How Obama Won by Earl Ofari Hutchinson--Book Review

On January 20th, the world will witness an historic event--the inauguration of Barack Obama. If you seek to learn more about how Barak Obama inspired a nation and captured the White House, you need to look no further than the engaging and fair, How Obama Won by Earl Ofari Hutchinson.

A leading political analyst and social commentator, Hutchinson follows up his last two titles, How the GOP Can Keep the White House, How the Democrats Can Take it Back and The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House, with an exploration into Obama's campaign from start to finish: what he did, what he didn't do, and what challenges he faced.

Americans' desire for change--something that Hilliary Clinton as an insider couldn't provide, how important or unimportant race would be in the 2008 Election, the state of the economy and the Wall Street Crisis of September 2008, Sarah Palin, and other issues that floated around from the day that Obama announced his intentions to seek the Democratic nomination, are put under a fair and balanced light to illuminate for the reader the elements that came into play and the decisions that were made to help catapult Barak Obama to the highest position in the land.

Conservatives, liberals and everyone in between will appreciate Hutchinson's writing style that allows even someone who does not regularly follow politics to understand his opinions, and yet, How Obama Won contains the right type of information to attract readers who have a working knowledge of the American political landscape. I can see this book being blogged about for months to come as polticial anaylsts dissect every facet of Obama's campaign strategy and continue to follow Obama's presidency.

While some readers may not agree with Hutchinson's assessment of Barack Obama as a "moderate centrist Democrat" and the author's comments about the Bush Administration, Hutchinson does an excellent job of showing how dissatisfaction with the current Administration played a huge role in Obama's win.

How Obama Won by Earl Ofari Hutchinson will not only be enjoyed by adults with an interest in politics, it would make superb high school and college reading material for social studies and current events classes of all kinds.


Title: How Obama Won
Autor: Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Publisher: BookSurge Publishing
ISBN-10: 143921929X
ISBN-13: 978-1439219294
SRP: $13.95 (U.S. Paperback) $9.95 (U.S. eBook)

Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton by Kathleen Willey--Book Review

A book to be read with a critical eye, Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton is a chilling commentary of what might have happened within the Clinton White House and why Hillary Clinton isn't the best candidate for women.

A Democratic activist, Kathleen Willey helped Bill and Hillary Clinton make it into the White House in 1992. When her family got into trouble, she turned to Bill Clinton for help and ended up a victim of assault. Target shares the story of the events leading up to her assault in the Oval Office and how the Clinton machine came after her to insure her silence.

I approached Target with enthusiasm. My interest in politics coupled with what I had already heard about Kathleen Willey made me jump at the chance to review this book.

Willey interviewed several people for Target and included references from other books about the Clintons: David Shippers, Joyce Milton, Dick Morris, Carl Bernstein, Jared Stern, and many others were cited. This thorough research, however, is not enough to make this reader say she enjoyed the book. If the entire account had been as strong and well written as the final chapter, my opinion would have been different. It wasn't, so therefore I cannot get by some of the issues I saw as I read.

The writing is passive with many instances of "was" and "were". In addition, the effectiveness of Willey's arguments are lessened by the qualifier, "I think" through much of the book.

In the Introduction and in the portion of text which discusses the assault in the Oval Office, Willey retells how Clinton's frantic aide is outside the door banging and yelling because Clinton is late for an important meeting. She says, "I realize why they don't come in. They've been told to stay out." (Page 5). Mere assumption, and not the only case.

Willey is not kind to many of the people she came in contact with during her years in the White House, but is appalled at how members of the Clinton machine and the press assault women who they chose to discredit.

