250 Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biographyrelationship to Joe Lieberman: “Should Obama hope to continue to enjoy his free ride, he
should consult his old mentor Joe Lieberman, the senator from Connecticut who used to be a
Democrat. Conservative commentators and right-wing media outlets always loved Lieberman
for his willingness to echo their talking points on subjects such as school vouchers and Social
Security privatization.” And in March 2006, Obama went out of his way to travel to
Connecticut to campaign for Senator Joseph Lieberman who faced a tough challenge by anti-
war candidate Ned Lamont. At a Democratic Party dinner attended by Lamont, Obama called
Lieberman “his mentor” and urged those in attendance to vote and give financial contributions
to him. This is the same Lieberman who Alexander Cockburn called “Bush’s closest
Democratic ally on the Iraq War.” Why would Obama have done that if he was truly against the
war? (Matt Gonzalez, “The Obama Craze,” Counterpunch)
Obama’s antics during his first months in Washington, DC before he left the Senate to go on the
presidential campaign trail give us some idea of what he means by bipartisan cooperation, which is
a blanket capitulation to reactionaries on virtually every issue, especially the economic ones.
Observers were astounded or a poll:
When Obama first got to Washington, he wanted to be a wonk, to keep his head down and
concentrate on small issues. “The plan was: Put Illinois first,” one of his aides tells me. Obama
himself admits that his initial agenda had a “self-conscious” modesty. His early legislative
accomplishments have been useful and bipartisan — he has even sponsored bills with
ultraconservative Sen. Tom Coburn, who believes that high school bathrooms breed lesbianism
— but they have been small-scale and off the headlines: a plan to make it easier for citizens to
find out about government spending, increased research into ethanol, more job training and tax
credits for “responsible fathers.” This is the kind of head-down diligence that plays well in the
Senate. “I am amazed by his sheer stamina,” says Sen. Dick Lugar, a Republican from Indiana
who has become something of a mentor to Obama.^109
Now even poor Tom Coburn has been thrown under the bus by Obama as a result of the
Philadelphia debate in which the anointed one cited Coburn as an example of a right-wing extremist
who wanted the death penalty for abortions as part of a rhetorical trick to seemingly balance his
decades-long friendship with the Weatherman terrorist bomber Bill Ayers. Obama’s concept of
friendship is clearly a very ephemeral one.
RECTOR OBAMA SNIFFS AT “THE MANUEVERINGS,
THE CHICANERY, THE SMALLNESS” OF THE US SENATE
Fundamentally, Obama is an apolitical and anti-political candidate who is opposed to a form of
government in which economic questions are decided primarily by the give and take and haggling
inherent in the parliamentary and legislative processes. Obama thinks that these decisions ought to
be made by bankers speaking among themselves in the measured tones of the corporate boardroom.
His entire campaign therefore has a decidedly anti-parliamentary thrust, a characteristic that it
shares with the early Italian fascism of Mussolini between 1919 in 1922. The Duce once described
the Italian parliament as a cattle pen, and his contempt for parliamentary methods was always
flagrant. Obama offers the same attitude in a somewhat laid-back postmodern or new age form, but
it is the same attitude, as we can see from this:
...Washington has plenty of wonks, and Obama wasn’t going to distinguish himself through
diligence alone. He came to the Capitol equipped with his own, swelling celebrity; the Senate
was not a perfect fit. Beyond his considerable charm, Obama can be righteous and cocky. He