Old Obama Versus New Obama

With regards to Obama's past, Nick Gillespie says:

Was his boyhood mentor “Frank” a secret communist? Did Bill Ayers write his books? Did young Barry harbor a soft spot for Franz Fanon and smoke dope like a Cheech & Chong extra? Did he get into Columbia despite being an adult illiterate raised in Kenya by Rosicrucians? Let’s play along and say yes to all this and more.

So freaking what? Compare any and all of that to the grim landscape that Obama has presided over like a dime-store Ozymandias. The guy got just about everything he wanted – expanded auto bailout, mega-stimulus, health-care reform, troop surge in Afghanistan, a free pass to deport immigrants and raid legal-under-state-law pot dispensaries. And it hasn’t worked. The best that the Obama administration can do to defend its objectively awful record – don’t forget the inability to muscle a goddamn budget through the Democratic Senate or deliver a deficit under $1 trillion – is to say that it would have been even worse if McCain had been elected. That sort of counterfactual – and the insistence that it’s alway George W. Bush’s fault – is the last resort of a scoundrel. That was the essence of Clint Eastwood’s bizarre but memorable appearance at the Republican National Convention: Obama hasn’t gotten the job done. If anything, he’s made things worse.

True enough, but Obama's past certainly influenced his policies, and they will certainly influence our country's future.