamists or slave owners among his ancestors?

IT DOESN'T MATTER.

What does matter is whether a candidate can be trusted to be truthful.

From that standpoint, Obama's family tree may matter in this election.