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Corsi's editor, Mary Matalin, claims his book is "a piece of scholarship, and a good one at that." There's nothing scholarly at all about this pathetic excuse for a hatchet job.

Sean Hannity tried to push Corsi's crazy theories on his radio and TV shows through multiple appearances. Hannity condemned "all you left-wing bloggers who want to smear Mr. Corsi" and to prove the author's credibility asked him, "How many footnotes are in the book?" Corsi responded, "There's over 300 pages, 700 footnotes, and I'll stand by the truth of every statement in this book."

Actually, there's only 681 footnotes. But maybe he'll stand by the truth of every statement after that one. (For the record, I have 769 footnotes in my shorter book about Obama, which, based on Hannity's faulty logic, must mean that my book is 13% more true than Corsi's.) The fact is, a footnote to an unreliable right-wing blogger isn't proof of the truth; it's proof that Corsi will write and cite anything, no matter how false, if it serves his far right agenda.

Corsi begins his book by noting that he titled it "Obama Nation" because that sounds like "abomination."(x) This bad Biblical pun damning Obama as evil reflects the sleazy attacks Corsi makes throughout the book. Corsi recounts that at World Net Daily, "a large number of e-mails were received from readers objecting that Obama was not the Messiah but rather the biblical Antichrist prefigured in Saint John's Apocalypse."(225) Corsi denies that he thinks Obama is the Antichrist, but much of his book is devoted to demonizing Obama.

Corsi has admitted in one interview about Obama's memoir, "I had to read it about six times before I began to figure it out." Thousands and thousands of people have read Obama's book, and Corsi seems to be the only one who had to read it six times before he could figure out that Obama was critical of his father's flaws. No, correct that: Corsi actually never figured it out himself. He admits that he wondered "why Obama failed to discuss his father's alcoholism and polygamy in his autobiography."(24) But Corsi writes that he is told by journalist Rob Crilly that he's wrong, that Obama in fact writes about all of this in his book (it's described in depth on pages 125-126, 215-217, and 344 of Obama's memoir). Unable to confess his own inability to read a book that he claims he's almost "memorized," Corsi prefers to blame Obama: "What is Obama trying to hide and why would he do so?"(24) Confronted with proof of his own stupidity, Corsi prefers to believe that Obama tried to conceal his father's flaws in a book which is all about discovering his father's flaws.

It takes real chutzpah to read a highly acclaimed book six times, overlook the most basic facts clearly written in it, and then blame the author for concealing the truth that he actually wrote. But Corsi has no shame. He writes: "That Obama's father was a polygamist and an alcoholic may or may not tell us much about Obama. But that Obama does not present the true story about his father outright in his autobiography, in an easy-to-follow fashion, leaves the reader to discover the revelation, much as Obama claims he himself did."(296) As a literary critic, Corsi is simply dreadful. The brilliance of Obama's memoir is that he lets the reader discover the flaws of his father just as Obama did himself. It's crazy to imagine that Obama's memoir is deceptive because he didn't follow a strict chronological order.

OBAMA'S MEMOIR

Corsi's embarrassing factual errors begin at the very start of his book. Corsi writes: "Interestingly, Obama did not dedicate Dreams from My Father to his mother, or to his father, Barack Senior, or to his Indonesian stepfather. Missing from the dedication are the grandparents who raised him in Hawaii...." That is very interesting, since Obama wrote in the introduction to his memoir, "It is to my family, though -- my mother, my grandparents, my siblings, stretched across oceans and continents -- that I owe the deepest gratitude and to whom I dedicated this book."(xvii)

In an appearance on MSNBC, Corsi tried to explain away this mistake pointed out by Media Matters: "In the introduction that he wrote after, this was going with the second book. And the original book had no dedication page and this is not the typical way that you dedicate a book. So I'm making the distinction there is no dedication page in the book at all, never has been." Once again, Corsi is wrong. The introduction where Obama dedicates his book to his family appears in the original edition of Obama's memoir, as well as the revised edition Corsi used for his book. Moreover, Corsi's attack against Obama was that he had not dedicated the book to his family, not that he didn't have a specific dedication page. But rather than admit a clear factual error, Corsi continues to deny that he made a mistake and tries to deceive viewers about his book.

