David Brooks’ article in the NYT 6/20/08 sums up what is by now abundantly clear about Barack Obama.  He is the epitome of pure unadulterated political ambition.  That is the simple truth underlying the audacity inherent in Obama challenging Hillary Clinton for the presidency.  That is the reason he discards his past attachments (Pfleger, TUCC, his grandmother etc) with such ease, along with any policy positions (eg. campaign finance reform) that hamper his quest for the White House.  His memoir is a fiction, a construct written by a man who decided at a Jesse Jackson speech (Columbia, 1984) to orient his life around becoming the first black president.  He was never dreaming of his father.  He was planning to become the first Black Father of this nation.  His Afri-Kansan ergo African American identity itself is a politically expedient affectation, honed to advantage in Southside Chicago politics.  Reverend Wright knew this when he called Obama a politician who “says what politicians say”.   So the man who brought Barack to Jesus, who was his mentor for 20 years, went under the bus with the rest of Obama’s past.  That blank slate, the one on which we can all write our hopes and dreams, may already be filled in with hubristic jive.  Red State… Blue State… Purple state? What a hopelessly insincere nursery rhyme that one is.  The only color purple he sees lies on the purple robes of power he dreams of soon wearing.  But, oh how remarkably marketable is America’s first Machiavellian Leftist. A Niebuhr reading Nietzschean, a real crowd pleaser with the will to power.  The new politics you say?  I think we've been reading this story for 2500 years.  Audacity.  Ambition.  Arrogance.   Nothing new there.  So if he wins the general election, don’t be surprised if we catch some Obama troll on November 5th measuring off a plot of ground on the Washington Mall for his memorial.   Right next to Lincoln's.
 
In politics as in war:  L’audace, l’audace.  Toujours l’audace.  Thus spoke Barack Obama.