Thoughts on this Rick Warren thing

When Senator Obama was elected President of the United States on November 4, 2008, it was a very happy day for me and many of my friends. I felt personally vindicated by his win, because to me, Barack Obama has been the quintessential equivocator. His oft-repeated phrase from "A More Perfect Union" was the epitome of equivocation: "I can no more disown [Reverend Wright] than my own grandmother."

The trouble with being an equivocator is that with the ability to understand all sides of an issue, explanation or even defense of an otherwise untenable position is seen as tantamount to unequivocal support. I can understand why pro-life activists are so passionate about wanting to prevent abortions, but that doesn't mean that I support the sabotage of family planning centers.

The way in which President-Elect Obama filled his Cabinet surprised many of his supporters and his detractors not only in terms of speed, but in choice. Liberal and conservative voices alike were intrigued at the pragmatism of his choices; if you had listened to Obama's speeches, read his books, and followed his demeanor throughout the campaign, you should not have been the least surprised.

During the past two years, Barack Obama has shown himself to be a man who follows his own drumbeat. He was never a fiery speaker, and (with prepared speeches) he was never boring. His eloquence was only matched by his temperance: pundits and supporters alike were wondering why he didn't go negative during his primary campaign against Senator Hillary Clinton. Why didn't he immediately and forcefully sever ties with Reverend Jeremiah Wright as soon as the "God Damn America!" clips flooded the airwaves and cyberspace? How could he be so gracious and magnanimous to his opponents during the debates when they were all hounding him? Obama didn't listen to criticism from his supporters; he did what he always did and kept it cool and equivocal.

What gave Obama the label of being a liberal was the only quantifiable thing that anyone could offer as evidence: his voting records. Because voting only calls for a yes or no, equivocation is absent in the results. But his books, his speeches, and his conversations with reporters and citizens have all shown listeners his appreciation for the pragmatic center. His ideals may be to the left: support for a woman's right to choose, ending the Iraq war, and unapologetic support for homosexual rights, but even these issues are tempered with sympathy for their counterparts (overall reduction in abortion, refocusing on Afghanistan, a lack of desire for federal support of legalized gay marriage).

And so we come to Pastor Rick Warren, who has been asked to deliver the invocation at the inauguration of President Obama. Here is a man who has been deeply committed to using scripture to inspire activism in the realms of poverty, disease, and the environment. He has also been a fierce proponent of Proposition 8. Gay voters who voted for Obama see this pick as a giant slap in the face to the advancement of gay rights. That the inclusion of the gay marching band is seen as a weak consolation goes to show the anger many in the gay community have.

I am dismayed at this criticism. President-Elect Obama's choice of Rick Warren to lead the invocation should not come as a surprise to anyone who supported Obama. Obama has shown himself to have deep faith in the Christian religion, and he also recognizes that a vast majority of Americans do as well. And given his choices, what should he have done? Let's see what his other choices could have been:

1) Pick Candace Gingrich to lead the invocation. Result: slap in the face to anyone who considers themselves moderate or conservative.
2) Pick an unknown or a non-denominational speaker to lead the invocation. Result: slap in the face to atheists and non-Christians.
3) No invocation. Result: slap in the face to any person who considers themselves religious.
4) Pick Joel Osteen. Result: fill in the blank.
5) Pick James Dobson. Result: slap in the face to every single one of his supporters.
6) Pick James Earl Jones. Result: the most memorable invocation in the history of the world.

Andrew Jackson ordered the forced relocation of Native Americans. He also brought the national debt to the lowest in its nation's history. Abraham Lincoln threw potential enemies of the federal government in prison without charge or trial. He also ended slavery. FDR quarantined Japanese-Americans during World War II. He also desegregated the Defense Department. Barack Obama invited an ignorant man to give the invocation at his inauguration.

He also is the first person to have a gay and lesbian band march down the street to help inaugurate an American President. Let's not forget that.

How do you explain "Socialism for the Rich" to Joe Sixpack?

