Proving You’re Worthy
By Pamela Gentry, Senior Political Producer
Posted Feb. 28, 2008 – Earlier this week during the Democratic presidential debate the candidates were asked to describe why their challenger was “worthy” of becoming the president of the United States.
Of course, they both were somewhat puzzled why they were being asked to promote their opponent, but they answered; no one recalls or reported their response.
But defining “worthy” isn’t easy.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has been trying to prove himself “worthy” since he tossed his hat in the ring for Commander and Chief. First he had to prove he was “Black” enough; then “experienced” enough; and then “capable” enough to lead.
It looked like Obama had cleared all hurtles, until the “gotcha” question during the debate. When Obama was asked one fo the two litmus test questions often posed to Black folks; Do you denounce Minister Louis Farrakhan, and did O.J. Simpson do it?
Obama even went a step further and “rejected and denounce,” the controversially and outspoken leader, now only the Simpson question remains. Why is it Black folks have to be responsible for every Black person who does or says something offensive, illegal or just plain stupid? It hardly seems fair.
It looks Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton (N.Y) will get a pass on the question now troubling the most likely Republican challenger Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.). McCain’s worthyness is under scrutiny regarding his birth status as a “natural-born citizen.” A story in The New York Times questions McCain’s birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936. McCain was born off shore, so does he meet the intent of the founder’s language “natural born?”
McCain’s parents were stationed in Panama when he was born, so the issue is being researched and legal experts are debating whether the letter of the law means only folks delivered on American soil meet the criteria.
We’ll have to wait and see what happens with McCain. I’m sure Obama, born in Hawaii and Clinton, born in Illinois are relieved the stork dropped them state side.
rather than try to prove he is “black enough”, obama has worked assiduously to convince the general electorate that he isn’t “too black”. hence is preposterous assertion on the campaign trail that we’ve come “90% of the way” to social equality.
mccain’s military legacy should safely inoculate him from any issues connected to his birth in what was at that time a territory under amerikkan control.
ok let’s be real…obama doesn’t have to prove at least to us anyway that he is ‘black enough’. that was a label put on him by the old guard. he’s married to a proud black woman and lives on the south side. this man had to work much harder than clinton to get not only the white vote, but the black vote as well and the hispanic vote. therefore, it’s much harder for him to run as a candidate without conjuring up old stereotypes and risk bing put into a box as the ‘black candidate’.
Ameica needs to smell the coffee. Yeah the media quote and unquote hates Hillary and loves Obama.. Why? Well there are some hush hush things about Obama that’s being oppressed… Hillary’s camp knows it, but to keep from sounding like a gossiper, the party keeps her quiet. But, trust me, if Obama gets the nomination–McCain’s camp will make it public… And,many of Obama’s supporters will be angry… Is this a conspiracy to get the republicans back in office? Wake up…
Get real ADH, If there were something hush hush about obama then the clinton camp would definitely use it against him. Youre trying to make her above gossiping. Please!
Ms. Gentry seems to have missed a major point: the issue isn’t whether Obama denounces Farrakhan’s controversial positions because he’s the “black candidate” but whether he denounces Farrakhan’s ideology because of Farrakhan’s public support of his candidacy.
If Farrakhan had come out in support of McCain, it would be McCain who was being asked if he denounced the positions held by Farrakhan.
I am so tired of everyone saying the republicans have some kind of conspiracy to get Obama in office so they can take the white house. Lets stop worrying about the republicans and just vote.
LILBABY26,
you bring up an interesting point. by prove to “us” i’m assuming your are speaking of his supporters, you included, and specifically black people? if not, i misinterpreted. if so, then…
…it was not the “establishment” or “old guard” that brought this issue up. it was largely the media, BUT, it was also prominent black leaders like sharpton and cornell west who openly criticized and questioned b.o.’s cred. for some reason, these leaders have done a 180.
Folks, these smear tactics were set up by Maggie Williams when she re-entered. Part of her M.O. As for the GOP, par goes the course. Part of the Free Republic and Rove playbook. IF you research most of the stories about Obama are 2 to 3 years old. It was all accounted for in the Obama camp. We have gone up by 5 points now in Texas, thats rom 12 points behind 9 days ago. Still lots of work to do in both OHio and Texas before Tuesday.
America will see through these devisive tactics. And remember, Hillary and McCain’s relationship with with foreign lobbyists has not been exposed as of yet either. Stay tuned. Yet for right now, these tactics no matter how noisy they are now, will get worse. And you have truly ask yourself regardless of your loyalties…why? But trust me the Obama campaign is more than prepared. FYI Senator Rockerfeller, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee has just switched to endorse Obama. Well there is someone who runs our nation’s Intelligence program who believes in Obama. THose in OHio and Texas, Remember Vote!! I am Joe Domingaux and I approve this message. Obama 08
Tanya……I hate to hurt your feelings, but ADH is absolutely right. What you don’t understand is both of these candidates still have a loyalty to the party. It happens all the times in Primary debates where one candidate acquires information on the other that they can’t despose because it will ruin the front runners chances for the nomination. I believe the Hillary’s campaign does have some dirt on him, and I also think that Republicans are going to stop at nothing “WHEN” they release it.
