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On Tuesday, at the Washington meeting of LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens), Barack Obama invoked his own life story (as he always does) as an inspiring example of patriotism and commitment, citing specifically "my twenty years of public service."
Why doesn't anyone in the mainstream media jump on this claim as an outrageous example of resume padding?
Twenty years ago – July, 1988—he was traveling the world in an extended vacation to Europe and Kenya, before packing up to move to Cambridge to attend Harvard Law School. Does Senator Obama consider his three years at Harvard (where he did well academically and seems to have enjoyed an active social life) part of his career of "public service"? Were his undergraduate years at Occidental College and Columbia also part of that service? I know that "progressives" tend to exaggerate the value of academic experience, but to raise your years in lecture halls and seminars to a kind of "service" to anyone (except yourself) amounts to the most ridiculous sort of solipsistic inflation.
What about the several years Obama concentrated on writing his first book "Dreams from My Father" (published in 1995) – do those years also comprise his "record of public service"? Barack even spent several months in Bali so he could complete his manuscript without distractions. I know that every author considers his work a special gift to the world (I'm just finishing my eleventh book, for publication this November, so I understand) but if literary endeavors amount to public service, then does that include even conservative books – or diet books, children's literature, and trashy novels?
Or maybe the Illinois Senator believes that in his case, summer jobs at prestigious law firms, or three years ('93 to '96) as an associate at a twelve-attorney firm in Chicago (Davis, Miner, Barnhill and Galland) amounts to public service.
One could argue that teaching troubled kids – as an inner city high school teacher, for instance, or working in special ed – constitutes an important sort of public service. But would you say the same about a well-paid part-time job as a lecturer at one of the nation's elite law schools (University of Chicago), speaking to students already guaranteed successful careers? Obama continued as a lecturer at the U of C Law School during the six years he served in the state senate in Illinois – so maybe he's counting those years as double.
Giving Senator Obama the benefit of the doubt, how did he ever come up with the figure of "twenty years of public service"? For the sake of argument, let's accept the dubious notion that his three years (June '85 to May '88) as a "community organizer" (for the "Developing Communities Project") count as public service. That's three years there, six years in the state senate in Illinois, and three-and-a-half-years so far in the U.S. Senate.
Unless you apply some sort of radical "new math," that amounts to 12-and-a-half years of "service."
Senator Obama has made the need for "universal service" an important plan in his campaign platform--demanding, for instance, that high school kids, and even middle school students, log hours a week of service as a requirement for graduation, or else their school districts would be cut off from all federal aid.
Does this mean that other young people will get service credit for writing books, working at law firms, teaching law school, or traveling in Europe – or do those sorts of "service" only count for Obama himself?
Or do his claims about "twenty years" merely amount to another example of old-fashioned fudging and braggadocio, typical of a preening politician with more aptitude for posing than policy?
Any other public figure would be questioned on this distortion of his own background. For those who say we can't question the Hope Pope in the same way that we'd challenge other politicos, I offer only three words: "Yes we can."
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