Our hero, Barack Obama, still a politician
Democrats (and some Republicans) are in such a tizzy over Barack Obama, it seems folks are ready to give him the Heisman Trophy and the Nobel Peace Prize on the same day. But what goes up must come down, and I think our dear first-term senator can only go down from here.
This past week Senators Obama and Dick Durbin signed a letter endorsing the candidacy of young Todd [Stroger] so that he might follow in his father’s footsteps and become the next president of the Cook County Board.
This has been one of the sadder sagas in Chicago political history. And Obama, America’s audacious knight in shining armor, deprives us of the very hope he likes to talk about in his speeches and his books.
I don’t mean to let Durbin off the hook but, frankly, I expected him to endorse the “regular” in this race. But Obama has allowed us to believe that he is different somehow. A new voice, a new frontier.
Instead, he’s traveled down the same dingy path that promotes the outright mediocrity and questionable competence that has given Chicago politics the reputation it richly deserves.
Yep, imagine that. Barack’s a politician, beholden (at least nominally) to the Chicago machine. Say it ain’t so! Say it ain’t so, Oprah! Say it ain’t so, Kenya! Say it ain’t so, Colin Powell!