Are the Democrats and the American People About to be Mugged by a Con Artist?

Some Democrats are beginning to feel pangs of remorse over the candidacy of Barack Obama as they head to Denver. The presumptive nominee appears to be fully capable of snatching defeat out of the jaws of certain victory. Despite heroic efforts by the mainstream media to resuscitate Obama’s candidacy after he was battered by Clinton in the closing series of primaries, Obama is flat lining in the polls. This is not supposed to be happening. Conventional wisdom held that 2008 was supposed to be a Democratic year. How can this sudden reversal of fortune be explained?

Rank and file, blue collar workers seem to be resistant to Obama’s
oratorical charms. Some voters find his angry and scary wife to be the political equivalent of the obnoxious reality television personality Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth.

Watch for the former Michelle Robinson to undergo an extreme makeover in the weeks leading up to the convention. More important, however, are the nagging questions that continue to be asked about Obama’s background and his career experience. Is he qualified to lead this great nation through trying times? Who exactly is this guy and where did he come from?

The Obama campaign is now plagued by his best selling autobiographical books. These exercises in mixing fact, fancy and unadulterated fiction would be problematic if simply available in print to opposition researchers, but, adding to Obama’s woes is the fact that he opted to record audio versions of the same two volumes. Americans can now listen to the presumptive nominee celebrating his enthusiastic drug use, delivering inflammatory rhetoric and reciting a string of racial slurs and profanities in his own voice.

Watching Obama’s flailing efforts to reinvent and market himself, reminded me of an enjoyable film adaptation of a stage play that I saw at the Lake Theater in Oak Park more than a decade ago. In “Six Degrees of Separation,” a charming black street hustler inveigles his way into the luxury high rise of a wealthy New York art dealer and his wife. He gained entry by claiming to be acquainted with their adult children who were in his class at Harvard. He sought the assistance of his friends’ parents because he had been mugged and stabbed in nearby Central Park. As the criminal had made off with all of his money, credit cards and personal identification, he asked the couple to shelter him until morning when he could safely check into the exclusive Sherry Netherlands Hotel. He explained that his wealthy father would arrive in the city tomorrow and he made plans to meet his son at the hotel. After bandaging his superficial wound, the stranger and his hosts ended up sharing a meal together.

In short order, the two sophisticated white liberals are delighted by the highly articulate young man, who claims to be the son of the celebrated film actor and director, Sidney Poiter. Another dinner guest is a mining executive from South Africa. This guilt ridden individual has remained on in Johannesburg in order to help educate and train his former employees. He asserts that it is his historical duty to help raise political consciousness among the laboring masses in post apartheid South Africa so that someday the blacks will be able to stage a successful revolution and kill him and other whites in the process. Naturally enough, this naïve character is equally impressed with “Paul Poiter“ and is eager to learn more about his thesis interpreting the J. D. Salinger novel, The Catcher in the Rye. Regrettably, the manuscript is unavailable (not unlike Obama’s undocumented legal scholarship) since the literate mugger stole the only typewritten copy during the robbery.

Early the next morning, the art dealer and his wife learn that their house guest is merely an accomplished con artist. He never attended Harvard and does not know their children. He obtained the details for improving his conversational skills and dropping the right names at opportune moments by enlisting the help of a former boarding school classmate of the children.

Armed with a personal telephone directory, stolen from the gay student‘s Boston apartment, the hoaxer set out to conquer Manhattan. After making further inquiries, the couple learns that other members of their social set have been similarly deceived under virtually identical circumstances by the young man who appeared on their respective doorsteps claiming to have been robbed and left penniless on the streets of New York.

The playwright, John Guare, based his script upon an actual news reports concerning a con artist named David Hampton who had successfully defrauded multiple New Yorkers. Guare was also acquainted with several people who had been duped by the con artist who claimed to be Poiter‘s son.

After Hampton learned that a fictionalized account of his crimes had been made into a successful play and movie, the bold imposter tried to secure a portion of the proceeds. His lawsuit seeking one hundred million dollars was eventually dismissed and Guare obtained a restraining order against Hampton. After spending several months in and out of prison for various financial crimes related to confidence games, Hampton finally died of complications related to acquired immune deficiency syndrome in 2003.

Truth be told, we know more about this trickster’s true origins then we do of Barack Obama’s dubious paternity, childhood and religious upbringing.

Obama, himself, has described the details of his biological father’s putative marriage to Stanley Ann Dunham as being “murky.” Obama has inflated his father’s meager bureaucratic accomplishments while sanitizing his alcoholism, child
neglect and serial philandering. In reality, Barack Obama Senior had multiple children by a variety of women and died as the result of one of his many drunk driving episodes. It is messy and sordid tale that has been reported upon in Europe while being largely ignored in the United States.

Given his origins is it any wonder that Obama seems alternately confused and given to grandiose boasting about his imaginary achievements? Has any other major party ever sought to nominate a candidate who sought the presidency as a means of resolving his personal identity crisis?

The late Thomas F. Eagleton, the former US Senator from Missouri, chosen by the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee, US Senator George S. McGovern, of South Dakota, to serve as his vice presidential running mate, had to resign from the ticket after less than three weeks due to published reports concerning his undergoing shock treatments as therapy for clinical depression. Eagleton’s mental and physical health issues seem to pale in comparison to those of the present presidential candidate who has constantly struggled to come to terms with who he actually is.

Things have gotten so bad that some Democratic activists are plotting to put Hillary Clinton’s name in nomination as a last ditch measure. After months of discussing his mathematical inevitability, Obama failed to secure a majority of the delegates required to win the nomination outright. After belittling Clinton’s prospects, which would have required the support of the super delegates, Obama finds himself needing those same super delegates to put him over the top. He cannot win without their support as Clinton has not released her pledged delegates. Clinton is unlikely to prevail belatedly, but the rumors are nonetheless injurious to Obama.

“Six Degrees of Separation” adroitly mixed comedy and tragedy with incisive social commentary. One of the characters, the art dealer’s wife, Louisa, still harbors hope that she can forge a relationship with the con artist who claimed to be Poiter‘s son. She comforts herself with the egalitarian belief that all people are the same and that everyone on earth is separated by no more than six degrees from everyone else. She vainly holds onto this notion despite all evidence to the contrary that the street hustler is actually a petty criminal who fooled her and all of her friends. As a reflexive liberal, Louisa is not unlike the uninformed masses of people who believe in Barack Obama absent any proof of any concrete accomplishments on his part. As a legislator, he accomplished nothing. As an attorney, he has never tried a case to a verdict.

If we were able to identify the six persons in closest proximity to the candidate in order to better understand Obama, who would they be? Possibly, William Ayers, Rod Blagojevich, Emil Jones, Tony Rezko, Todd Stroger and Jeremiah Wright.

If you are seeking genuine political change and desired reform, why on earth would you look to the Cook County Democratic Machine to deliver a knight in shining armor?

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Daniel J. Kelley is a contributor to The Chicago Daily Observer.