The Daily Background

Dear Politico’s Mike Allen,

Stop writing inane stories about Barack Obama that blow trivial things out of proportion.

(I should explain that Allen has a personal grudge against Obama because the latter wouldn’t answer questions once when Allen ambushed him coming out of a campaign event at a time he wasn’t taking any questions from the press and followed him around asking him questions. Allen then wrote an article about this incident as though Obama was being the unprofessional one.)

Well, Allen is back with another idiotic article. And this one reflects shades of the madrassa story: it’s about all the juicy oppo research that supposed exists for Obama’s fellow candidates to dig up on him. Just look at the amazing, groundbreaking, totally earth-shattering dirt Allen has found on the Senator:

Why has he sometimes said his first name is Arabic, and other times Swahili? Why did he make up names in his first book, as the introduction acknowledges? Why did he say two years ago that he would “absolutely” serve out his Senate term, which ends in 2011, and that the idea of him running for president this cycle was “silly” and hype “that’s been a little overblown”?

Why that’s a veritable laundry list! Each one of those items could practically stop the man from becoming President! Mike Allen is the next Woodward! All hail Mike Allen!

In fairness to Allen, that’s only his lede, and the rest of the article is pretty much a carbon copy of every other article ever written about the Senator (here’s the spark notes version: blah blah blah inexperience, blah blah blah, black, blah blah blah, drug admission, blah blah blah too liberal). I’m surprised he didn’t mention Obama’s middle name. It’s stupid, but even stupidness needs to be debunked, so here we go, one by one. First:

Why has he sometimes said his first name is Arabic, and other times Swahili?

Has it ever occurred to you, Mike Allen, genius star reporter and eminent source of light, that the man doesn’t entirely know? After all, he only met his father once before the man died (and was named after his father). It’s not entirely impossible is it, that perhaps his mother did not know the exact origin of his name? It’s easy to see what Allen is trying to do: he’s trying to make it seem like Obama is ashamed that his name might be Arabic, and so he’s trying to make it seem like he’s tried to hide it. The truth of course is that Swahili is very similar to Arabic (in fact the former evolved out of the latter), and that his father is from Kenya (a place where Swahili is spoken). Incidentally, the very similar name “Barak” is of Jewish origin. Hardly earth-shattering. Second:

Why did he make up names in his first book, as the introduction acknowledges?

Hi, I’m Mike Allen, and I apparently don’t understand that this story-line has already been beaten to death, recycled and beaten to death again by Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Tribune, who first wrote about this ages ago (2004 specifically). The whole thing has already been put to Obama, and his answers are very simple: he did not remember everyone’s names, he did not know how to contact most people in order to get permission to print their real names, and finally for the sake of length, he used composite characters.

It should be noted that Sweet tracked down people from his first book and found that they thought his descriptions of them were accurate. And he was 100% up front about this when he wrote the book more than a decade ago. The whole story is not worth the ink it was printed on. Third:

Why did he say two years ago that he would “absolutely” serve out his Senate term, which ends in 2011, and that the idea of him running for president this cycle was “silly” and hype “that’s been a little overblown”?

Apparently political reporter-extraordinaire Mike Allen has never heard of a politician changing their mind about term pledges. I’m sure Allen would be just as shocked to learn that Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) has repeatedly said she would not run for a third term in 2008 but is running anyways. I’m sure Allen would be equally shocked to learn that Tom Tancredo (a Republican Representative from Colorado who is now running for President) got elected due to his aggressive campaigning over term limits, and then proceeded to break his own term limit pledge. I’m sure we’ll all read articles from Allen about both of these scandals very soon.

As for Obama’s appraisal that the amount of hype that’s encircled him is overblown? Well, he’s right about that too. And it’s not hypocritical in the least bit to say that the buzz around him is ridiculous and then go and run for President. It’s proof that the buzz hasn’t gone to his head and can still tell reality from ridiculousness. Something I’m afraid we can’t quite say for reporting wonder-boy Mike Allen.

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