The BBC’s “World Have Your Say” & Barack Obama

18 Jan, 2007 by John Hawkins

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Yesterday, I did an appearance on a BBC show called, “World Have Your Say,” to talk about Barack Obama and “Is America ready for a black president?”

I knew nothing about the show, but I figured that the BBC is big in Britain, so what the heck? Long story short, it was an odd show because they misled me a bit going in. I thought I was going to be a guest on the show and, of course, they told me they’d mention the blog (Why would I bother doing the show if they didn’t). But, when I actually did the show, they didn’t mention my last name or the fact that I blogged at Right Wing News. In fact, they played it off like I was a caller. Now, I don’t listen to the show, so maybe all of their readers knew that I was someone they’d grabbed in advance, but in any case, if they’d told me exactly what I’d be doing, I wouldn’t have bothered.

Anyway, the first person who talked about Barack went on at length about how he was bi-racial, wasn’t out of the Jesse Jackson school of “black leaders,” and how he had more appeal across racial boundaries and beyond his liberal base because of that.

Then they came to me and I said that’s true, as far as it goes, but Obama is getting by right now on charisma and a moderate tone, his appeal isn’t based on issues. In a presidential campaign, Obama would have to actually get into the issues and his extremely liberal views would kill a lot of the non-liberal support he’s getting today.

They also asked if America is ready for a black President and I said yes, America is ready for a black Republican President. Then I noted that Colin Powell, had he run and won the Republican nomination in 2000 and Condi Rice today (and no, I wouldn’t support Condi or Colin for the nomination although I at least like Condi) would have better shots of getting elected than Obama because they would have a shot to pull in black voters who normally vote Democratic.

But, Obama? My gut instinct is that there are 7 or 8 Republican candidates who could beat him in a Reagan style landslide because he’s inexperienced, very liberal, and beyond charisma, he brings nothing to the table.