We all have our different social networks. Personally, most of my friends are involved in community theatre, which means (at least in the DC Metro area) that they are pretty open-minded. Politically, most of my friends in the theatre community are left-wingers, although there is the occasional Republican, even of the log cabin variety. Considering I attended a Quaker school, almost all of my high school friends are liberal. Most of the people in my workplace are also on the left side of the political spectrum. My colleagues at work and my theatre and high school friends are all Obama supporters. My family is a different matter; my mother is a social and political conservative (she voted for Huckabee in the primary, and absolutely adores Sarah Palin), while my father is a Clintonite Democrat. Regardless of political position, everyone I know could be considered a political junkie.

Then there are my friends and associates in Delaware whom I see once a month in the Air Force Reserve.

While a few of my fellow troops are politically aware (on both the left and the right), most could not care less about politics. In fact, one guy didn't know how to pronounce the name of the Democratic presidential nominee. He represents, I believe, a plurality (if not the majority) of the American voting public. He's someone who prefers his information in easy-to-swallow soundbites and prefers quick-and-dry answers to questions that deserve complex responses.

Since the announcement of the $700 billion bailout that President Bush the Treasury Department wish to give to failing Wall Street corporations, the blogosphere has exploded with finger-pointing, accusations of hypocrisy, and most of all, the designation of the bailout as "socialism for the rich." Fiscal neoconservatives are critical of this bailout from a less-government standpoint, while Democrats are critical of any legislation that does not include provisions for increased regulation and oversight.

However, the debate amongst these various political groups will only be white noise when it comes to the average voter. Adam Smith? John Maynard Keynes? The New Deal? Henry Paulson? What are these things? It's just too complex to sit around debate. The consequences of the housing bust combined with the multiple bank failures compounded with government intervention revealing hypocrisy concerning government handouts is just gibberish to a lot of people. There is absolutely no way to break this down into something cut-and-dry.

So what do these folks rely on? Chain emails that spread misinformation. Spoon-fed news on cable. It's easier to condemn that hypothetical mother who keeps having babies simply to collect a welfare check (although the Welfare Reform Law passed by the Clinton Administration got rid of such loopholes), but it's not so easy to draw parallels to the proposed government bailout. And why not? Because of how we are raised to demonize our enemies.

With Ronald Reagan as the figurehead for laissez-faire economics and his famous line that "government is the problem," the neoconservative movement was able to capture and hold on to a sentiment that is easy to manipulate. Communism, in any of its forms, is what happens when the government steps in where it shouldn't. Government will take away your hard-earned money and give it to some welfare mom who should get off the pipe and get a job. Get rid of government, and let the free market make as much money as it can; everyone will benefit! But if you let the government look after you, it'll insinuate itself into every aspect of your life. If you let the government handle your healthcare, it won't be long before the government can deny a treatment you need. If you let the government help you, then you'll become dependent on it for any and all things.

With that creed, neoconservatives were able to simultaneously demonize government oversight and social programs by linking it to dictatorial communism. Deregulation allowed for corporations to do what they would. Tax cuts reduced the flow of capital into the federal government, and the budget deficit skyrocketed. Yet, even Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush realized that some money had to come into the federal coffers, so those either taxes were raised (Reagan), or reinstated (Bush). After the Clinton Administration's bipartisan effort balanced the federal budget (leaving a surplus), President George W. Bush gave it back to the American people, cut taxes, gave tax breaks, and we all lived happily ever after. (Due to my involvement in the U.S. military, I am hesitant to publish my unabridged opinions of our current president and his administration, lest I become a target of government reprisal.)

Many in America are still easily manipulated by the fear of communism, as if socialized medicine is a slippery slope to the GULAG or a one-child only policy. Yet when the government hands out bailouts to companies like Bears Stearn or AIG, the seeming hypocrisy of the government goes unnoticed. Why? Because businessmen who make money are not the enemy: they are the backbone of the American capitalist spirit that made the United States number one. They're not the welfare mom on crack who has babies to con U.S. taxpayers out of their hard-earned money. An attack on the American businessman is an attack on capitalism, and an attack on capitalism is an attack on America.

