It's true that Barack Obama scares me. He has so much charisma that I'm afraid an Obama presidency would actually succeed in implementing his harmful agenda. I'm not saying that Hilary Clinton's and John McCain's agenda's aren't harmful—just that I think they're less likely to succeed in bringing them to fruition.
Nonetheless, there's no point in making too much out of his regrettable comment that small-town Americans "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment" because they are bitter about their economic circumstances. True, the remark is offensive, out of touch, and just plain wrong, and Obama didn't improve the situation with his attempt at recovery. "I didn’t say it as well as I should have,” he admitted, but “I said something that everybody knows is true.”Senator, the problem isn't the way you said it, but that you believe it. But you are not alone in believing what Hillary Clinton, most of the Democratic Party elites, too many of the Republican Party elites, Hollywood, and much of the media "know is true." Clinton, attempting to capitalize on Obama's gaffe, explained that "Americans who believe in the Second Amendment believe it's a matter of constitutional rights," and "Americans who believe in God believe it is a matter of personal faith." Perhaps that's just another example of unfortunate phrasing, but the attitude seems equally elitist and out of touch with the real people who actually believe in God and in the Constitution of the United States.
One of my frustrations in talking with people from other countries is running into comments that begin, "Americans..." followed by some statement of belief, action, or attitude that supposedly represents all or at least most of my countrymen. More often than not, my insistence that "I am not that way, and neither is anyone I know" will not budge them from their certainty that what they see in our movies and television shows, hear from our politicans, and learn from our news media is the real America, while I and my family, friends, and neighbors must be some aberration. That Americans tend to make the same mistake about people from other countries does not excuse such stereotyping.
The misunderstandings of foreigners, however, do not disturb me nearly as much as that those who seek to represent all Americans in the nation's highest office are equally out of touch with those who would be their constituents. Barack Obama merely removed the mask.
