Who is Barack Obama?

After the basketball games were done, and the vote counting as well, last Saturday night I was channel surfing prior to bedtime, and came across the speech Barack Obama made that night in Richmond, Virginia. I stopped to watch, and was amazed at the performance. This guy is a formidable candidate. A tidbit follows:



"....But in this election - at this moment - Americans are standing up all across the country to say, not this time. Not this year. The stakes are too high and the challenges too great to play the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expect a different result. And today, voters from the West Coast to the Gulf Coast to the heart of America stood up to say that it is time to turn the page. We won Louisiana, and Nebraska, and the state of Washington, and I believe that we can win in Virginia on Tuesday if you're ready to stand for change....."



More:



"...But I am running for President because I believe that to actually make change happen - to make this time different than all the rest - we need a leader who can finally move beyond the divisive politics of Washington and bring Democrats, Independents, and Republicans together to get things done. That's how we'll win this election, and that's how we'll change this country when I am President of the United States....."



Read the whole thing here.



For the last several years I have been hearing both partisan Democrats and partisan Republicans expressing the same thoughts, although each side probably has a little different idea of what that means. Obama has discovered a theme that is reacting powerfully throughout the country. His delivery and enthusiasm makes him a very formidable candidate in spite of his lack of experience.



After some thought, I decided to try to find out just who this Barack Obama is. One can check his bio at numerous places and they all have about the same info. From Congresspedia:



"Obama was born August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Obama studied for two years at Occidental College, before transferring to Columbia University. There he majored in political science, with a specialization in international relations. Upon graduation, he worked for a year at newsletter publisher Business International (now part of The Economist Group), and moved to Chicago, where he was a community organizer in the Altgeld Gardens housing project on the city's South Side. It was during his time spent here that Obama joined the Trinity United Church of Christ. [26]
He left Chicago to study law at Harvard University, where he was elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. He graduated magna cum laude. After law school, he returned to Chicago and organized an aggressive voter registration effort that registered over 100,000 voters and aided in the election of President Bill Clinton and Senator Carol Moseley Braun, the first African-American woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate. Soon after, he joined a local civil rights law firm, and he became a lecturer of constitutional law at the University of Chicago..........."



He ran for the Illinois Senate in 1996 and won. In 2000 he ran against an incumbent Congressman and was defeated 61% to 30%. In 2004, he was elected to the United States Senate from Illinois. Now, in 2008, he is running for President of the United States.



You can check his personal story here, and here, and, of course, on his campaign site.

Is there a downside? Well, yes. In looking for the downside, one first would go to Hillary's campaign. There one will hear about the association of Obama with one Antoin "Tony" Rezko who is currently under Federal indictment in a corruption case. The case is described here, while Obama's connection is described here. It seems Mr. Rezko "helped" the Obamas buy a $1.6 million house right after he was elected to the Senate. That's a pretty expensive house for someone with the job history he has disclosed. The dealings came to the public eye when Rezko was required to disclose it at his bond hearing. There is no direct evidence of anything illegal, but the potential is there.

In my short search, I have not found anything else, but I suspect that if there is anything, the Clintons will be all too happy to inform us.

Where does his money come from? This is a surprise, I guess. From Opensecrets.org:

"Goldman Sachs
$421,763

UBS AG
$296,670

Lehman Brothers
$250,630

National Amusements Inc
$245,843

JP Morgan Chase & Co
$240,788

Sidley Austin LLP
$226,491

Citigroup Inc
$221,578

Exelon Corp
$220,267

Skadden, Arps Et Al
$196,420

Jones Day
$181,996

Citadel Investment Group
$171,798

Harvard University
$164,978

Time Warner
$155,383

Morgan Stanley
$155,196

Google Inc
$150,329

University of California
$140,429

Jenner & Block
$136,565

Kirkland & Ellis
$134,738

Wilmerhale Llp
$119,245

Credit Suisse Group
$118,250"

If you want to check out the other candidates, go here. This is a great site for political campaign finance.

As you can see, there is nothing revolutionary about Obama's big donors. Many of them donate to Hillary and to McCain as well.

The real downside to Obama just seems to be his far left record. He talks about hope and bipartisanship, and about all the great things he is going to do, but the devil is in the details, and he has not been free at all with details. What he does seem to be doing is trying to be all things to all people, speaking in very high sounding terms, but not going into any depth on the subject. Will he fill in the details? Somebody needs to challenge him on this. If Hillary doesn't, then he may well defeat her. He is good enough to win this thing if he can get by with the platitudes without having to go into specifics.

It is going to be an interesting election year.