248 Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized BiographyTHE HOPE POPE CREATES THE HOPEFUND
And then there were the kudos, the accolades which showered down on the anointed head:
Shortly after Obama’s swearing in, his beatification begins when Time magazine names Obama
one of “The World’s Most Influential People.” He is listed among other leaders and
revolutionaries. This same year, the British journal New Statesman names Obama one of “10
People Who Could Change the World.” After he was on the cover of Newsweek the same week
President Bush appeared as Time’s Man of the Year, his fellow Democratic senators gently
ribbed him at their first weekly luncheon of the new Congress. His memoir was on The New
York Times’ best-seller list for 54 weeks. And Washington society was eager to embrace him —
a Capitol Hill newspaper ranked him as No. 2 on its list of most beautiful people. Mr. Obama
was also pulling in big money. He created a political action committee, the Hopefund, to
increase his visibility and help other Democrats, and it raised $1.8 million the first year. He
disappointed some Democrats by not taking a more prominent role opposing the war — he
voted against a troop withdrawal proposal by Senators John Kerry and Russ Feingold in June
2006, arguing that a firm date for withdrawal would hamstring diplomats and military
commanders in the field. His most important accomplishment was his push for ethics reform.
Party leaders named him their point person in 2006, and when the Democrats assumed the
majority in Congress in January 2007, Mr. Obama and Mr. Feingold, a longtime Democratic
proponent of ethics reform, proposed curtailing meals and gifts from lobbyists, restricting the
use of corporate planes, requiring lobbyists who bundle donations to disclose individual
donors... “He folded like a cheap suit,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South
Carolina and a close ally of Mr. McCain. “What it showed me is you are not an agent of change.
Because to really change things in this place you have to get beat up now and then.” (New York
Times, March 9, 2008)
Obama’s betrayal of the Kerry-Feingold bill of mid-2006 is by itself enough to make his claim
of consistent opposition to the Iraq war into a bitter mockery, but the Kool-Aid drinkers and
lemming legions who support his cultist candidacy are epistemologically incapable of seeing
this simple fact.TOM DASCHLE, THE SENATOR FROM CITIBANK
As soon as Obama got to Washington, he immediately began recruiting a staff of classic
powerbrokers and influence peddlers.
Obama was sworn in as a senator on January 4, 2005. Although a newcomer to Washington, he
recruited a team of established, high-level advisers devoted to broad themes that exceeded the
usual requirements of an incoming first-term senator. Obama hired Pete Rouse, a 30-year
veteran of national politics and former chief of staff to Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle,
as his chief of staff, and economist Karen Kornbluh, former deputy chief of staff to Secretary of
the Treasury Robert Rubin, as his policy director. His key foreign policy advisers include
Samantha Power, author on human rights and genocide, and former Clinton administration
officials Anthony Lake and Susan Rice. Obama holds assignments on the Senate Committees
for Foreign Relations; Health, Education, Labor and Pensions; Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs; and Veterans’ Affairs, and he is a member of the Congressional Black
Caucus. The U.S. Senate Historical Office lists him as the fifth African-American Senator in