What a pol believes
WSJ’s James Taranto is puzzled about Obama’s Middle East positions, citing from a much-quoted ElectronicIntifada.com article in which Obama is said to have told a pro-Palestinian activist, “Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I’m hoping when things calm down I can be more up front.” The article’s author, and sole source of the quote, is EI’s co-founder, Ali Abunimah.
Writes Taranto:
It is possible that Obama had a sincere change of heart–that he came to see the merits of the Israeli side of the argument. It is also possible that Obama has no sincere views on the subject–that when he was traveling in radical-chic Chicago circles, he told people like Abunimah what they wanted to hear, and now that he has gone national, he has switched to telling a more mainstream Democratic constituency what it wants to hear.
There is a third possibility, as plausible as the other two - that Abunimah is making it up. Wouldn’t be the first time that a Palestinian propagandist was playing with the truth. Strange for Taranto to hang an entire argument on one self-interested person’s version of a conversation – for example, Taranto discounted the Times report about McCain’s relationship with a female lobbyist because, in part, its sourcing was thin.
Taranto next takes a post-modern turn:
But what does Obama really believe–about the Middle East, about Wright’s “black liberation theology” or about any other complicated and sensitive topic? The question is a Rorschach inkblot; the answer reveals more about one’s emotional response to Obama than about Obama’s intellectual response to the world.
Taranto’s right that Obama’s credibility is in the eye of the beholder, but that’s an analysis that applies to just about anybody, no? What does any politician “really believe,” and how do we know?
JustASC is written by Andrew Silow-Carroll, Editor-in-Chief of the 