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The real Obama’s face

There’s an old saying in politics that a “gaffe” occurs whenever a politician accidentally says what he really thinks.

In that context, Barack Obama committed the ultimate political gaffe last week.

He said because small-town, working-class folks resistant to Obamamania are under constant economic stress: “It’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment … as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Obama said this to a friendly audience at a $1,000-a-head fundraiser in San Francisco, where he thought there were no media.

But blogger (and Obama supporter) Mayhill Fowler was there and posted his comments to HuffingtonPost.com, a liberal political website.

He’s since made an “if I offended anyone” apology, explaining he expressed himself badly.

Nonsense. I’d argue Obama said exactly what he thinks. He probably even believes he was being sympathetic.

After all, by his lights, he wasn’t personally calling anyone a gun nut, religious fanatic, racist or anti-immigrant. Rather, he was explaining, compassionately from his standpoint, why these folks feel as they do.

CONDESCENDING LIBERAL

Obama, one of the most liberal senators in America, was simply expressing, accurately, the condescending and patronizing liberal world view toward anyone they consider unenlightened.

Since that’s how liberal politicians think, why be surprised when one of them occasionally slips up and admits it?

Hillary Clinton, Obama’s rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, was hypocritical and hilarious in characterizing Obama’s comments as elitist. Clinton, like Obama, sees herself as one of the liberal “anointed.”

As conservative writer Thomas Sowell describes such politicians in The Vision of the Anointed, they consider it their special burden to lead the great unwashed toward enlightened, “correct” thinking — meaning their thinking.

The danger for Obama is not Clinton’s self-righteous attacks leading up to next week’s Pennsylvania primary, but that his own words cast doubt on his sincerity, dating back to the moment he entered the American political consciousness at the 2004 Democratic convention.

There, Obama delivered his famous speech that America was more than a collection of red Republican states and blue Democratic ones perpetually at war with each other.

“The pundits … like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States,” Obama declared as Democrats cheered, “but I’ve got news for them … We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”

INSPIRATIONAL

This was inspirational stuff, giving Americans weary of partisan infighting a momentary vision of a new kind of government that would reject partisanship, respect opposing viewpoints and unify Americans toward the common good.

Now, with a few revealing words in San Francisco describing non-Obama supporters as “bitter” rural hicks who must be guided toward enlightenment, Obama hasn’t just shot himself in the foot.

By revealing what he really thinks, he has shot the most inspiring part of his political message in the heart.