Cheat Seeking Missiles

The Audacity Of Inexperience

Eli Saslow of the Washington Post got the most difficult assignment of the campaign season: Write up something good on Barack Obama’s accomplishments in the Senate.

Lordy, Lordy, Lordy.

Now if the shoe were on the other (non-tap dancing) foot, we would have found a headline like “With No Accomplishments to Stand On, a Run for President.” But this is Barack Obama, the Dems and the Washington Post, so instead Saslow spun a little 5-clicker of a yarn called “A Raising Political Star Adopts a Low-Key Strategy,” complete with this rare photo of Obama in one of his exceedingly rare cross-the-aisle moments where he discussed legislative initiatives with showed off his photogenic family to the Vice President.

His near complete lack of legislative experience? No sweat! Saslow makes it smart, strategic:

Obama arrived as a celebrity, a best-selling author whose keynote speech was the only moment Democrats wanted to remember from their 2004 convention. He could capitalize on that reputation by speaking out against the Iraq war, scheduling prime-time television interviews and seizing control of high-profile bills. He could, as one Chicago friend suggested, “go in, do your thing and take the place by storm.”

Or, others advised, Obama could assume the typical role of a freshman senator, maneuvering with deference and humility. By endearing himself to Washington’s elite, he could build the foundation for his future.

“I think it’s important to take it slow,” Obama told his advisers. “I want to be liked.”

Take it slow?! I wish Saslow had supplied the date, because we would then have the first lie of his presidential campaign documented.

Despite this lead-in, Saslow continues without an editorial guffaw when approximately 36 seconds later Obama decides to run for president.

The story also worships Michelle Obama for refusing to disrupt her life and accompany her husband to Washington. Thinking about the howls of indignancy from the liberated women of the left (including liberal women journalists) about Sarah Palin’s choice to work, imagine the nastiness we’d be reading if a GOP candidate’s wife had abandoned her husband to a one-bedroom apartment in DC while she stayed home and worked, even though she had two small children who needed her attention.

Instead, Michelle’s decision is all about her mom and kids:

The more Michelle Obama mulled over the possibility of moving, friends said, the more she wanted to stay in Chicago — to keep her job as an executive at University of Chicago Hospitals, to live within a five-minute drive of her mother, to maintain a steady childhood for her daughters outside what Barack described as the “hothouse environment of Washington.” Her husband agreed it would be best to move to the capital alone, and he resigned himself to a solitary existence in a foreign city.

And as for Obama’s near complete lack of accomplishment in the Senate? Heroic!

He stuck to a simple routine, flying into town Monday or even Tuesday morning if his schedule allowed. He spent long days in his Senate office and long nights toiling on his book, sometimes e-mailing chapters to friends for fact-checking at 3 or 4 a.m. On Thursday afternoons, with his typical week in Washington nearing its end, Obama instructed staff members to reserve him tickets on multiple United flights — always in coach for image purposes, staffers said — so he could land in Chicago before his daughters went to bed.

Seen through the alternate universe lens of Obama as a GOP candidate, this would be summarized as staying to himself, working on his book so he could get his payday instead of working on legislation, and ditching town at the earliest opportunity and returning at the latest instead of doing his work as Senator.

In a companion shocker, WaPo today endorsed Obama for president.

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