* "Ann Stock had no sense of decorum or good taste, which was typical of the Clinton White House." (Page 43)

* "Julie always had frizzy blonde hair that was so big it almost looked like an afro. She had no sense of style or makeup, so she always wore bright purple blush. She looked like Clarabelle." (Page 183)

* Speaking of Linda Tripp - "The press was brutal to her, just brutual...The press made fun of everything, from her hair to her clothes to her nose. Nothing was off limits." (Page 129)

* "...the Clintonistas quickly dispatched each accusation, saying Paula Jones was 'white trash after cash' and making Gennifer Flowers out to be a promiscuous lounge singer." (Page 97)

On Page 58, Willey says she cannot for the life of her remember what she wore the day she was assaulted in the Oval Office, but in the Introduction and on Page 61 she says that Clinton put his hands up her skirt and over her blouse. And on more than one occasion, Willey paints herself as a "quintessential soccer mom", but how many soccer moms work in the White House and are married to a lawyer who is the son of a famous senator?

These criticisms and others not mentioned put the credibilty of portions of Willey's account under scrutiny.

What Willey did exceptionally well is explain why the Clintons should not return to the White House, supporting her opinions with extensive documentation. Here are some excerpts from Chapter 10:

* Speaking of Hillary's presidental campaign - "They don't want us to remember that he is her spouse...who will help make decisions from a nearby desk...If Hillary wins the presidency, we will get them both...Just as he needed her to put out his fires, she needs his influence and his political wisdom. He will be there as her partner, and still, as a predator." (Page 225)

* " Hillary is no feminist, no champion for women, no advocate for women. She is an advocate for one woman: Hillary Clinton." (Page 229)

* "Thanks to the Clintons, leaders like Gloria Steinem and Patricia Ireland lost all credibility on sexual harrassment, sexual abuse, assault, even domestic abuse...the feminists no longer have the authority to address these issues." (Page 237)

Overall, I don't believe Target will persuade anyone to change directions when it comes to the Clintons. Conservative readers will enjoy Willey substantiating what they believe and liberal readers will decry this as a pack of lies. In the end, however, no matter which side of the political spectrum you fall in, the questions still remain of what really happened in the Clinton White House.


Title: Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton
Author: Kathleen Willey
Publisher: World Ahead Publishing, Inc.
ISBN-13: 9780974670164
ISBN-10: 0974670162
U.S. Price: $25.95

Earl Hutchinson and The Ethnic Presidency--Blog Blitz

I am taking part in the Ethnic Presidency Blog Blitz. The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House is the latest book from sydicated columnist and political analyst Earl Hutchinson. Earl has been a frequent guest on Hannity and Colmes, The O’Reilly Factor, The Big Story, EXTRA, and numerous CNN News and Talk Shows. He was a regular commentator on CNBC’s The Dennis Miller Show.

Earl has been a guest on the Today Show, Dateline, The Lehrer Hour, and BET News, America’s Black Forum. He is a frequent commentator for the American Urban Broadcast Network and Ed Gordon’s News and Notes on NPR. He is also a featured columnist for www.BlackNews.com, www.BlackAmericaWeb.com, and www.Alternet.org.

Earl is associate editor of New America Media. His op-ed columns appear in the Baltimore Sun,L.A. Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Newsday, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Christian Science Monitor, and other major newspapers.



The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House is an explosive look at how racial and ethnic conflict has openly and covertly played a crucial role the past three decades in influencing, shaping and ultimately deciding who bags the world’s biggest political prize, the White House. It tells how racial politics will play an even bigger role in the 2008 presidential election and future elections.

It examines Obamamania, the Hillary and Bill factor, the soaring Latino vote, the silent but potent Asian-American vote, the immigration wars, the GOP’s love-hate relationship with Black and Latino America, and Bush’s effort to recast the GOP from a clubby, ole white guys party to a party of racial diversity.

The following are three separate excerpts from Chapter 6 - Reagan, Race, and His Imitators:

EXCERPT #1

Ronald Reagan could have been standing at the podium of his own library in Simi Valley, California during the first GOP presidential contender’s debate in May 2007 plugging himself as the best GOP candidate to capture the White House in 2008. The ten presidential candidates bellowed out his name nineteen times. They elbowed each other aside to smother themselves in his mantle. Their Reagan love fest was not solely a calculated political ploy to play on the name of the man millions still hold in reverential awe. It was a matter of practical politics.

