Obama Partially Belies Michelle, Gainsaying Her Poor-mouthing on His Behalf

The Obama campaign this year is based on emotions, feelings, and prejudices, like Obama's campaign for the presidency in 2008. His wife Michelle gave a tearjerker of a speech --which contained significant lies --in order to play on the emotions of the crowd. Her main purpose in the  speech --given before the Democratic National Convention-- was to arouse sympathy for Obama by poor-mouthing, claiming that he grew up poor, penniless, struggling to make ends meet, and the like. She falsely described Obama's childhood as financially impoverished. Now a child whose parents are divorced is likely to have some psychological problems, which may be the case for Obama as well. However, poverty in money terms was not one of his problems while growing up. Yet Michelle poor-mouthed before the Convention and before millions of TV viewers across America. She said, among other things:

Barack was raised . . . by grandparents who stepped in when she [Obama's mother] needed help. Barack's grandmother started out as a secretary at a community bank. She moved quickly up the ranks, but like so many women, she hit a glass ceiling. And for years, men no more qualified than she was, men she actually trained, were promoted up the ladder ahead of her, earning more and more money while Barack's family continue to scrape by . . .[see here]

Michelle said that Obama's grandmother "moved . . . up the ranks." Yet she didn't say that she became a bank vice president at a major bank. But Obama must have forgotten that Michelle was poor-mouthing his upbringing, his  childhood. He said in his debate with Romney that his grandmother was a bank vice-president, hardly the sort of person to suspect of being economically deprived:

You know, my grandmother -- some of you know -- helped to raise me. . . . She worked her way up, only had a high school education, started as a secretary, ended up being the vice president of a local bank.[the debate transcript, CNN]

  Hence, Obama was inadvertently spoiling the campaign's and Michelle's narrative of an impoverished childhood and upbringing by stating truthfully that his grandmother was a bank vice-president. Actually, he was not entirely frank. His grandmother was the vice president of a rather small "local bank" when she lived in the Seattle area. However, in Hawaii she became vice president of the Bank of Hawaii, a major bank in that state with much international business. The Bank of Hawaii is not a mere "local bank." So, although he truthfully stated that his grandmother was a bank vice president, he tried to minimize this status by saying it was at "a local bank."

Bear in mind that the purpose of poor-mouthing Obama's childhood was to arouse sympathy and identification. His campaign needs to do that because his record of accomplishment is very thin, except for his negative accomplishments which have been dangerously extensive and manifold. The economy, foreign affairs, American domestic security. He has little to boast about. There is the killing of Osama bin Laden of course. But killing Bin Laden did not and will not of itself eliminate the problem of al-Qa`ida, let alone Islamic jihad terrorism.

Negatively, his accomplishments include an Iran that is moving ever closer to getting a nuke weapon, The Bomb. They include an Egypt now under Muslim Brotherhood rule, making threatening hints of war on Israel. The Islamist leader of Turkey, Erdogan, is reported to be Obama's best friend abroad, despite Erdogan's provocations against Israel [the Mavi Marmara and "Free Gaza" flotilla], his blockade of Armenia, and his suppression of democratic freedoms at home in Turkey.

Hence, the emotional appeals, such as made by Michelle, are necessary. But sometimes a guy forgets the script and tells the truth, even if only partially.