Should we question Obama's judgment and character

The Sundries Shack seems to be saying yes... hell yes:

Barack Obama called off the hounds days ago. He said the candidate’s family was off-limits. Yet the nasty attacks continue. If he can’t rein in his own supporters, how can we believe that he’ll deal with Mad Mahmoud or Vladimir Putin or even the shadowy evil “special interests”?

If he wants us to believe he is a leader, he can start by showing some leadership right now and condemning Howard Gutman directly and by name. Every day these attacks continue show him to be nothing more than just another politician who talks a much bigger game than he can play.

UPDATE: Oh, this explains why Obama haasn’t ditched him yet. Gutman isn’t just a big-time money man for the Obama campaign, he’s also the lawyer who represented Susan Rosenberg, who was part of Bill Ayers’ Weather Underground terrorist group.

You might remember Bill Ayers as the guy who was sorry he couldn’t wreak more destruction and who hosted the fundraiser that launched Barack Obama’s political career. The two have been as tight as ticks for more than two decades and worked closely together for a foundation that spread money around to such groups as ACORN (the leftist group that is up to its eyeballs in voter fraud).

Gutman gets a pass because he’s tight with Obama’s terrorist friends. Okey-dokey.

So who is Howard Gutman?  Hot Air provides that answer:

Fair to call him a “top” supporter?  Given the fact that he’s a member of The One’s national finance committee and advertises that fact in his HuffPo bio, I’m going with “yes.” His M.O. reminds me of Greenwald trying to rewrite the definition of “chickenhawk” so that it applies to the right but not the left: Start with the smear you want to use, then refine the parameters just enough to protect your own side from the tu quoque. In this case it means replacing the argument that mom should be home with the family with the more highly nuanced argument that any politician of either sex should be home when their family’s in crisis.  Bristol’s pregnant and baby Trig has Down’s syndrome and, gosh, don’t you think a responsible mother gender-neutral parent would consider that before doing something as rash as running for high office? To which I reply: Am I hallucinating or isn’t there a guy on the other ticket who had a much worse family crisis than this, who in fact has been praised to the heavens for not quitting his job and instead making a heroic effort to manage both kids and career through hard times? Did I dream that? I could have sworn I heard something about it recently.

I think it a good time to bring back Obama's words when Palin smears began to heat up from his supporters:

"Let me be a clear as possible:  I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people's families are off limits," Obama said, "and people's children are especially off limits.

"This shouldn't be part of our politics," he continued, "It has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as governor, or her potential performance as a vice president.

"And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories," he said. "You know my mother had me when she was 18, and how a family deals with issues and, you know, teenage children, that shouldn't be the topic of our politics and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that's off limits."

Asked about the insinuation from the McCain campaign that the liberal bloggers trafficking in rumors about Palin write for websites that mention Obama, the senator said, "I'm offended by that."

The Democratic presidential nominee said, "There is no evidence at all that any of this involved us. I hope I am as clear as can be – so in case I’m not, let me repeat: We don't go after people's families, we don't get them involved in the politics. It's not appropriate and it's not relevant."

Concluded Obama before getting on his campaign bus headed to Milwaukee, Wisc., "Our people were not involved in any way in this and they will not be. And if I ever thought that it was somebody in my campaign that was involved in something like that, they'd be fired."

It's incredibly difficult for me not to think back to words spoken about Obama by Christian progressives when I see Gutman's gutlessness, Obama's failure to live up to his promise and what it is Obama supporters are attempting to do to Sarah Palin. 

For example, Greg Boyd:

Obama’s combination of eloquence and personal gravitas is like nothing I’ve ever seen. So is his ability to pull sides together and rally people around a common cause. Politics is about overcoming divisions in the polis (society), and in this sense Obama’s speech was pure political genius. Add to this Obama’s own unique story and the fact that he’s an African American giving this speech on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and it’s hard not to be moved, even for foreigners like myself and regardless of what you think of his specific political proposals.

Or Rev. Susan in Ca:

I think he reaches across the aisle moreso than other senators, whether republican or democrat.

