The Fromson File

So Barack Obama’s early life was scrambled by his father’s  abandonment.  Haven’t  all of us who endured a similar trauma? It takes years to get over. I know.  But is that story worth frontpage treatment plus six columns across half of an inside page of Thursday’s Los Angeles Times?  I’m not purposely feeding red meat to Sam Zell who wants to be rid of anything serious running in the diminishing quality of his newspaper. But, as they say, let’s get a life when it comes to campaign coverage. The nationwide  decision to print or broadcast every morsel of information about Barack or his confused opponent in the midst of summer is just plain idiotic. Who really cares?  Regardless of the bloated news cycle inflicted upon us, can’t we be given some relief?  That’s the way things were done in the days of back room politics that I used to cover, and it worked pretty well. Barack should go on an extended vacation, preferably to one of the distant islands of the Pacific that would be deemed to be too far away and certainly too expensive for the cable suits to try and keep up with the erstwhile Democratic candidate.

Meanwhile, Barack’s trip to the Middle East, accompanied by the three network anchors, is bound to attract beaucoup news coverage there as well as here. After visits to Egypt and Israel in the past few months, I would be the last to expect him to accomplish much beyond collecting a few photo ops.  Like all presidents and presidential candidates who have preceded him, I’m sure Barack would be wise enough to expect little else to come from his smiles and handshakes either with the Israelis or Arabs. Neither party is in a mood to talk seriously about negotiations. From my experience of having been to the region repeatedly since 1967, the roadmap to peace always has been filled with potholes. So  there’s hope that our aspiring leader, having the good sense to take along a cadre of military-wise experts to accompany and caution him will avoid any verbal thunderbolts that he might inadvertently launch and regret later.  Senators Jack Reed (D-RI) and Chuck Hegel (R-NEbraska) are on board. Adding Senator Jim Webb(D-VA) and (ret) General Wesley Clark would seem to seal the deal. All four are Vietnam veterans and given what I’ve heard them say, any could be logical candidates to be Obama’s vice-presidential running mate, although Hegel the Republican  would be a longshot.  A military cohort would diminish  John McCain’s alleged advantage, boasting of his “experience” as a national security expert. I have never figured out what that experience means, having been in and out of Vietnam for six years and interviewed countless fighter pilots during the war.  

While mulling that over and getting past the silly controversy over a  frontpage cover of the July 21st New Yorker that inadvertently poked fun at Barack and his wife, Michelle, go inside and read an interesting insight of Obama’s political maturation by one of the magazine’s political writers, Ryan Lizza. It will offer more insights than most of the know-it-alls who have staked claims to expertise, covering the campaign until now.

Lizza concludes with this observation: “Obama has frequently been one step ahead of his friends and the public in anticipating his own rise. Perhaps it is all those people he has met over the years who told him he would be President one day. The
Reverend Alvin Love, a South Side Baptist minister and a longtime Obama friend, said that Obama called him in December 2006, seeking advice on whether to run for president. “My dad told me that you’ve got to strike while the iron is hot,” Love recalls saying and Obama replied, “The iron can’t get any hotter.”

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