Obama - Serving His Constituents

For months we have heard about all the little people who are contributing to the Obama campaign. Each month, when fundraising numbers are released, we are told that the vast majority of these donations came in $10 or $25 increments. If this is the case, it is likely that many of these donors really could not afford the donation they made - that they gave up something, made a personal sacrifice, to support the candidate they believe in so strongly.

Obama claims to be the candidate who will improve the standing of the poor. The foundation of his candidacy is his desire to lift people out of poverty, to provide hope for the hopeless. It is an idea which has sold well, as his millions of small donors shows. These people believe in this man and believe that he has their best interests at heart. They have given up their hard-earned (or government gifted?) dollars to support the ideal of a leader who is "one of them" - who understands their plight and will change their lives for the better.

While this all sounds very high-minded and inspirational, consider the reality of Senator Obama's, and his wife, Michelle's, conduct. Last Thursday, Obama was invited to attend the Alfred E. Smith Memorial fundraiser at the Waldorf-Astoria, a presidential campaign tradition. The room rates at the Waldorf-Astoria start at $599.00 a night, and go up to $799.00 for a one bedroom suite. While hotels in New York are unquestionably expensive, certainly it would have been possible for the Obamas to locate accomodations nearby that would have shown more respect for the value of their donors' contributions. Instead, they treated themselves to a night at the Waldorf. If we assume the rate they paid for this room was an average of the rates above, they spent between 28 and 70 of those $10 to $25 contributions to pay for this room. Of course, we know that they were not the only representatives of the campaign present in the hotel - there had to be security people there, aides, etc., but lacking exact numbers of persons, or rooms, it is impossible to determine the real cost of this extravagence.

If merely choosing to stay at this pricey hotel is not enough evidence of the immense hubris of Senator and Mrs. Obama, let us consider the afternoon snack Michelle ordered from room service.

Suppose you were a donor to the Obama campaign. Suppose you had scrimped on your household budget, month after month, to squeeze out ten dollars a month to contribute to this man, and you learned that nearly seven months of your donations, seven months of your sacrifice, had been thoughtlessly plunked down for nothing more than the delivery charge for this "snack"! Suppose your family had eaten fish sticks instead of hamburger to save this money, and you learned that the Obamas are having a "snack" that costs more than you spend on groceries to feed your family for a month.

The Obamas' complete disregard of their supporters is a clue to the attitude we could expect should this couple occupy the White House. They obviously do not see themselves as "one of us" - they deserve much more than we could ever dream of having. They obviously have no concerns about personal economy or wise spending; extrapolated to the nation, this is a frightening prospect. Combined with the class warfare rhetoric that is a central fixture of Obama's stump speech, this minor incident foretells a policy of high taxes and wasteful spending unlike any we have ever known in this country.

At this moment in our nation's history, we need Ebenezer Scrooge, not Marie Antoinette, in the White House.