This is why many Americans will continue to support Republicans and neoconservatives, even as some are willing to criticize the bailouts. It's much easier to understand and hate an individual with whom you don't want to associate yourself (a welfare mom) than with someone who has taken advantage of the very regulatory system that he helped tear down.

Islamophobia: The New Acceptable Prejudice

A recent poll stated that 12% of Americans, more than one in ten, believe that Senator Barack Obama is a Muslim. It's quite a large percentage, given the publicity of Obama's former pastor, the now notorious Jeremiah Wright. For many months, the Obama campaign has been furiously trying to explain that Obama is not a Muslim. Then, a brilliantly satirical caricature of Obama and his wife Michelle appeared on the cover of The New Yorker. Both the Obama camp and the McCain camp called the cover offensive, but the folks at The New Yorker stuck to its guns and defended its satire. The least problematic of this incident was that they had to explain that their cover was satirical, and everyone knows that when you have to explain a joke, it's no longer funny. It's Comedy 101. Granted, it's The New Yorker, hardly that funny to begin with. But that's an entry for another time.

How did Senator Obama himself feel? In an interview with Larry King, Senator Obama stated that "when you're running for president for almost two years ... you get a pretty thick skin. And, you know, I've seen and heard worse." He then added that "this is actually an insult against Muslim-Americans, something that we don't spend a lot of time talking about. And sometimes I've been derelict in pointing that out. You know, there are wonderful Muslim-Americans all across the country who are doing wonderful things. And for this to be used as sort of an insult or to raise suspicions about me I think is unfortunate." King then immediately switched topics and discussed the war in Iraq with Senator Obama.

In addition to treating the magazine cover with a grain of salt, Obama brought up a point that I've been aching to hear raised: what's wrong with being Muslim?

During this campaign, Obama's secret Muslim past is an accusation that has been tossed around by the ignorant, playing on fears of another 9/11. As a consequence, the Obama campaign has tried to distance itself from the Muslim community, even going to far as to remove two Muslim women wearing headscarves lest they appear in the same vicinity as Obama. The Muslim world is so feared and stigmatized that American Muslims are treated like second-class citizens. Fortunately, the Obama campaign immediately apologized, and that was that. If only that could be true of all apologies.

Racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism are the top three prejudices that are taken advantage of in order to discredit an opponent's argument. Since there is no way to successfully defend oneself against charges of these three prejudices without sounding like an ignoramus, these prejudices are the standard go-to for argumentative tactics. They work, because they evoke feelings of oppression, from slavery to the Holocaust. The fear of resembling an oppressor is so grand, no self-respecting person can afford to make a remark that is even close to sounding racist, sexist, or anti-Semitic, bringing about obvious benefits (less outward prejudice) and drawbacks (free-speech is stifled).

But Islamophobia is not pounced on with the same outrage that racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and even homophobia are. Even before 9/11, Hollywood and the mainstream media almost always portrayed Muslims in an unflattering way. Muslim representation has ranged from the sexist oil sheik, to the racist cab driver, to the womanizing Persian, to the airplane hijacker. Granted, these Muslims exist, and they're not just a few people, but we've barely even seen token "good" Muslims. The consequence is that many people are less aware of what Islam really is. They watch movies like "Executive Decision" or TV shows like "24" and assume that Muslims are just a bunch of Jew-hating terrorists who pray to their mysterious god "Allah" and honor-kill their daughters because their holy book the Koran commands them to do it. Every single time a nutjob Muslim commits a crime, the stereotype is reinforced. The reinforcement turns into resignation and acceptance. The acceptance manifests itself as prejudice.

Consequently, anything that is related to Islam is now tied to terrorism. From Rachel Ray's scarf to Barack Obama's name, fear has overtaken reason. Apathy has been substituted in place of the pursuit of knowledge. Theology and dogma now explains the behavior of all Muslims, even though theology and dogma have little place in everyday American life.

