The Obama Nation, by 'Swiftboat coauthor Jerome Corsi, is hitting bookstores tomorrow. I've been browsing through an advance copy, and thought I would offer up a sneak peek.
My primary impression is that this book is no Swiftboat. Instead, it seems to have all the firepower of a leaky old rowboat. It is truly a strange book, investing much of its argument in psycho-babble analysis of Obama's father, rehashing the same old 'scandals' that blew up and quickly fizzled out during the primaries, and stretching for some almost laughable scare tactics (did you know Obama's invoking the idea of change is nothing more than code for "the redistribution of income that Saul Alinsky ad in mind when he advocated using 'Change' as a radical socialist call to action.")
Publication date was originally set for August 5th, but was moved up. I suspect the reason is that more and more of Corsi's assertions are going out of date every day.
Join me below the fold for more...
A lot of the blockbuster assertions Corsi purports to make are indeed being undermined every day, despite going to press with little lead time (there are citations in the book as recent as May 29th of this year.)
For example, Corsi hyperventilates over the idea that an Obama administration would open up contacts with the Iranian government. Alas, since the final draft went to publication, Bush went and sent a high-level envoy for talks with Iran.
Or here's Corsi on Iraq:
Will Obama still run against the war if the reports coming from Iraq and Afghanistan continue to validate the Bush adeministration's policy in the region?
If McCain wanted to stay the course until he could declare victory and stage an orderly withdrawal, why would Obama object? Would Obama do anything different?
Well, we know how the narrative has shifted in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past several weeks, with McCain being the one to move toward Obama's positions.
Corsi compares Obama to Dukakis, gleefully anticipating the inevitable 'tank moment' which will sink Obama:
Dukakis never recovered from his famous 'tank moment'....Dukakis looked silly in the tank helmet, and the image graphically reinforced Bush's argument that Dukakis lacked what it took to be commander in chief.
Ummm, OK. Now let's replay the stellar visuals from Obama's trip to Afghanistan and Iraq, shall we?
And here are the very last words in the book:
If he sticks to the issues, McCain will defeat Barack Obama
Oops, he did it again. McCain has lately run nothing but attack ads against Obama focused more on personality than issues.
Corsi expressly states that "no attempt has been made, nor will there be any attempt made, to communicate the shape or contents of this book with anyone in the Republican party..." I guess it's just an amazing coincidence that, with the book subtitled "Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality," and with it devoting many pages to the ways in which Obama has created a cult of personality, that in the week preceding publication the media should suddenly be filled with navel-gazing over Obama's arrogance, sense of entitlement and whether he has created a personality cult. Yes, an amazing coincidence indeed.
The book opens rather bizarrely by focusing on issues that I have a hard time believing are really going to resonate with voters. He spends many pages criticizing Obama for writing Dreams From My Father as a literary, 'psychological' memoir rather than a straightforward factual one. He devotes pages and pages to examining the sadder aspects of Obama's parents, obsessively convinced that this has high relevance to Obama's prospects at the polls. He then goes into a long-winded grand conspiracy theory about Obama's support for Raila Odinga in Kenya's presidential election as evidence of his pro-Islamist sympathies. Again, there may be some tidbits of interest in here for real international policy wonks, but it is laughably overblown and not something that is likely to resonate with voters.
The second half of the book veers into more familiar territory...but the point is, it's familiar territory. The same old 'scandals' that blew up during the primaries are dredged up anew. 'Bitter' is back, Michelle Obama's lack of pride, Rev. Wright, Tony Rezko, Bernadine Dorhn and Bill Ayers...all make their appearances. But what is most striking to me is that there is nothing new here. All this crap has already been thrown.
What Corsi is counting on is that people don't really pay attention to the race or the candidates until close to election day, and so they have yet to discover all this terrible stuff about Obama. This is why he devotes the final portion of his book to painting Obama as having created a personality cult, which will surely unravel as people learn the truth.
Oh, and if that doesn't work, well there's always this:
However, Democrats should remember a key adage of American politics: voters rarely allow the same political party to control the presidency as well as the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives[emphasis in original]
A rather thin reed for Corsi to hang his hopes on, but given this book that veers between rehashed stories, psychobabble, and conspiracy theories, perhaps it's the best he can hope for.
Really, I expected a much stronger hatchet job here. I'm rather surprised,
By the way, Corsi announces early in the book that he sure as hell isn't going to vote for McCain either! He's voting for Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party!