Corsi claims that in Obama's memoir, "we find Obama caught up in half-truths"(18) because, Corsi reveals, Obama's father had turned down a full scholarship from the New School in order to attend Harvard. Where did Corsi learn this? Well, actually, it was printed right there in Obama's memoir. But Corsi calls it a "half-truth" because "Obama does not make this important point chronologically."(18)

It's difficult to convey just how bad of a reader Corsi is. Although he has a Ph.D. (as he reminds us on the cover of the book and the top of every other page), Corsi seems incapable of the most basic reading skills. Instead, Corsi complains about Obama's memoir, "Deciphering the truth takes much effort...."(18) Unfortunately for his readers, Corsi is not someone who likes to put a lot of effort into a book, whether he's reading it or writing it.

Many of Corsi's critiques don't make any sense at all. Corsi attacks Obama's memoir because he "never states precisely how many wives his father had, or how many half-brothers and sisters he has from different mothers...."(21) Yet Corsi himself interviews Obama's uncle: "Sayid Obama was not even sure how many wives his brother had....The number of children Obama Senior had is equally uncertain."(26) If Obama's uncle doesn't know how many wives and children Obama's father had, why is Corsi denouncing Obama for being unable to state the numbers "precisely"?

According to Corsi, "Obama blames racism for breaking up his parents' marriage, not his father's polygamist ways..."(21) Corsi provides no citation for this false claim, probably because it's not true.

Corsi devotes six full pages of his book to expose a "lie" about how Obama's father came to America: "Obama is again lying about history to claim JFK had anything to do with bringing his father to the United States to study."(33) And what was this "lying"? As the Washington Post discovered, John F. Kennedy and the Kennedy family foundation had funded a second airlift to bring African students to US colleges, but that Obama's father had been part of the first airlift. When Obama talks about the Kennedy family's role in helping bring students like his father to America, he's not lying.

By contrast, Corsi's book is littered with factual errors, such as these identified by Media Matters:

Corsi claims that Obama's omits his half-sister's birth: "remarkably, he makes no reference to Maya's birth"(48) In reality, Obama mentions it on page 47 of his memoir.

Corsi claims that Obama's work as a community organizer in New York City is "a job Obama does not mention in his autobiography."(129) Obama does discuss it on page 139.

Corsi suggests that "Obama Senior, following the prescripts of Islamic sharia law, divorced" Obama's mother in 1963.(44) In reality, there's not any evidence, beyond the assertions of a right-wing blog, that the divorce had anything to do with sharia law.

According to Corsi, "Still, Obama has yet to answer questions whether he ever dealt drugs, or if he stopped using marijuana and cocaine completely in college, or whether his drug usage extended into his law school days or beyond."(77) In reality, Obama reports that after he went to college at Columbia, "I stopped getting high."(120)

According to Corsi, "Nowhere in the autobiography does Obama disclose that his wife-to-be accompanied him to Africa on the 1992 trip."(25) Not true. Obama writes on page 439, "After our engagement, I took Michelle to Kenya to meet the other half of my family."

Corsi is fond of using a common technique: he cites some outrageous claim as if it were true and then discusses the impact it would have on voters. For example, he discusses a YouTube video and declares that "What would be heard by most listeners is that Obama hates the military so much that he might leave the United States defenseless against our enemies..."(3)

False reports about religion form a major part of Corsi's book. Corsi claims, "Obama's Kenyan father was Muslim."(20) In reality, Obama's father was an atheist. This fact is confirmed in Corsi's own book when Sayid Obama (Barack Sr.'s brother) declared, "I did not see my brother practice Islam, especially after he came back from his studies in the United States."(22) But Corsi claims, "there is no doubt Obama Senior was a Muslim by birth and upbringing"(22) That's a lovely claim, but unfortunately for Corsi, it's factually false: A Muslim, like a Christian, is determined by faith, not by birth and upbringing.