Obama still need more supper delegate.
Marcus,
Get real please. There is no conspiracy and the real problem is that you don’t have enough dirt on him that you have to act like there is some bombshell sitting out there. Spinning his words here and there and trying to use his book against him, and the muslim thing..was the best you/they have and it’s that entire reason that polls have shown that Obama is better against McCain, and no I’m not sitting here saying that polls are some sort of word of God, but what I am saying is the intellect or mindset rather as to why people poll this way in this case is because there is enough dirt on Hillary to fill a landfill and while she sits there claiming that it’s all out there, one I beg to differ and two just because it’s out there doesn’t mean it’s untouchable and will not be druged up again and the one pile that’s bigger than them all with McCain will be Iraq but if they want to get dirtier with her they don’t have to do much digging.
Well regardless od the controversy. WE are are happy to announce working in the Obama 08 campaign the latest progress on Change. Latest polls this morning shows now Obama 45% to 45% in Ohio, 48% to 42% Texas. That is after being down as many as 12 points in the polls 10 days ago. There is hard work to do, yet we must rally on. THATS WORK TO RALLY!!! Go to barackobama.com to see how You can make a Difference in thia pivotal time in history. Although, there has been many things said about Senator Obama, we must remain diligent and focussed. Afterall, it is not only an assault on Mr. Obama, yet American’s intellect as a whole who dare to want something different…A Change. Yes, despite the naysayers and haters, it will Continue. This is A MOVEMENT . As KRS-One once said “Dont Lose It”.
Fyi, on a lighter note. The video “We Are The Ones” made by will.i.am and other Obama supporters has been receiving a great deal of attention, especially in the African American and Latino community. The supporter-made video features several African American and Latino artists and entertainers. Obama 08
Click Link to See Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghSJsEVf0pU
On a not so lighter note, I think you women/lady voters might want to check this out. It is an NBC deep background investigation revelaing Hillary’s unwillingness to return $170,000 in campaign funding from a corporation that is steeped in sexual harrassment chargest, and the CEO himself is a disbarred lawyer with a criminal background.
http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/02/29/718285.aspx
wow..i seriously shouldn’t post so early. Sorry for the typos on that last post. =(
I sincerely agree with former president Bill Clinton here people….
and you should too…..
watch and enjoy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe0BPwWAxnk
OBAMA SHOULDN OT HAVE PLAYED JAY-Z NEXT TIME PLAY “HONEY BROWN” http://WWW.CDBABY.COM/HONEYBROWNMUSIC
http://WWW.MYSPACE.COM/HONEYBROWNMUSIC
i agree with bill clinton here as well. but i’d like to add/revise.
you should vote for the person who makes you think AND hope, not just hope. b.o. uses many many many emotional appeals, but very few logical appeals. emotions are what motivates people to act in the short term (e.g. voting in an election).
HILLARY uses more logical appeals than b.o. which contain more substance. and i don’t think that you can compare dubya’s scare tactics about another 9/11 in 2004 against kerry, with HILLARY’S “children” ad which uses logic to ask “who do you want making important decisions in the white house?” yes, there are emotional appeals there as well (obviously, the child sleeping).
but at the end of the day, you’d better vote for the person who makes you think FIRST.
When will Hill finally answer the question about how she will MAKE people pay for healthcare…she refuses to say the g-word….c’mon hill say it…GARNISHMENT
kris, 1, i’m speaking about black people in general you too hillary supporters, and 2., the media xploited that issue because they get their talking points from al and jesse. hillary played into the security mom base with that ad. like obama isn’t gonna answer the phone on time and instead is gonna deal with it later(karl rove must think that this is brilliant)??????
