Stop the Presses: Obama Was Ambitious

Obama's 'Hidden Side' is the ominous headline of a story in the Chicago Sun-Times, which breaks wide open Obama's secret, dark, reprehensible past, riddled with the villainy of—gasp!—ambition.

On the stump, presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama suggests his political career was an afterthought. He tells of returning to Chicago from Harvard Law School to be part of a civil rights practice and teach law.

However, a new book reveals a reason Obama joined a politically connected law firm: to give him entree to the powerbrokers in Chicago's elite liberal political community who helped elect Mayor Harold Washington -- a job the new lawyer had his eye on.

Obama actually pondered a political career early on, even telling Craig Robinson, his future brother-in-law, he might get into politics after Harvard and "maybe I can be president of the United States."

ZOMG—the bastard!

Presuming for the moment that the recollections of Obama's nefarious aspirations to, um, be a leader or wev in Obama: From Promise to Power are accurate, so fucking what? The same charge of naked ambition is routinely lobbed against Hillary Clinton as if it's a bad thing. "She's always wanted to be president, the horrible bitch!" Well, fuck me! The unmitigated nerve of extended planning and preparation for what is arguably the most difficult job on the entire fucking planet! How could they?!

By most accounts, George W. Bush never really considered being president with any seriousness; Jeb was the real go-getter. Dubya stumbled from a failed Congressional campaign, bad business deals, and a stint in baseball to the largely ceremonial governorship of Texas, at which point it sounds like Karl Rove got designs on the White House and figured Dubya would be just the patsy for the job. By Dubya's own admission, he spent the first half of his life in a directionless haze of immaturity and drunkenness. He never planned on being president, and—dare I say?—it shows.

He was categorically unprepared for the job—had never traveled, didn't understand the world, barely comprehends (or likes) the country itself or the people in it. He is a poor manager, a terrible leader, an embarrassingly abysmal speaker, an intellectual lightweight, and an irrepressible bully, who surrounds himself with incompetent cronies. He is disrespectful, dismissive of legitimate dissent, and disdainful of the opposition. In every aspect, from protocol to personality, he is unfit for the presidency, in no small part because he walked into the job without a moment's forethought, expecting the role, the office, and the rest of the world to bend to his shape, rather than having formed himself in its image.

So maybe an ambitious nature ("hidden" or not) shouldn't be treated like a disqualification, but instead the most fundamental prerequisite for the job. Someone who takes the presidency seriously, who respects the gravity of the position and all it entails, is to be commended, not condemned. It turns out, being the sort of guy with whom it would be "fun" to drink beer isn't actually the most important qualification for being the leader of our nation. Go fucking figure.