Corsi writes, "Was Obama ever trained in Islam? Obama and his presidential campaign vehemently deny he ever had anything to do with Islam. But is that the truth?"(50) No, it's not the truth. But the lie belongs to Corsi, not Obama or his campaign. According to Corsi: "Obama did attend a government-run public school in Indonesia and he did receive Islamic instruction, including study of the Koran. Here the Obama campaign makes a mistake. I accept Obama's statement that he is a Christian, but take exception to the claim that Obama was not introduced to Islam as a child."(51) Of course, the Obama campaign never claimed that Obama did not receive instruction about Islam, as he explains in detail in his own memoir. Instead, the campaign asserted, "Barack Obama is Not and Never Has Been a Muslim," which is true. Studying the Koran doesn't make you a Muslim. Corsi claims that a blog found Obama's school records and discovered his horrifying revelation: "his religion was listed as Islam." Well, of course it was. You had to be listed as Christian or Muslim at the school, and with an atheist mother and a nominally Muslim stepfather, it was natural for Obama to be listed as a Muslim.

Corsi attacks Obama at length because his memoir describes a childhood Indonesian home in a "still-developing area on the outskirts of the town." Corsi complains, "that physical description does not match the Indonesia television news videos showing the house..."(54) According to Corsi, it is "an attractive neighborhood in the center of Jakarta."(54) Perhaps that's because things change. In 1970, my parents lived in central Illinois near the edge of a cornfield; today, that same house is in the center of town. In 1970, when Obama lived in Indonesia, Jakarta had a population under four million; today, it's over 13 million. But rather than the obvious explanation of urban growth, Corsi sees only a vast Obama conspiracy: "it is hard to decipher what Obama might be trying to hide by not being clear about the specific location of the houses where he lived in Jakarta....Looking closely at Obama's narrative, what dominates the story are the holes."(55)

Corsi notes "a bizarre but important story" where Obama recounts in his memoir being nine years old and reading a Life magazine in the embassy library and seeing a picture of "the black man who tried to peel off his skin" after using a chemicals to lighten his skin.(65) An extensive investigation by the Chicago Tribune found no such article in Life magazine. It's possible that Obama had seen a July 1968 article in Esquire, titled "A Whiter Shade of Black," which dealt with blacks who used an ointment that turned their skin white. Or it's possible that as a child Obama saw advertisements for skin bleaching products and simply didn't remember it correctly two decades later. As a 1966 Time article noted, "Advertisements in the Negro magazines still hymn Nadinola skin bleach: 'Lightens and brightens skin.'"

Yet according to Corsi, "The entire episode suggests what psychologists call 'hypothetical lying,' in other words, imagining something that has not happened, but imagining it with so much precise detail that the made-up memory functions for the person as if it were real."(66) Astonishingly, Corsi concluded: "Has Obama lost the ability to tell the difference between something that actually happened and something he invented?"(66)

The irony here is that Corsi makes far more factual errors than anyone has ever alleged against Obama's memoir, and Obama was trying to remember incidents 20 years earlier that happened when he was a child.

Corsi offers yet another example of Obama's faulty memory: a photo that Obama recalls seeing in Life magazine when he was in Indonesia was apparently published in Life a year "after the date Obama wants us to think he left Indonesia."(67) Corsi concludes, "the puzzle just adds to the growing list of factual discrepancies or outright fabrications that Obama manufactures, very likely on an ongoing basis. Even Indonesian television reporters can't identify with certainty the addresses where Obama lived with his family."(67) But it's ridiculous to conclude that Obama is guilty of "fabrications" because he failed to remember the exact year of his childhood that he saw a photograph in a magazine.

As Stephen Colbert said about Obama, "If we can't trust you to remember which magazine you read in Indonesia when you were 9, how can we possibly ever trust you to protect our country?"

WHO IS JEROME CORSI?