Or Will Sampson:

I have found Barack Obama to be so engaging. He has shown grace under fire, and courage in the face of increasingly nasty and, dare I say, Rovean, tactics employed against him by both Hillary and Bill Clinton. He much more closely embodies what I want to be true of myself, our nation and her leaders.

So, I am asking you to join me in hoping for a new political dynamic. I am asking you to believe that a new era is possible, that engagement matters, that reconciliation is politically viable and that responsibility for our words and actions can once again be a governing principle for our nation. I am asking you to support, or to continue to support, Barack Obama.

And Mike Todd:

All that being said, there are still two things that will get my attention when we're talking politics. They're the same two things that get me excited about Jesus-following too: Hope and change.

I've said many times that I am not optimistic, but I am very hopeful. I'm also a supporter of that old saw about doing the same things and expecting different results.

For these and other reasons, we here at Waving or Drowning are prepared to endorse Barack Obama for President of the United States.

It's a strange juxtaposition... Gutman's words and the fact that Obama has not reigned him in (or thrown him under the bus as he has countless others when it suits him) and the gushing Obasmic words of his pious supporters.

Simply amazing stuff.

H/T for the Gutman behavior goes to The Anchoress.

Comments

[Uli Pele]

You are talking about people from Obama's PAST yet fail to analyze the people who are working on McCain's campaign. Right now. As I type this!

McCain has more than 50 of the sleaziest lobbyists from capitol hill running his campaign -- many of them representing foreign interests including Saudi Arabia (remember, they are the ones who attacked us on 9/11), are associated with the Russian mafia and lobby the U.S. congress in support of foreign terrorists! Other of McCain's campaign insiders represent some of the biggest oil companies that continue to rip off the American public every day.

I'm not talking about people that McCain worked with on other issues or used to socialize with. I'm talking about the very people who are advising McCain and running his campaign!

it's no wonder that McCain voted against raising the minimum wage 14 times while he was in the senate. It's not wonder that McCain voted more than a dozen times against helping America's heroic veterans. The people helping him shape his policies represent the very companies that want to keep wages low and want the government to give their companies the money that should be used to help our brave veterans.

So much for McCain being a "maverick." If you really look at him, you'll see that McCain is really a flip-flopping liar who's in bed with the mangiest dogs of DC!

[Mommynator]

You want to name some names and provide some proof, or are you just going to troll here and vomit all over the nice clean floor?

[Jimmie]

Hmmm...lobbyists performing a distasteful yet legal and, above all, highly democratic activity or unrepentant murderers. Is it really so difficult to decide which one deserves worse condemnation?

Thanks for the link as well!

[Tim Chesterton]

OK, speaking of context...

I would like to invite readers to follow the link to Greg Boyd's post and see for themselves that the paragraph Rick has quoted is taken entirely out of context.

The theme of Boyd's article could be summed up in this sentence: It would be nice if some of the things Barack Obama is talking about could become a reality under his watch as president (assuming he gets elected), because they sound really good, but I'm not holding my breath, because as a citizen of the kingdom I know that Jesus Christ, and not Barack Obama, is the hope of the world.

The paragraph that Rick quoted is lifted out of the centre of Greg's article, where he's dealing with the attractiveness - or even seductiveness - of some of Obama's proposals.The crucial sentence comes a little further down in the article:

I have to therefore regard Obama’s call to embrace the audacity of this political hope as a temptation. (I’m of course referencing Obama’s book, 'The Audacity of Hope'). Whatever good Obama, McCain or any other politician may or may not be able to accomplish, the ultimate hope and allegiance of all Kingdom citizens must remain in Jesus Christ and in the mustard seed Kingdom he established.

It's also misleading to call Greg Boyd a leftist, as even a cursory examination of his blog would make clear. He's in fact more of a quietist, in the old Mennonite tradition - one who inclines more toward disengagement from the political process and emphasises the kingdom that grows unnoticed, like a mustard seed. His latest post makes this very clear.