# The Obama Hype

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-obama-hype/438667>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [February 22, 2008, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-obama-hype/438667 "2008-02-22T02:40:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 101

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**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\
**Post date:** [February 24, 2008, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-obama-hype/438667/101 "2008-02-24T07:35:38Z")

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[QUOTE=treis]  
1.6 mil is a hell of a lot for a community organizer.  
[/quote]

He didn’t live there when he was a corporate organizer.

> [@](#):
>
> And yes, I’m cynical enough to think that Obama saw community organizing as a path towards political power.

I see. So everything about him is false. _Dreams From My Father_, which he wrote before he was famous or had ever run for anything was a memoir expressing a catalogue of carefully cultivated lies. He truly cared nothing for the poor and had no honestly felt ideology. Every move he made was calculated to achieve one thing and one thing only – political power! Nothing about him is sincere. No choice has ever been principled. He is a brilliant, carefully cultivated sociopath hungry only for power. And the fastest way to power was working for peanuts in the Chicago projects. Or maybe he is what he appears to be. An authentically idealistic person. Apply Occam’s Razor a little bit here.

> [@](#):
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> He sure as hell wouldn’t have as much support as he does now if he had gone into corporate law.

How do you know? Hillary got her start in corporate law. Lots of politicos do. It’s what is done. Corporate law wasn’t even Obama’s only choice. He was also offered a clerkship at the Supreme Court. That would have been a hell of astart to his resume if all he was ever really driven by was his lust for political power.

Let’s apply your cynicism to John McCain. He wouldn’t have gotten where he is now if he hadn’t been a POW for 5 1/2 years. Who’s to say he didn’t deliberately let himself get captured just so he could earn that war hero status for his future political career.

> [@](#):
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> If you were Barack Obama in 1991, what path would you take that would get you more political power faster than what he did?

Any of those high paying jobs would have gotten him going faster than being a community organizer and civil rights attorney in Chicago.

He also would have risen exponentially faster if he’d chosen to poses as a conservative instead of (as you imply) pretending to have compassionate, liberal principles.

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