Corsi brags that he is a member of the far-right Constitution Party, which "asked me to run as its presidential candidate in 2008..."(xi) As Media Matters noted, Corsi wrote many incredibly offensive and bigoted comments on right-wing message boards. He called Islam "a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion" and wrote that "RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers." According to Corsi, "Boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn’t reported by the liberal press." And Corsi wrote, "didn’t John Kerry begin practicing Judiasm? He also has paternal grandparents that were Jewish. What religion is John Kerry?" Corsi referred to Katie Couric as "Little Katie Communist." Corsi called Bill Clinton "an anti-American communist." Corsi called Hillary Clinton a "FAT HOG" and possibly a "lesbo," and repeatedly referred to their daughter as "Chubbie Chelsea."

In short, Corsi is sexist, racist, and bigoted toward many different religions.

(Oddly, although Corsi has no problem denouncing Obama for a book written almost 15 years ago discussing his childhood memories, when Bob Beckel criticized Corsi's offensive online comments from 2002 and 2003, Corsi complained, "you're going back to ancient history." But Corsi's bigotry isn't ancient history. As recently as August 9, Corsi claimed that Martin Luther King Jr. was "a shakedown artist."

Corsi makes openly racist comments in his book, like "Obama's mother chose another third world prospect for her second husband"(43) or declaring, "the race Obama embraces is not that of his mother, although he does have that choice."(63) Presumably, Corsi thinks that all Obama needed to do was shout "Caucasian" loudly enough and no one would ever notice that he's black. In Corsi's delusional imagination, "Obama wants to will all the white blood out of himself so he can become pure black."(91) Corsi declares, "His race, he self-determines, is African-American. In making that determination, he rejects everyone white, including his mother and his grandparents."(91) Of course, anyone who actually reads Obama's memoir realizes that he never rejects his family or white people. Corsi also worries, "If Obama does win the presidency in 2008, he will be the first president in our history to have an extended family in another country."(113) These sleazy attacks are meant to convey that Obama isn't "American" enough.

Corsi writes, "I have pursued Obama's extensive connections with Islam"(xv) and attacks Obama for being insufficiently anti-Muslim. Corsi writes, "Obama could have an increasingly difficult time convincing U.S. voters he is anything but pro-Islam"(298) and adds, "Obama's experience with Islam predisposes him to Islam."(302) Demanding that presidential candidates must hate all Muslims is a particularly sick kind of bigotry.

Corsi even claimedin an August 9, 2008 interview that Obama may not be an American citizen and that his birth certificate is a fake: "We can't yet get the authentic birth certificate....I'm convinced it's a forgery." According to Corsi, "if a birth certificate were forged and put on a website, it's conceivable that somebody committed a felony."

Here Corsi is embracing one of the dumbest conspiracy theories in the world. Obama's birth certificate, released by his campaign to stop these loony rumors, has been proven to be authentic, but far-right conspiracy theorists claimed that the Obama campaign had taken the birth certificate of his sister, Maya Kassandra Soetoro, and changed the date of birth, place of birth, name, sex, and father's name to make it appear to be Obama's birth certificate. This conspiracy theory supported by Corsi is particularly stupid because Maya was born in Indonesia, not Hawaii, and therefore doesn't have a Hawaiian birth certificate. The fact that Corsi supports this conspiracy theory should make everyone question both his sanity and his capacity for rational thought.

Corsi's crazy theories aren't limited to Obama. Corsi has accused George W. Bush of running a secret conspiracy to destroy the United States: "President Bush intends to abrogate U.S. sovereignty to the North American Union, a new economic and political entity which the President is quietly forming....Why doesn't President Bush just tell the truth? His secret agenda is to dissolve the United States of America into the North American Union." Conservative talk show host Michael Medved criticized Corsi and denounced these conspiracy theories as "puerile paranoia." Conservative blogger John Hawkins of Right Wing News condemned Corsi's lunacy: "Nobody has worked harder to convince people that the completely moronic North American conspiracy theory is real."

Corsi wrote an entire book about this delusion, and has focused on a nonexistent "NAFTA superhighway" and even falsely published an article saying that Mexican president Vicente Fox had confirmed plans for the Amero, a fantasy of Corsi and the John Birch Society about a new currency to replace the dollar.

PLAGIARISM

Corsi even accuses Obama of plagiarism, claiming his book was a "borrowing of ideas." According to Corsi, "Many of the black-rage paragraphs Obama wrote in Dreams from My Father bear a striking resemblance to passages Frantz Fanon wrote in his first book, Black Skin, White Masks...."(81) So what is this striking resemblance? Obama wrote about the phrase "white folks" and Corsi quotes him: "Ray assured me that we would never talk about whites without knowing exactly what we were doing. Without knowing that there might be a price to pay." And the "similarity" in Fanon's writing? "The black man has two dimensions. One with his fellows, the other with the white man. A Negro behaves differently with a white man and with another Negro."(81) The only similarity here is the notion that blacks speak differently around whites, which is one of the most common motifs in African-American literature, and hardly original to Fanon or anyone else.

But Corsi has one last trick up his sleeve. He claims that Obama's mis-remembered story about skin lightening was actually an idea stolen from this passage in Fanon's book: "For several years certain laboratories have been trying to produce a serum for 'denegrification'" with all the earnestness in the world, laboratories have sterilized their test tubes, checked their scales, and embarked on researches that might make it possible for the miserable Negro to whiten himself and thus to throw off the burden of that corporeal malediction."(82) This is, of course, utterly silly. Chemicals to lighten skin had been around for ages and widely advertised. Obama didn't need Fanon to come up with the idea, especially since Fanon's bizarre notion of a "denegrification" serum appears to be very different from the skin chemicals.

To sustain this crazy theory of Obama plagiarizing Fanon, Corsi asserts that "Frantz Fanon's revolutionary writings were instrumental in shaping Obama's own political analysis of race."(126) Corsi goes even further, imagining that Obama's distant father was the source of some kind of Fanon obsession: "We do not know if Obama Senior ever shared Fanon's writings with his son, but much of the expression of black resentment Obama offers in Dreams from My Father appears strongly influenced by Fanon's pages."(82-83) We do not know? Obama last saw his father when he was 10 years old. Does Corsi really think that Obama spent that short time as a kid with his father being indoctrinated in the works of Frantz Fanon?

According to Corsi, "Obama railed against the same forms of racial oppression his father must have felt under British colonialism."(83) What is Corsi talking about? Obama ultimately rejects the "black rage" that Corsi attributes to him, and nothing about it is "anticolonial" in nature.

Corsi also accuses Obama of plagiarizing words from Deval Patrick, ignoring the fact that Patrick had urged him to use those phrases and was acting in the role of a speechwriter.(226) Then Corsi takes the accusation of plagiarism to psychotic new levels. According to Corsi, "Obama has repeatedly used the words bamboozled and hoodwinked," claiming that Axelrod was stealing dialogue from a Spike Lee movie that used the same words.(228) Corsi also accuses Obama of plagiarism for using the common pro-labor phrases "si se puede" and "yes we can." Corsi even accuses Obama of plagiarism for using the word "change," claiming that "the use of 'change' as a political slogan dates back to socialist Saul Alinsky and his desire to cause a radical redistribution of income from the haves to the have-nots in America. Does Axelrod really want his candidate identified with Saul Alinsky?"(230) Needless to say, it's highly doubtful that Alinsky invented the word "change."

According to Corsi, "Obama has borrowed phrases freely even from movies, taking 'bamboozled' from Spike Lee's movie about Malcolm X and the phrase 'He is the One' from the Matrix movie series."(300)  Of course, "bamboozled" existed as a word long before Spike Lee, and Obama has never said he is "the One." Oprah Winfrey once said, "Is he the one? South Carolina, I do believe he is the one to bring us the audacity of hope."(229) To claim that Oprah Winfrey plagiarized from a movie because she used the word "one" is silly.

Corsi's false attacks on Obama as a plagiarist are particularly ironic because Corsi is himself a plagiarist. After right-wing blogger Debbie Schlussel discovered that Corsi was repeatedly stealing her work (while adding in mistakes), Schlussel declared that Corsi "is a plagiarist, plain and simple. He cannot be trusted."