Reaganism is still very much alive and kicking in American politics. The then top GOP contenders Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, as well as the other six who stood on the podium at the Reagan library that May evening, owed their political life to him. The same could be said for later entrant Fred Thompson who wasn’t at the debate. He announced his candidacy months after the debate.

The Reagan revolution didn’t merely return America to a world in which God, patriotism, rugged individualism, militant anti-communism, and family values ruled supreme. Reagan, far more adroitly, than former President Richard Nixon a decade before him parlayed the forgotten American sentiment and a sanitized image of the past into a powerful conservative ideological movement. Race was a never-far-from-the-surface subtext to that movement.

EXCERPT #2

In the immediate decade after the collapse of the 1960s civil rights movement and Nixon’s White House ascension which further fueled racial anger and accelerated the shift, white Southerners had joined with blue-collar ethnics who were fed up with bussing, affirmative action, and crime to desert the Democratic Party in even bigger numbers than during Nixon’s campaigns.

Reagan rode the crest of his Neshoba speech and in his early years in the White House appealed to their fear that society was spinning out of control and that the Democrats did not have the answers. He stoked their fervent hope that a telegenic, conservative Republican could fulfill Nixon and Goldwater’s promise to restore law and order, clamp down on permissiveness and restore prosperity.

Reagan upped Goldwater and Nixon’s ante. His first task was to eliminate the remnants of the Great Society programs rejected by many whites as government handouts to blacks. He didn't totally succeed. But he further eroded public enthusiasm for massive spending on social and education programs. During Reagan's first four years federal expenditures on education and training, social services, public works, civilian research and development dropped.

Reagan fixated Middle Americans on the government as pro-higher taxes, pro-bureaucracy, pro-immigrant and especially pro-welfare and pro-rights of criminals. He painted government as a destructive, bloated, inefficient white elephant, weighting down the backs of Americans. He claimed that government entitlement programs that benefited the poor were a crushing drain on the budget. The Reagan imitators played hard on these themes and vowed to cut taxes and tighten the reins even more on federal spending in their debates in 2007.

Even though the Reagan revolution masked its racial appeals in code words, and subtle messages, race continued to lurk close to the surface, and from time to time it exploded to the surface.

EXCERPT #3

Reagan’s frontal attack on big government, social programs and civil rights further insured Republican wins in national elections and tightened the Republican Party’s cast iron-grip on the South. Bush in 2000 and again in 2004 benefited mightily from Reagan’s Southern and forgotten man strategy. In both presidential elections, he hauled in the electoral votes of the Old Confederate states, and the Border States with the exception of Maryland and its disproportionate number of black voters, and secured the granite like backing of America’s heartland.

Civil rights, civil liberties, women’s groups, and liberal Democrats still regard the Reagan years as the most disastrous in modern times for civil rights and social programs and that didn't change even as the nation lionized Reagan after his death in June 2004. GOP conservatives revel in the era and aura of their beloved icon. They should. His Southern Strategy, forgotten man pitch, and happy style of politics, put Republican presidents squarely in the national driver’s seat.

John McCain’s stay the course talk on Iraq, terrorism, taxes and curbing federal spending were pages straight from Reagan’s playbook aimed at shoring up any wavering GOP backing in the white South. They invoked Reagan’s patented God, country, and patriotic themes in debates through 2007. The Reagan imitators hoped that Reagan’s legacy will do the same for them.

For much more information about Earl Ofari Hutchinson and The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Affects the Race to the White House, visit his blog blitz homepage at http://inspiredauthor.com/promotion/Ethnic+Presidency+Blitz. To order your copy of The Ethnic Presidency, visit www.ethnicpresidency.com or
Amazon.com

The New Feminized Majority by Charles Derber and Katherine Adam

I'm doing something a little different today. Charles Derber and Katherine Adam are on a virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book Promotion to promote their timely nonfiction political book, The New Feminized Majority: How Democrats Can Change America with Women's Values, which was recently released by Paradigm Publishing.