And where are the so-called "moderate" Muslims? Where are their voices? If they are so moderate, why are they not doing more to condemn the actions of extremists? Several months ago, I gave my answer to those questions. Since then, little has changed. Muslims and non-Muslims alike don't talk. The silence breeds further acceptance of negative stereotypes, and it continues from there.

One of the causes of this silence is the sad fact that no one really knows where to go to find answers to their questions. While political correctness has its place, the fear of being un-PC too often dampens people's reasonable questions. It's risky to sound unaware, lest being unaware becomes tantamount to ignorance. I disagree. Ignorance, to me, implies the knowledge of something's existence, while consciously ignoring or seeking out the truth. Being willfully ignorant is a redunancy. Not being aware of something is different; at least it's somewhat excusable.

So where does one go for answers about Islam? The most obvious answer is, well, Muslims. And when you talk to Muslims, you'll find out that their way of life is not all about reading the Koran, or praying five times a day, or even abstaining from pork and alcohol. Dogma may be the foundation of belief, but because Leviticus says that homosexuality is forbidden doesn't mean that there aren't gay Jews.

Communication is the foundation of all learning. Once communication has been established and the facts have been ascertained, we can then make our judgments. Any conclusion made without all the facts is premature judgment, hence the term prejudice. And that has to stop.

How do you deal with the Unreasonable?

In July 1, 2008's Op-Ed Section of The Washington Post, columnist Richard Cohen wrote a piece that touched on a sentiment that I've had growing in me since the start of the new century. The article itself is a criticism of Senator John McCain's search for endorsements from famous members of the American clergy, most notably Billy and Richard Graham. He writes that "the endorsement of such clergymen has been sought by virtually every Republican presidential candidate of our times," a practice that Cohen feels is "disquieting."

I understand where Cohen is coming from. The pursuit of approval from the faithful is a necessary one to undertake if one is to get anywhere in politics. Since most of America (and, indeed, the world) either practices a religion or holds a belief in reverence for the supernatural, professing a faith is the easiest way to gain trust. In America, it's Christianity.

Most Americans who have faith weren't really concerned about Mitt Romney's bid for the presidency. True, he had to come out and defend his faith, but at the end of the day, Romney was accepted in a way that wouldn't have been possible if he hadn't been religious at all. In other words, better to have a different faith in Jesus than no faith in Jesus at all.

I've noticed that an individual's piety is seen as the redeeming quality behind even the most scientific and reasonable of people. Albert Einstein's research fundamentally altered the way in which the universe is seen and questions the concept of predestination, but rest assured, Einstein himself could not fully comprehend the magnitude of his discoveries. "God does not play dice," he is famously quoted; ergo, since Einstein believed in the supernatural, so must we all.

In The Assault on Reason, Al Gore methodically traces the pattern on how Americans, through television and the 24-hour news networks, have given up on their heritage of Enlightened reason to surrender to gut instinct. It's a brilliant argument, but it later seems disingenuous when he attempts to balance reason with faith.

Cohen notes that piety can "excuse ... ignorance and intolerance." It's true. How often have we forgiven people because they either found Jesus, or converted to Islam, or turned to Buddhism? And how often have logical arguments screeched to a grinding halt when a matter of faith is brought up? In fact, the only way reason is able to progress is for matters of faith to be ignored. Even amongst scientists who have faith, their faith is compartmentalized in a place that is accessed only at sporadic times. This compartmentalization is necessary in order for science to progress. When trying to chart the trajectory of a falling particle into the gravity well of a singularity, Jesus' Sermon on the Mount doesn't have much applicability.

Faith, by definition, is unreasonable. It causes wonder, that there's something greater than what we can see, no matter what tools humanity can invent to see farther or smaller than ever before. It is the source of inspiration that can drive a believer to handle venomous snakes without fear or stand up for civil rights. It's also the source of courage that allows a man or woman to willingly strap on explosives and kill. It's the screen through which we can ignore destruction and see something totally different and unrelated. And in this modern age, it is seen as the ultimate trump card to an individual's character and trustworthiness -- that no matter what his or her reasoned or scientific background, that individual is willing to allow the unprovable to supercede documented evidence.

