Why I personally would not vote for Barack Obama

Opinion by Robin G. Jordan

When I first heard the media comparing Senator Barack Obama with a "rock star" because he was drawing unusually large crowds at his rallies in the primary elections, it set off an alarm bell in my mind. At this juncture in history what the nation needs is not a rock star in the highest office in the land, a celebrity who attracts the adulation of the masses, but a mature experienced leader. I am a historian by training if not by vocation. Like Thomas Sowell, I have observed that Senator Obama shares a number of characteristics with various charismatic demagogues who have appeared on the political stage during turbulent periods in world history. What particularly concerns me is the tendency of his adoring followers to not look closely at their hero, to view him as a messianic figure, and refuse to entertain any criticism of their hero and his record. They idolize him to the point that whatever he does and says is right in their eyes. Anyone who dares to say anything negative about Obama is greeted with hostility and accused of being racist.

Even before Obama became a candidate in the Democratic presidential primaries, the media was haling him as a "rising star" in the Democratic Party. What I saw, however, did not impress me. The media appeared to have taken a fancy to Obama: he was receiving a lot more media attention than a junior US Senator might expect to receive. The media were building up their own image of Obama that did not actually fit the man. Indeed the media Obama appeared to be a projection more than a real person.

While the media may have helped create this image of Obama and are doing all they can to maintain the image, Obama and his followers are also doing all they can to foster it. A lot of Obama’s followers have bought into the image themselves. Most Americans have yet to see the real Obama. I suspect a goodly number of those who are planning to vote for him, or have already cast an early ballot for him, when they do see the real Obama, will regret voting for him.

Obama has so far proven himself as adept at presenting himself as those whose support he is courting would like to see him and at saying what they want to hear. He has sought to portray himself as pro-life and pro-family when his record shows that he supports abortion on demand and condones what amounts to infanticide. His campaign includes a number of leading advocates of so-called "gay-rights" and he has spoke out in support of gay marriage. Obama gives the impression of being more interested in achieving his personal ambition—becoming the President of the United States—than he is in serving the national interest.

During the Democratic presidential primaries Obama preached hope and promised change. Hope and change have been persistent themes in his speeches since he was nominated Democratic candidate for President. Few realize that Obama borrowed these themes from Afro-American preachers. Indeed his rhetorical style shows the influence of Afro-American preaching. The difference between message of Afro-American preachers and that of Senator Obama is that when they talk about hope, they are talking about the hope that God offers. When they talk about change, they are talking about the transformation that occurs in the life of an individual who surrenders his life to Christ. The hope about which Senator Obama talks is the hope that he offers—presenting himself as a unifier who can do what other political leaders have failed to do. The change about which he talks is political, social, and economic change brought about by the implementation of the radical agenda that he and other ultraliberals in the Democratic Party favor.

Obama has portrayed Senator John McCain as a Bush clone, seeking to exploit wide spread dissatisfaction with the Bush administration and its policies. This may play well with his base but it is an unfair portrayal of Senator McCain. It is also historically inaccurate. No US President has ever been exactly like his predecessors even when they belonged to the same party. Each US President has been unique.

Obama is exploiting popular myths about the Democratic Party. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal may have helped to alleviate human suffering in the Depression but the New Deal did not end the Depression. The war in Europe, adoption of the Lend-Lease Program by which the United States supplied munitions to the Allies, and the entry of the United States into World War II stimulated the US economy and brought an end to the Depression. New Deal-style public works programs are no substitute for a robust, healthy private economy.

No one party has a monopoly upon helping the poor. During his administration President Richard Nixon increased entitlement programs designed to assist low-income families. Nixon also ended the Vietnam War that had cost so many American lives and reestablished diplomatic and economic relations with mainland China.

Obama is playing upon people’s hopes and fears. Developing alternative renewable sources of energy like solar, wind, and tidal are commendable. But even at a stepped-up pace the development of these alternative renewal energy sources are not going to provide an immediate solution to the nation’s energy problems. Nor will provide the jobs that Obama says that it will. Rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure will require additional taxes not only at the federal level but also at the state and local levels. The number of new jobs that rebuilding the nation’s highways and bridges provides will be limited. Obama has been telling older people in Florida that McCain would take away their Social Security benefits, which is patently not true. McCain has proposed giving people the option of investing in the stock market a small amount of the money they were paying into Social Security. He made the proposal before the stock market took a dive.

There are a lot of questions about Obama for which no satisfactory answers have been given. Instead of uncovering the facts as one might expect journalists to do, the media has been content to repeat Obama campaign talking points. Two studies support the contention that there is a decided media bias toward Obama and against McCain, which has been only too evident on the Internet, in newspapers and magazines, on television, and on National Public Radio.

I was incredulous when I recently heard John Meechum, an editor of Newsweek, assert on NPR that Obama’s stay in Indonesia as a youth qualified as experience in foreign affairs.

What I read so far about Obama raises questions in my mind as to whether he is truly a Christian. As a confessing Anglican I cannot help but note the similarities between the beliefs that he professes and those of Presiding Bishop Katherine Jeffert Schori. Obama, like the Presiding Bishop, is a pluralist. He attended a church in the United Church of Christ, a liberal denomination, a church in which Black Liberation Theology was the predominant teaching. Several Bible scholars and theologians have taken issue with his interpretation of Scripture.

At the risk of being dismissed as a crank, I must state that I sense something that is spiritually evil in the almost hypnotic influence that Obama exerts upon his followers.

If Obama is elected President, I believe that Christians will face a time of serious testing. While I see a need for some kind of national health insurance scheme to provide coverage to Americans who cannot afford private health insurance, I am concerned about what might happen under an ultraliberal Democratic administration if health care were to be rationed. A President who has no scruples against the killing of unborn children and the abandonment of prematurely-born children would have no moral compunction against signing national euthanasia and assisted-suicide laws. There is already a movement in Europe to give lethal injections to adults, children, and infants in certain categories rather than provide them with care. These include the severely retarded, the seriously and terminally ill, and those suffering from dementia. The State of Oregan will pay for drugs to end one’s life but not to preserve it. The State of Washington is considering its own assisted-suicide law. If Obama wins the election, we will have such a President. We already have a Congress dominated by the Democratic Party under ultraliberal leadership and a segment of the electorate who believe that Obama can do no wrong.

Note: I was a registered Democrat for 44 years. Over the years, however, I have became increasingly alienated from the Democratic Party due to its position on abortion, so-called "gay rights," and other issues. When I registered to vote in Kentucky where I now live, I registered as an Independent.