Sensei Kreese has issued the marching orders.  No one touches the prima donna until the tournament.  Is that clear?  No hard punches.  No hard questions.  Let the man skate.  Keep the kid gloves on, because we don’t want to hurt the guy’s chances of becoming President.  This may sound harsh to some of my friends on the left (and one person in particular), but the free ride Barack Obama has been getting for the majority of his run for the White House is flat-out ridiculous and it’s about time someone started asking him questions that he can’t answer from the Democrat talking-point quote book.  It doesn’t do him any good to complain about the press coverage.  If he can’t handle the few hard questions he’s getting now, he’s got some work to do before he is ready to handle White House press conferences.

Tony Resko shouldn’t matter.  The Rev. Wright and his controversial comments shouldn’t matter.  Louis Farrakan shouldn’t matter.  Barack Obama doesn’t have official endorsements from these folks, so it’s perfectly clear that Barack Obama doesn’t agree with Rev. Wright and Louis Farrakan and some of the outrageous things they have said in the past.  At least that is the answer Obama’s supporters have when we dare to bring this stuff up. Then there’s the question of William Ayers.  Maybe most of this was part of breaking into Chicago politics, for Obama to temporarily associate himself with some shady characters in order to get elected.  That’s a possibility.  But it’s fair to ask questions about these things.

Here’s why.  All along Barack Obama has been telling us that he is the candidate with the best judgment, because he was opposed to the Iraq war from the beginning.  Should this be the only factor we use to determine how good Barack’s judgment would be as President?  Do we know exactly what he will do as President?  Of course not.  We have to look at what he has said, and we have to look at what he’s done in the past.  Obama is still undefined to some degree, so we still have to try to fill in the blanks. Are we now saying that you can’t really judge a person by the company he keeps? It’s no reflection on Barack himself that all these no-good creeps like him.  Got it.   Sometimes a President can get the good guys and bad guys mixed up.  Former Presidents like Jimmy Carter find this distinction rather difficult.  (And yes, Chris, even Bush does it. There.  Happy now? 🙂 )  My concern about Obama is that he hasn’t shown much aptitude for determining that in his own life, and what would he do when confronted with foreign heads of state who have every incentive to try to fool him?

Then there’s the perfectly legitimate question of why Hamas thinks Barack Obama would be supportive of their interests. We aren’t calling Barack Obama a terrorist. We don’t think he’s a terrorist. We do think that he will misread the intentions of groups like Hamas, people like Ahmadinejad, and terrorist-supporting countries like Iran and Syria. That’s the concern, and it’s a legitimate concern. Foreign policy is a tricky business and we just don’t think he’s ready for that challenge. I just hope that if he becomes President, he will appoint some folks to his foreign policy team that can help him with this.

Don’t misinterpret this as a shredding of the future Democratic nominee. We are actually doing you a favor by talking about Rev. Wright and flag pins, because the more time we spend on the stuff Democrats consider trivial, less time will be spent finding out how much he doesn’t know or understand about foreign policy and the economy. Besides, isn’t it better that Obama gets these questions out of the way now, rather than waiting until closer to the election? It’s not entirely unreasonable to believe that all this will be old news when the election rolls around, and we will get back to healthcare and the economy soon enough. Maybe the media has finally decided to start asking Obama questions that he can’t answer in a soundbite. There’s nothing wrong with that.