btw, ya’ll every notice that people keep saying ‘wait til the republican party get to obama thier their slime machine’. i was watching oreilly and i usually don’t watch that show, but laura ingraham was takin his place and brought this up. mostly it’s democrats that are out with the smear tactics. the issues of race and gender have been brought up be them and not really republicans(they’d rather stick to patriotism and farrakhan instead) karl rove and limbaugh said the same thing
Couldn’t agree more lilbaby. In fact, I’ve got to say I’ve been more disenfranchised by the Democrats this year that ever. Hillary, whom I once had respect for based upon her resume and her accomplishments has proved to me that there is nothing she will not do…throw all fairness and morality, etc out the window. I simply have no respect whatsoever for people that would smile for Black America’s vote during the reign of Bill and then turn around and beat down a very well educated and civil servant who decided to run against her for president. The smears tied to her campaign, the multiple firings or resignations within her campaign as a result, the blatantly obvious (No matter how much drudge wants to try to cover it up by putting out pics of Hillary and Bill..HELLO THEY ARE NOT BATTLING AMERICAN MUSLIM FEARS.) Somali clothing pic which has been used to smear him as a muslim once again despite the uphill battle that he faced and that many prominent media investigations have debunked. He has had to fight her and a former president. He is having to fight McCain. And have you seen him breaking down with his voice cracking on the verge of tears? No. He has been viligant and he has battled back and let me tell you what else…he has run a very clean campaign considering that there is enough dirt on Hillary to fill a landfill and more keeps coming out all the time and yet still his campaign has taken the higher road.
I never before would have said this and I have in fact shot down others who made such statements. But should Hillary by some miracle win this nomination I will be voting Independent and maybe even Republican. I kid you not. That is not a threat and it is not some whiney rant, this is about her character and the face that she has decided to show the American people.
Oh and one other thing, anyone who thinks that the Republicans aren’t eating this up is highly mistaken. It’s been flat out said by the GOP that they are taking this time to raise money, they are watching to see what dirt is being brought within the democratic party so that they themselves can use it, they are taking the time to rest and build a strong coalition of the best of the best to go up against a very fractured, beat down, overspending, democratic party whose character as a political party is now tainted as a result of this division and mud slinging within it’s own party.
It’s very sad and if that is the case we brought it upon ourselves.
Oh and here’s one more thing that should tell us how “worthy” Hillary is. Remember those rants she was making…Oh something about Obama plagarizing speeches…
Perhaps she could explaing this one: Oh and when you play the two ads, note that they didn’t even take the liberty to change the “3am.” time frame…wow.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/2/29/155558/168/352/466445
well, MIKE, i can tell you that many HILLARY supporters feel the same way. I WILL NOT be voting for b.o. for me, the right experience, coupled with the right policy, and not based on pie-in-the-sky promises. i mean, some of what b.o. promises sounds like an 8th grade student body president campaign. “No more homework! No more gross school lunches!” i will be voting for either Nader or McCain IF b.o. were the candidate.
and look, let’s not talk about plagiarism and using each others responses. how about the debate? Would b.o. pull out of nafta? “Like HILLARY said…” Do you know anything about the new russian president? “Well, HILLARY was pretty much right…” does he have an original thought in his head?
HILLARY 2008
hillary missed pronounced his name which is kinda an insult. bill clinton promised the same kinda hope and change even though he was inexperienced at the time. what is the difference now??????
bill Clinton endorses barack obama
http://youtube.com/watch?v=OyuQy2gAA2w
Hillary claims knowledge of foreign affairs and health issues claiming obama is too inexperienced HELLO her knowledge has been passed on from her husband not from her!!! Keep it Real Hillary
Kris,
There is nothing in this world that is going to convince you of Obama’s experience. Not his voting record against Hillary’s as a Senator, not his civil service record, not his plans, nothing even though it is all out there for public scrutiny. I’d see a much better point were you arguing…Ok how is he going to pay for it, or you disagreed about policy specifics but you just flat out don’t want to see the obvious which is that her being First Lady is not presidential experience. She did not get to sit in any of the important meetings and at best she got any information of things that occurred from Bill. So what does that leave her with? The same experience as Obama, as a Senator.
OBAMA 08
LILBABY26, you can’t fault her for not pronouncing the man’s name exactly correct. i wonder if b.o. knew it? also, bill clinton WAS NOT inexperienced. he had been the governor of a state for over a decade!!! that’s running a country on a small scale. bill clinton was more experienced than obama.
MIKE, as i have said 50,000 times before, i do not discredit what b.o. has done for the people on the southside of chicago. HOWEVER, my argument has ALWAYS been that HILLARY has more of that kind of experience than b.o. does. i don’t understand how YOU don’t see that. even if you just want to say she has more life experience because she’s older. she’s done more things. period. she’s more experienced.
if you want to talk about experience as an elected official, he has more than her based on his time in the illinois legislature. but fixing potholes on the southside of chicago and being a part of national policy are very different things. let’s just agree to disagree.
HILLARY 2008
1. The picture of obama should have been on obama’s website and out in the open from the start! Obama didn’t have a gun to his head when he put on the clothes… so why hide form it? He had to have seen the reporters there… he did it for publicity… I think obama planned this as a land mine for someone to step one in the future so he could use them to get sympathy!
2. The double standard about farakkkan is ridiculous! Farakkkan is a racist, and those that support him are also… bet.com is racist. Farakkan promotes a muslim pimp religion! He has been denounced by muslims worldwide! Anyway obama looked like he was lying about denouncing farakkkan! You could see it in his blinking darting eyes!!! LOLOLOLOL!!!! It is gonna bring the double standard to the forefront!
