There can be no doubt Obama is a man of the deep left, epitomized by his decision to push forward on healthcare legislation last winter despite Scott Brown's stunning upset victory in the January 2010 Senate election in Massachusetts. Brown campaigned as the 41st vote against ObamaCare in deeply Democratic Massachusetts and won on that basis - and yet Obama decided to ignore the political ramifications for his party and himself and forge ahead on his healthcare legislation. It is something Bill Clinton would never have done; instead, Clinton would have accommodated a new political reality by moving to the right.
The political defeat this Tuesday that the Democrats will experience, after Obama's stunning victory just two years ago, reflects the disconnect between what voters thought of him when he ran for President and what his actual policies have wrought.
There are several factors which account for this misunderstanding of Obama. First, he lied about the nature of his beliefs on the campaign trail and convinced enough Americans he wasn't as leftist as he really is. For example, during his primary battle with Hillary Clinton, Obama criticized Clinton for supporting an individual mandate as part of healthcare legislation. The individual mandate - the requirement that everyone buy health insurance or be fined if they don't - is a necessary element of any comprehensive government expansion into healthcare which both Clinton and Obama knew. Clinton was honest about it, while Obama lied to stake out a more politically palatable position. But when it came to craft legislation, naturally ObamaCare included the individual mandate.
Second, many Americans wanted to believe the "hope and change" message, with particular attention on the significance on voting for the first black President. Voting to make you feel better about yourself can easily lead to bad outcomes, since it downplays the policies and values the candidate represents.
Third, many people believe the best candidate is someone who is "really smart". I heard a prominent dentist say, "I voted for Obama because he is so smart, and I'm so disappointed and surprised that someone so smart pushed for a government takeover of healthcare." Although I've never been convinced Obama is that smart, I suspect he is smarter (as in a higher IQ) than John McCain - who had many good qualities but brilliance wasn't one of them.
But this is one of the most ridiculous standards of all. Who needs campaigns, and political careers, when we can just administer IQ tests and save all the trouble of an election? More seriously, while a degree of intelligence is needed to be President, what is more important are the candidate's values and world view which will shape the thousands of decisions that get made when if office, many of which are unknown during a campaign and therefore can't be discussed or debated.
As example, look at the Obama administration's policies toward the political crisis that developed in the summer and fall of 2009 in Honduras. The Honduran Supreme Court ordered the arrest of the president for violating a constitutional prohibition against seeking a second term, which the Honduran military carried out with overwhelming support by the Honduran political establishment including the political leaders of the Honduran president's party.
Outrageously, the Obama administration sided with the Honduran president and his supporter, Hugo Chavez, who is establishing a tyranny in Venezuela using similar tactics. How on earth could an American president support a would-be tyrant over those seeking freedome?
And this is where a President's core values and world view take over, because Barack Obama is a man of the left, and when the leftist president in Honduras claimed it was a coup that led to his ouster, rather than his violations of the law, Obama and his administration took his side.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, I had the view that the three most important things to know about Barack Obama were that he attended Reverend Wright's church for 20 years; started his political career at Bill Ayers' home; and was married to Michelle Obama.
Obama sat in Wright's church and listed to him preach his hatred and bitterness toward America, which even a good Democrat like Oprah Winfrey found unacceptable and left Wright's church many years ago. Bill Ayers was a terrorist from the 1970s who on September 11, 2001 didn't regret his terrorist actions 30 years before, and moved into "acceptable society" by becoming a professor to promote his leftist agenda through academia. And Michelle Obama said she was never proud of her country until it nominated her husband for President - never mind that she had attended Princeton, had made $300,000 per year as a hospital administrator, or that her husband had been a U.S. Senator - words of a bitter leftist.
Obama's intelligence tells us nothing about why he supported tyrants in the Honduran debacle, but his values and world view tells us a great deal why he did. He saw a fellow man of the left, allegedly trying to "help the poor and oppressed", so he chose accordingly.
It is a decision George Bush or John McCain, with very different values and world views, would not have made.
So when you evaluate political candidates, the most important assessment you can make is to determine what is the candidates core values and view of the world. This, more than any other factor, will determine which policies they pursue or support once in office.
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