I've always had an interest in politics and I actually ran for public office in 2003. Things didn't work out the way I hoped, but I still remain active in local politics as much as my schedule allows. One of the things that always interests me during political discussions with co-workers or friends is the reasons that we vote the way we do.

For some, they are going to vote Democratic or Republican because they always have. It doesn't really matter who the candidate is; all that's important is what letter appears after his or her name. For others, it's a single issue: be it the economy, ending the war in Iraq, reproductive rights, or any other issue that is most important to this voter; whichever candidate feels the same way she does, gets her vote. And there are many other ways in which voters connect to a particular candidate before stepping inside the ballot box.




The 2008 presidential primaries have certainly left us all hanging; and for the first time ever, the Democrats are going to have to choose either a woman or a man who has a multiracial and multicultural background to represent them against a Republican challenger. Both Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton embody the modern day Democratic Party, but some people, like authors Charles Derber and Katherine Adam, believe that Barak Obama is a more feminized candidate than Hillary Clinton.

Why?



On Page 144, the authors discuss how Obama's background allows him to understand the feminized values of "diversity, equality, and community". Derber and Adam go on to state, "He (Obama) highlights the importance of values in his own life and in the nation's politics. He emphasizes that there is a "common good" or universal set of values that can bring Americans together. He stresses change and the movement from self-interested partisanship to a feminized politics of the common good."

They go on to say, "Obama emphatically argues that values must drive politics."

Do you agree? Is Obama a more feminized candidate than Clinton? Must values drive politics?

Are you interested in finding out more? Then purchase a copy of The New Feminized Majority: How Democrats Can Change America with Women's Values at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders, or at Paradigm Publishing's website.


This virtual book tour has been brought to you by:

Tom Kuiper and I've Always Been a Yankees Fan

I've Always Been a Yankees Fan: Hillary Clinton in Her Own Words by Tom Kuiper is the biggest collection of Hillary quotes ever, put into witty, sometimes illustrated, and often hilarious context.

Tom Kuiper is a political activist who has followed Hillary Clinton's career for many years. Even with that being the case, I thought something must have surprised him during the writing of this book. Here's what he had to say:

"The most surprising thing I found out about Hillary is her long tactic of attacking her perceived enemies whenever something bad happens to her, or both she and Bill Clinton.

We all remember how she went on the offensive during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, blaming Bill's troubles on a 'vast, right-wing conspiracy.' She'd been doing that for a long time. Back in 1988, Bill gave a disastrous 'introduction' speech for Michael Dukakis at that years' Democratic convention. Bill's speech went on and on for over 35 minutes, and it was widely panned by everyone who saw it. Hillary blamed it all on her perceived enemies, namely the Dukakis people. She told a friend, "they set Bill up," meaning Dukakis and his advisors wanted Bill to look bad.

Same thing happened in 1996, when President Bill Clinton was heckled during a speech by some far-left people who objected to him signing the welfare reform bill. Hillary actually thought they were Republican spies. She told an advisor she wanted a background check done on all people who were going to attend the upcoming Democratic convention, to make sure there would be no Republican 'spies' there.

There are many more examples in "Yankees Fan" of Hillary blaming her political enemies whenever things go against the Clintons."


I'VE ALWAYS BEEN A YANKEES FAN VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR '08 will officially begin on Jan 2, 2008 and continues all month.If you would like to follow Tom's tour, visit http://www.virtualbooktours.wordpress.com/.

ATTENTION!!! Buy one of Tom's books at AMAZON, send US an online copy of the receipt before January 31st and he will send you a personalized thank you letter, PLUS other incentives including free ebooks from Pump Up Your Book Promotion! Go to http://www.pumpupyourbookpromotion.com/authorsontour.html to see what else you could receive!

This virtual book tour has been brought to you by: