The recent revelation, and reservations expressed in a policy memo by Hillary Clinton's one-time chief strategist Mark Penn, challenging Barack Obama's "American roots," are instructive. In a March 2007 memo Penn noted: "all of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared toward showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light. Save it for 2050," according to Atlantic magazine writer Joshua Green who broke the story. Penn continued: "It also exposes a very strong weakness for him -- his roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values."
As expressed on this blog, I do wonder about an Indonesian madrassa education and being raised in an areligious Muslim household. Americans advocate diversity, which is the positive side of Obama, but at what cost? Are American values, while we are engaged in two horrific conflicts in very different parts of the world, to be completely set aside?
Now I'm wondering how many Clinton supporters are pondering the same thing.
Posts