And so it goes. Time and again, American politicians will court the faithful by underlining their own faith. And time and again, Americans will follow those who show the most faith in their beliefs. But it must be stressed that although following the faithful may have led us to legislated equality, the faithful also led us to believe there were WMDs in Iraq.

Charles Krauthammer is an idiot.

I leave it to you, the lonely readers of this blog, to discover on your own just how unreasonable Dr. Charles Krauthammer can be. I will not give examples, and I will not post links. Reading this man's stuff is one of the most painful things a person can do. In my opinion, he is worse, yes worse, than Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, or Bill O'Reilly, as a conservative voice who blows things out of proportion in order to misleads (intentionally or not) the public into believing what he says has actual merit in reason.

There are some conservative columnists that I can read with a sense of appreciation for their viewpoint. The best was, of course, the late William F. Buckley. Today, the most palatable conservative columnists (at least in The Washington Post) consist of Michael Gerson, George Will, and sometimes, even Robert Novak. Their conservative slant is obvious, but it is usually tempered with reasoned arguments stemming from their own political ideology. You can take these men seriously. Hannity, Coulter, and O'Reilly (like Keith Olbermann and Bill Maher on the other side) don't use reason to support their opinions, and so intelligent people, both on the left and the right, recognize that these individuals' rants are exactly that: rants. Nothing more than entertainment that tries to pass itself off as news, and never to be taken seriously.

What makes Krauthammer worse than these ranters is that he is expected to be taken seriously. He's a featured columnist in The Washington Post and is a panelist on Inside Washington. Go ahead. Read his work. Then do your own homework on what he writes about. After that, get back to me on why any reasonable person should take him seriously.

“As California goes…”

“…so goes the rest of the nation. It's inevitable. This door's wide open now. It's going to happen, whether you like it or not.”

So said San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom on Thursday, May 14, 2008 after the California Supreme Court ruled against a ban on same-sex marriage. Spectators cheered. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was supportive.

Opponents are fuming. How could a Catholic mayor and a Republican governor allow this affront to the institution of marriage to occur? They are crying inappropriate judicial activism (as if there were any other kind). I call it progress too long in coming.

How ironic is it that gay marriage would be legal in states under Republican governorships (Schwarzenegger in California, Mitt Romney in Massachusetts)? Log cabin Republicans notwithstanding, members of the Republican Party are stereotypically seen as bigots; they hate gays (except hot lesbians), immigrants, minorities, and the poor. Bambi’s mother was probably shot by a gun-loving Republican hunter. (I kid; the hunter was a Libertarian.)

But I digress. The court’s ruling is an important step in the long march toward true equality. The court did exactly what I did when defending gay marriage to a fellow student in my Civil Rights history class: they used the precedent of a 1948 ruling that struck down a ban on interracial marriage.

Although it’s a bit touchy to compare anti-miscegenation laws to bans on same-sex marriage, both the ban on interracial marriage and the ban on gay marriage have interesting parallels in the proponents for those bans. They said that miscegenation and homosexuality were unnatural and sacrilegious. Blacks and homosexuals have both been considered less than human, and violence has been perpetrated against both groups, killing innocents. And while homosexuals have had an advantage in being able to hide their orientation (a “luxury” Blacks don’t have), the cost of being discovered can be a terrible price to pay, depending on where one lives.

I don’t expect bigots to read this blog, but in case they do, listen up. The time is approaching when your stupidity will be exposed as such. Homophobia will be perceived as something quaint and outdated, like burning witches, black and white TV, or paying for long distance calls. You will go the way of the dinosaur, the dodo, and Laserdiscs. And when you become artifacts relegated to dusty halls of antiquity, you will be observed not with awe or interest, but with the disdain that comes with looking at how shamefully humanity once behaved. It's inevitable. It's going to happen, whether you like it or not. In order for you to survive, you must adapt and evolve.

What am I saying? You probably don’t believe in evolution either.

The Elitist Films of Brad Bird

On April 6, 2008, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) attended a fundraiser in San Francisco. There, he stated:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And 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 or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

His opponents quickly jumped on the words “bitter” and “cling to guns or religion” and labeled Obama as an “elitist.”

