WSJ Editorial: Obama's lost years
Barack Obama makes his first campaign visit today to his alma mater, Columbia University. Just don't ask the prolific self-diarist to talk about his undergraduate days in Morningside Heights.
The Columbia years are a hole in the sprawling Obama hagiography. In his two published memoirs, the 47-year-old Democratic nominee barely mentions his experience there. He refuses to answer questions about Columbia and New York -- which, in this media age, serves only to raise more of them. Why not release his Columbia transcript? Why has his senior essay gone missing?
Now in our view, the college years shouldn't normally be used to judge a politician's fitness for office. We're not sure the transcripts of Al Gore, John Kerry and George W. Bush -- which showed them to be C students -- illuminated much for voters. The McCain campaign won't release his records, but we know he graduated at the bottom of his Naval Academy class.
But Mr. Obama is a case apart. His personal story, as told by him, made possible his rise from obscurity four years ago to possibly the White House. He doesn't have a long track record in government. We mainly have him in his own words. As any autobiographer, Mr. Obama played up certain chapters in his life -- perhaps even exaggerating his drug use in adolescence to drive home his theme of youthful alienation -- and ignored others. What's more, as acknowledged in "Dreams From My Father," Mr. Obama reconstructed conversations and gave some people pseudonyms or created "composite" characters.
Voters and the media are now exercising due diligence before Election Day, and they are meeting resistance from Mr. Obama in checking his past. Earlier this year, the AP tracked down Mr. Obama's New York-era roommate, "Sadik," in Seattle after the campaign refused to reveal his name. Sohale Siddiqi, his real name, confirmed Mr. Obama's account that he turned serious in New York and "stopped getting high." "We were both very lost," Mr. Siddiqi said. "We were both alienated, although he might not put it that way. He arrived disheveled and without a place to stay." For some reason the Obama camp wanted this to stay out of public view....
Read entire article at WSJ
The Columbia years are a hole in the sprawling Obama hagiography. In his two published memoirs, the 47-year-old Democratic nominee barely mentions his experience there. He refuses to answer questions about Columbia and New York -- which, in this media age, serves only to raise more of them. Why not release his Columbia transcript? Why has his senior essay gone missing?
Now in our view, the college years shouldn't normally be used to judge a politician's fitness for office. We're not sure the transcripts of Al Gore, John Kerry and George W. Bush -- which showed them to be C students -- illuminated much for voters. The McCain campaign won't release his records, but we know he graduated at the bottom of his Naval Academy class.
But Mr. Obama is a case apart. His personal story, as told by him, made possible his rise from obscurity four years ago to possibly the White House. He doesn't have a long track record in government. We mainly have him in his own words. As any autobiographer, Mr. Obama played up certain chapters in his life -- perhaps even exaggerating his drug use in adolescence to drive home his theme of youthful alienation -- and ignored others. What's more, as acknowledged in "Dreams From My Father," Mr. Obama reconstructed conversations and gave some people pseudonyms or created "composite" characters.
Voters and the media are now exercising due diligence before Election Day, and they are meeting resistance from Mr. Obama in checking his past. Earlier this year, the AP tracked down Mr. Obama's New York-era roommate, "Sadik," in Seattle after the campaign refused to reveal his name. Sohale Siddiqi, his real name, confirmed Mr. Obama's account that he turned serious in New York and "stopped getting high." "We were both very lost," Mr. Siddiqi said. "We were both alienated, although he might not put it that way. He arrived disheveled and without a place to stay." For some reason the Obama camp wanted this to stay out of public view....