I had not intended to write another column about Barry “Not Goldwater” Obama, but events intervened and here we go again. Obama’s stumbling performance at the Saddleback Church necessitated this op-ed commentary. My original topic (Cook County mismanagement) will have to be tabled until another day.

Rather than admit that the presumptive Republican nominee, US Senator John McCain of Arizona, handed him his lunch after both candidates were interviewed by Pastor Rick Warren, the Obama camp cried foul and insisted that McCain had not been isolated in “the cone of silence” during Obama’s individual interview and thereby benefited by knowing Obama’s responses in advance. Given Obama’s clumsy and stuttering performance, I find it difficult to believe that McCain could have possibly learned anything of value by listening to the junior senator from Illinois. What exactly is this “cone of silence” business anyway? Is this a presidential campaign or a television game show?

The Obama campaign is playing a game show of a different sort. Their antics call to mind the wacky stunts on the daytime television favorite “Beat the Clock.” The key difference is that Obama and his money men are trying to run out the clock by denying the public access to his records documenting his radical past and his questionable associations (witness the frustrated efforts of Stanley Kurz of The National Review to obtain documents linking Obama to Bill Ayers and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge foundation from the University of Chicago-Illinois) and to limit the collateral damage from the public coming to the obvious conclusion that their candidate is a show horse and not a workhorse in terms of his nonexistent record of significant legislative accomplishments.

In May, Obama boasted of his willingness to debate McCain “anytime, anywhere”. This offer was promptly rescinded after Hillary Clinton pasted Obama during several presidential debates preceding key Democratic primaries. Without a prepared script posted on a teleprompter or cue cards, Obama is prone to
stuttering and mumbling incomplete words like “er, uh, ah, , ahem” over and over again. Naturally enough, Obama refused to agree to participate in a series of ten town hall meetings with McCain (a format in which McCain does quite well) after the Democratic primaries ended in a near photo finish.

Absent the Obama campaign’s ability to manipulate the arcane Democratic party nominating rules (the hangover legacy of a revolt which was orchestrated by Jesse Jackson and Bill Singer and which resulted in the ouster of Mayor Richard J. Daley and the duly elected Illinois delegation from the 1972 convention that nominated that South Dakota crowd pleaser George McGovern for president), Hillary Clinton would probably be the nominee, so Obama is loathe to engage in too much participatory democracy in the run up to the general election.
Better to dance with Ellen DeGeneres (what a pity that Obama skipped out on attending DeGeneres’ same sex wedding ceremony) and to drop lame references to Eighties pop songs into his substance free speeches than to address the actual, critical issues. There is a hilarious video on You Tube of Obama actually inserting the platitude filled lyrics of the tune “Never Gone to Give You Up” into his public speeches. Granted some splicing was required to produce the end result, but you can enjoy a good chuckle by watching the Pied Piper in action here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtO2jj5IyBk

Left to his own devices, Obama has managed to make former Republican Vice President Dan Quayle look like Winston Churchill. Excuse my digression, but I once attended a ninety minute speech that Quayle delivered, without notes, which concluded with an audience question and answer session, at Northwestern University, and the only pauses occurred when Quayle stopped for a sip of water.

In an hour and a half, the much maligned Quayle mispronounced no more than two or three words in total. Of course, the mainstream media ignored the speech because Quayle’s more than adequate performance did not fit with the
template of the vice president being a vapid idiot. Compare and contrast this Quayle performance with Obama on the campaign stump. Earlier this year, Obama made
an epic gaffe when he claimed to have visited almost all of the fifty-seven states during the course of his historic campaign. Perhaps “The Manchurian Candidate” was confused by the reference to fifty-seven varieties of pickles printed upon the Heinz Ketchup bottle when he made this misstatement.

Whatever happened to the requirement that a candidate possess sufficient “gravitas” to be president? When George W. Bush took on Al Gore in 2000, this
buzzword was repeated constantly by the talking heads to diminish the underachieving Texas governor (who nonetheless graduated from Yale and earned a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard while Gore managed to flunk out of both divinity school and law school). I guess the prerequisite was retired after the Florida recount. In any event, Obama seems to be decidedly
light in his loafers when he is pressed to respond to difficult questions.

Remarkably, as I write this column, Delaware Senator Joe Biden is supposedly still in the running for the vice presidential slot on the Obama ticket.

Imagine having two plagiarists on the same ticket! Talk about a blue plate special! Biden gained notoriety for shamelessly plagiarizing from a speech given by Neil Kinnock of the British Labor Party in 1988. The ensuing flap, captured on videotape, derailed his presidential bid.

Biden was also shown to have been a poor student who committed plagiarism while attending law school. Obama has been convincingly accused of recycling speeches previously used by John Edwards and Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick (Hillary Clinton referred to Obama as representing “Change that you can Xerox“). Obama may be able to claim partial dispensation for lifting adulterated material from Edwards since his campaign manager, David Axelrod, whose photograph could provide an effective illustration of the dictionary definition of the word “nebbish,” formerly acted as a campaign shill for Edwards in 2004.

Speaking of maintaining deferential silence, it will be interesting to see if Obama succeeds in gagging his erstwhile ally, Rod Blagojevich, when the
governor attends the convention with the bitterly divided Illinois delegation to the Democratic National Convention. Obama is seeking to distance himself from the scandal plagued governor, but no less a partisan than Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel (D-5th) was forced to admit the obvious fact when questioned that in happier times Obama served as in advisory capacity as a member of Blagojevich’s kitchen cabinet.

One also has to question the wisdom of the decision to permit Michelle Obama to return from internal exile and to address the convention. Public opinion polls have demonstrated that the strident Mrs. Obama is not at all popular with the electorate. Oprah Winfrey, the former host of “AM Chicago,” will be on hand in Denver to work her makeover magic. Perhaps it will sell.

After all, Oprah managed to put over such phonies as James Frey, author of the faked drug addiction memoir, A Million Little Pieces, and the ethically challenged and currently unlicensed psychological babbler, Dr. Phil McGraw (who was sanctioned by the Texas Board of Examiners for Psychologists for professional misconduct). Surely, the diva of daytime television can work her magic on behalf
of her favorite candidate and his strident spouse.

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

He plans upon using liberal doses of bicarbonate of soda to get through the upcoming broadcasts of the Democratic national convention.