Question His Patriotism?

Political campaigns do all sorts of strange things all the time, and coverage of such campaigns often take even stranger twists. Take this CNN poll question:



There's been a lot of innuendo and skirting of this issue for the last year (based largely on Obama's middle name : Hussein), but, as The Politico points out, this is a "largely whispered question that none of his main, named critics" have been willing to touch.

Personally, I don't care about his middle name one way or the other. He didn't pick it anymore than I picked mine. What does bother me is his cavalier attitude about the presidency (as evidenced by his opinions on foreign policy) and his (and his wife's) trashing of America in an attempt to make it to the White House.

It's difficult to believe the hyperbole when Michelle Obama says she's never been proud to be an American before her husband ran for president, or that she actually believes Americans are worse off today than in previous generations.

Were my father, as a Depression baby, able to discuss what actual poverty used to be like in America, he would probably scoff at squishy, privileged people like Barak and Michelle Obama. I don't hear either Obama talk about hunting squirrels to feed a family of eight like my father did as a child. And if affording college is the polio of this generation, then we are doing considerably better than previous generations where death and disease were occurances so common as to be expected. These days, college is the norm, regardless of its particular usefulness, but I've yet to hear of anyone dying because of a lack of government involvement.

Perhaps bluntly questioning if Obama is patriotic enough to be president may be unseemly, but if Obama wants the job, he needs to show a bit more respect for the office and the people. Unfortunately, the voters he courts don't really think America is a special place, either.

UPDATE: William Kristol has a nice column addressing this patriotism thing.