Solving the Obama Problem | FrontPage Magazine

Solving the Obama Problem | FrontPage Magazine: "Regular readers of this site need not be reminded of Barack Obama’s countless gaffes, aberrations, indulgences, prevarications, poor decisions, shady dealings and worrisome patches of biographical obscurity. These blemishes have been rehearsed in article after article to the extent to which we can say that, by this time, the issue of his competence and bona fides should have reached critical mass. Nevertheless, for the fence sitters, the undecideds or those of a different political persuasion who out of curiosity occasionally scan the conservative media, it might be expedient to revisit the Obama problem and set down a brief summary of the president’s track record.

I have argued before that Barack Obama is as close to being a rogue president as can be imagined. There is something troublingly undocumented about him, a cloud of ambiguity hovering over his selective reticence. No one can doubt that his actual résumé, compared to that of any of his predecessors, is strangely bare, like a kind of Mother Hubbard’s cupboard. (Obama’s first memoir in particular, Dreams from My Father, as Jerome Corsi shows in The Obama Nation, is a distinctly unreliable source. Corsi has been viciously attacked as a liar and a “discredited, fringe bigot,” but his defense of his allegations is point-device.)

Some facts are known—where Obama studied, where he taught, his activities as a “community organizer,” his various associates, his attendance at Trinity United Church, his law firm employment, his voting record in the Senate, and now the White House visitors list to which, as Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer reveal in The Post-American Presidency, access had been blocked until a legal suit forced him to release it. The problem is that much of genuine importance remains an ongoing mystery.

For example, his college and university transcripts, including his academic papers and financial statements, his senate files and schedules, his professional client lists and other documentation remain sequestered under seal, a fact which should properly distress even his most ardent supporters. There is also the enigma of his faith, for although Obama professes to be a Christian, “we don’t know,” writes Bosch Fawstin, “when he renounced Islam, if he ever truly did.” (Political scientist John Drew who knew Obama at Occidental College is confident that “his basic mental architecture has more links to Islam than Christianity.”) Obama’s informational footprint, unlike his carbon footprint, is scarcely discernible. What does the president have to hide? There should be no reason for such coyness—if that is what it is—any more than, for example, there could be a legitimate reason for the Los Angeles Times to suppress video footage of Obama’s words and actions at former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi’s Chicago farewell party. Something is clearly not kosher here.