It is important to understand what the word “elitist” connotes. While “elite” stands for the best of the best, the pinnacle of achievement, the word “elitist” carries with it implications of snobbery and condescension stemming from a sense of presumptuous superiority. In other words, people want to be elite; nobody wants to be elitist. From my experience, this is a uniquely American sentiment. I challenge someone to find a non-American equivalent to the rhetorical saying, “What, you think you’re better than me?!” Chances are, if that question was asked in another country, someone would actually answer “Yes” and not feel the slightest ounce of shame or embarrassment if his response was accurate.

There is a certain characteristic about each of us that can be difficult to discuss. It’s not race, gender, religion, or even sexuality (though these are at many times difficult to honestly discuss). No, in America, even the most open-minded and equivocating liberal can get squeamish when discussing the characteristic of achievement. If you are the best at something, you had better keep it to yourself, lest you sound like you are bragging, and nobody likes a braggart. Bragging hurts people’s feelings, and is relegated to the caricatured world of hip-hop.

Well, there is one non-rapper in whom elitism has found a sympathetic voice. His name is Brad Bird, and he is the writer and director of the Academy-Award winning Pixar movies The Incredibles and Ratatouille. These two movies not only are about the elite, but these movies celebrate elitism.

Brad Bird has been outspoken in his support for animation as a tool to express his vision. Listening to him during his interviews on the DVD extras, I easily got the impression that he thinks very highly of himself. What’s more, I couldn’t disagree, certainly not after watching his movies. Bird knows not only knows how to tell a story, he knows what kind of story he feels he needs to tell. And the common thread binding The Incredibles and Ratatouille is the pride one should have in being the best.

In both movies, the protagonists never had to work for their skills; both the Incredible family and Remy the rat were born with their powers and palate, respectively. In The Incredibles, Mr. Incredible is frustrated at having to hide his power, and is mad that his super-fast son Dash isn’t allowed to compete in sports. When he objects to attending his Dash’s “graduation” from the fourth grade to the fifth, he exclaims, “[A ceremony is] psychotic! They keep creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity…” And who is the villain in this movie? A smart, yet disillusioned, inventor, bitter that his youthful efforts were rejected by Mr. Incredible. His master plan is to equalize the playing field by selling his inventions to give ordinary people super powers; in his words, “when everyone’s super, no one will be.”

In Ratatouille, there are two characters that illustrate Bird’s elitist streak: Remy the rat, and Anton Ego, the appropriately named food critic. Both Remy and Ego consider themselves superior in knowing what tastes good. Other movies would have painted Ego as someone who didn’t know anything about what he critiqued and turned him into some sort of buffoon (much the same way Bob Balaban’s critic character in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Lady in the Water was portrayed). But his monologue at the end of the film makes this stuck-up food critic a sympathetic character:

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau's, who is, in this critic's opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau's soon, hungry for more.

It is not too much of a stretch to see that Bird is using Ego to plead a case for himself; Bird is a man of “new talent,” and the world of animation showcases the “new creations” that have the potential to rock even the most stodgy film critics to their core.

Unfortunately, Bird’s films leave out two very important facets of achievement. The first is the potential emptiness that comes from being at the top. At the end of the movie, notice how after Dash easily wins a school race, he jogs off the track with a smug look on his face. Dash is the fastest runner in his school, no doubt. But what would happen to his mentality after winning every race without even trying? What would Dash gain from effortless wins at trivial contests? Second, Bird’s films do not focus on something that I’ve found to be true in all people: that everyone is good in at least one thing if they try. For Linguini, the would-be chef, it’s roller skating. For Remy’s father, it’s leadership over an entire colony. No, not just anyone can cook, but anyone can do something well.

It is this dismissal of other people’s achievements that is the dark side of elitism. This dismissal stems from an inability to equivocate. And from what I’ve seen, Senator Obama is the most equivocal politician since Adlai Stevenson. Obama is an elite senator; he is definitely not an elitist.