A: Sen. Obama promised to a gathering of Planned Parenthood last July that his first act as president – and that’s what he said, “my first act” -- won’t be to bring home the troops from Iraq, or to set up a government health care system or any of the other things that Barack Obama has promised. The Number One thing, the top priority, his first act, is to sign a bill called the Freedom of Choice Act, which re-legalizes partial-birth abortion, among other things. Fine. People have all kinds of opinions about abortion. People are pretty much in agreement about partial-birth abortion – that they don’t want it. But that will be his first priority, and that he would go so far as to pander to Planned Parenthood and say that at their gathering last July, is really, really amazing to me. You can watch him say it on YouTube, by the way.

Q: What do you like or appreciate about Obama now that you didn’t before you began your book?

A: Sen. Obama is an excellent writer. I thought I’d read through “Dreams from My Father” and think that it was some kind of lousy, mediocre book by a celebrity. I didn’t realize when I began reading it that he wrote this as a memoir when he was 33 years old. In fact, I had started reading it a couple years ago, not realizing the context of it. When I sat down to read it and fill it up with Post-it notes and underlines and everything, I realized that this is really a well-written piece of work and that it was very reflective. I think that the Obama who wrote that book is a lot more reflective than the politician today.

Q: How has your book been received by the mainstream liberal media?

A: The first review that I received was from Politico (politico.com), who called my book a “serious” and “fact-based” account of Sen. Obama’s political career. Generally speaking, the mainstream media have ignored me -- although they have had to at least acknowledge that my book contains facts in it and isn’t a compilation of viral Internet smears (laughs). The Obama campaign has tried, without actually mentioning my book, to say it is cut from the same cloth as some of the other things out there, which I think is unfair. I wish they would mention me more often and do it by name, because I really want people to learn about Sen. Obama. I’m telling everyone who will listen about Sen. Obama everywhere I go. I really hope my book can start a national conversation that is not limited to people who already are going to vote against Sen. Obama.

Q: What’s the most important thing about Sen. Obama that you have learned that every voter should know by November?

A: Just because I’d like to see this fact in print, because I am surprised how many people don’t know it, I am willing to offer this as an answer: I want people to know that Sen. Obama won his first election by throwing all of his opponents off the ballot. It’s a story I cover in my first chapter, and it’s something that Sen. Obama is so embarrassed about that he wrote a completely fictitious account of his first election in 1996 in his (2006) book “The Audacity of Hope.”

Q: Do you think Sen. Obama will lose or win and what do you suspect will ultimately do him in if he loses?

A: I don’t know what the results are going to be, and it’s really too early to make predictions. But Sen. Obama has shown in the primaries a tendency to fade near the end of an election. As I explored his earlier elections, you don’t find any that were competitive. From his 1996 election, his 1998 election, the race he lost in 2000 and then the one he won in 2004, each either had special circumstances that helped him win or they were uncompetitive – he knew he was going to win or in the case of the congressional one, he knew he was going to lose. Running his first serious competitive campaign, Sen. Obama faded at the end and let Hillary Clinton win all of the big primaries. He also seems, perhaps, in this election – the general (presidential) election -- to have peaked early and is fading.

I will be very interested to see what kind of bounce he gets from the convention. If he’s not way ahead after this thing, I really think he is a goner right off the bat; he is underperforming his party in all the polls -- this is a Democrat year and Obama is not winning. And people are starting to talk about his real record – for the first time, maybe. The more we hear about that -- the more human he becomes, the less messianic -- the more people are going to demand that he show them that there is anything sincere about what he says – which I think he’ll have a very hard time doing.