Speaking of double standards. HILLARY Has declined to return $170000 in contributions to her campaign from individuals at a company accused of widespread sexual harassment, and the CEO of the company has a criminal record. On mere principle she should not have taken the money but as you have seen her campaign doesn’t have principles. These are the same people that said they planned on throwing the kitchen sink at him( that means going negative at full throttle). The same campaign with 10 different campaign slogans. When is she going reject and denounce these people. If this was OBAMA she would have brought this to everyones attention. Headline to the story “OBAMA DO NOT CARE FOR WOMAN”. Her suppoters call her a champion for women. It should be champion for women ONLY when I was the presumed general election nominee but now I need the money.
Someone on this blog needs to realize (or acknowledge) that the “Poor Psychologically Battered Wife Syndrome” card cannot be played at this particular table. The stakes are too high. We stand to lose too much. She may have duped New York with this typical feminist conniving tactic, but America has spoken; we are bot willing to gamble on Hillary! HILLARY’S EMOTIONAL FREE RIDE IS OVER! Let it sink in and take slow deep breaths.
Hillary’s alleged wealth of experience is nonsense. She isn’t entitled to the presidency because her husband held office for two terms. If you are riding shot gun with someone for 8 years…THAT DOESN’T MEAN THAT YOU KNOW HOW TO DRIVE!
I’ve been seeing lately the press now turning on Obama because Hillary Clinton has commanded it. I am amazed how one woman can bring the press to their knees in fear of a backlash.
Did anyone see the politico.com article this morning how a senior member of her campaign Mark Penn is no trying to distance himself from her because he as we all know can see a sinking ship.
Also she should be worried about her upcoming court case and focused on how she can get out of being caught lying and cheating once again…Or does she know how to make bad things disappear?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcbg72tK_ks
no kris, he ran a small southern state with a small population and had NO foriegn policy experience. hillary is trying to run on excellent foriegn policy. during the 90’s we had a failed plan in somalia, the rwanda(i think that’s how u spell it) genocide, we mistakenly dropped bombs in sudan, and we’ve been hit by terrorist on our own soil and in the embassies. hillary cannot win this argument agaisnt mccain..
and in a lot of countries russia included, it is insulting to mispronounce a name because it can sound feminine just as it is insulting in the arab countries to shake a person’s hand with your left hand or show the bottom of your feet.
The true issue is your intelligence. Will you let the media, the intellectuals, the so-called Black LEADERSHIP determine your souls? YOUR PLACE IN SOCIETY OR HISTORY? When Lincoln was debating whether he would use a tactic of slavery abolishment on the Confederacy as a strategic economic weapon, many of those in the Union told him it was not the right time, that he was inexperienced to deal with such matters. Arent you glad they did? His predecessor Andrew Johnson would never passed any legislation on slavery, and in fact slowed down drastically the Reconstruction Movement.
Many such as Sheila Jackson Lee, Andrew Young, and others tout how much Martin Luther King meant to them. Not to say he didnt to us all. Yet, in actual terms, the NAACP, Roy Wilkins and a like often critized MLK heavily at the time for being misguided, too young (hes was under 40), not experienced, and premature for his time. SOund familiar?
Harry Belafonte basically financed most of King’s trips and frequent bails from jail, not all these so-called folks you hear leached on his legacy now.
Now we are with this election 2008, seems like the press, media, even many African American congressman, are turning on Obama…why you ask? Well you think about that. No need to answer the obvious. Being in Texas, never saw much experience W Bush had in being President, no joke intended. BUt he didnt. What about Bill CLinton. Arkansas Governor and Attorney General of Ark, NO US Legislative experiece. Hmmm you ask?
And what about Obama’s credibility question. Hillary and Whitewater, McDougal, and what about those foreign lobbyists, you know those who had known ties with the PLO. Yes the same ones that raised 250,000 for her 2008 campaign. Yet we ignore that.
We have to ask ourselves. Do WE WANT TO CONTROL OUR OWN FUTURES? NO one can control it for you folks. YOU HAVE TO FEEL YOU ARE WORTHY OF SOMETHING GOOD HAPPENING TO YOU. If not, we are wasting our time with this whole political debate. You have to feel that for once you cant live on King, all due respect Mr. King has been passed know for 40 years. WHAT IS THIS GENERATION DOING for Their Place in History? You cant go back to singing kumbaya anymore. Your ancestors wouldnt approve. Now what will YOu DECIDE?
i comment from botswana nd i must go Bafack OBAMA GO,BRING CHANGE TO THE US
Everyones concerned about Obamas pastor what about McCain? His Pastor is a freakin maniac