GUILT BY ASSOCIATION

Corsi's favorite attack against Obama is guilt by association. Corsi complains that Bill Ayers "likes to present himself as the 'Distinguished Professor of Education' at the University of Illinois at Chicago."(119) Perhaps that's because his title is "Distinguished Professor of Education."

Corsi claims that Obama's distant connection to Ayers "could easily block Obama from the White House, and not just in 2008 but forever."(120)

Corsi claims that, "In his eleven-year reign of underground terror, Ayers participated in thirty bombings."(139) This is false; Corsi's sole source is a World Net Daily article that offers no source for this claim. Altogether, there were perhaps 30 bombings and attempted bombings blamed on the Weather Underground, but no one imagines that Ayers participated in all of them, since the organization was highly decentralized while on the run from the police.

Of course, there's no reason why Corsi needs to exaggerate Ayers' crimes. What Ayers did was appalling and stupid. But it has nothing to do with Obama, who has condemned Ayers' past. (By contrast, John McCain has never been asked to criticize G. Gordon Liddy, the Watergate criminal he calls his "friend" who urged his radio listeners to shoot federal law enforcement agents in the head; nor has McCain ever been asked about Oliver North, the Contragate criminal who illegally funneled government money and weapons to support the terrorist activities of the Contras.)

Corsi claimed Alice "Palmer would never have introduced Obama to the Hyde Park political community at the Ayres-Dohrn home unless she saw an affinity between Ayers and Dohrn's radical leftist history, her own history of far-leftist politics, and the politics of Barack Obama."(137) But the event wasn't held primarily for Obama. It was Palmer's own announcement that she would run for Congress, as the Politicoarticle cited by Corsi made clear. Obama was there as Palmer's endorsed successor for her Senate seat, but there's no evidence that he had any role in deciding to hold it at Ayers' home.)

Corsi claims about Obama: "either he did not know Ayers and Dohrn are still radical leftists—in which case he is implausibly naive—or Obama did know, which would confirm he joined with Ayers and Dohrn because Obama too continues to believe, albeit silently and secretly, in the Far Left's radical agenda."(140) Of course, Corsi is so desperate to push the conspiracy theory of Obama as a secret left-wing radical that he omits another possibility: that Obama knew Ayers was a leftist, but he didn't care. Perhaps Obama believes in the notion of a free society, where you work with people you disagree with.

But according to Corsi, "Even today, Ayers appears to hold the same radical political beliefs he did in the Weather Underground, and Obama had to know that was also the case when he first met Ayers in 1995."(147) Corsi doesn't explain how Obama "had to know" Ayers' views on politics when he first met him. Telepathy? Mind-reading?

Corsi is fond of quoting other people to make the distortions and deceptions he's afraid to do himself. He quotes a blogger referring to Ayers as "Obama's boss" and explains that reference was due to Ayers being chair of the Woods Fund board.(147) Corsi doesn't bother to correct this error (the chair of a foundation board is not the "boss" of the members)

Much like David Freddoso's anti-Obama book (which I reviewed here), Corsi uses McCarthyist red-baiting techniques to attack Obama, such as his childhood friendship with an alleged communist poet, Frank Marshall Davis. Corsi glorifies the "McCarthy-era committees seeking to expose communists considered to be a security threat."(86) So what "threat" did this committee find in Davis? According to Corsi, he wrote articles criticizing a Hawaii "Commission on Subversive Activities" and a 1951 article in a communist newspaper. Corsi notes that authors read by Obama were also reds: Langston Hughes and Richard Wright "both had communist connections as well."(86)

Corsi also denounces Obama's alleged connections to Saul Alinsky, because he worked for a community group that utilized some of Alinsky's techniques. According to Corsi, "When Obama tells audiences that his community organizing experience 'taught me a lot about listening to people as opposed to coming with a premeditated agenda,' he is reciting pure Alinsky dogma."(135) To Corsi, listening is "intrinsically an elitist view; always, the organizer knows best."(135) This is an Orwellian perversion of language to claim that listening is "an elitist view."

Corsi quotes numerous far-right sources to "prove" his claims, such as this: "Conservative columnist Ann Coulter has characterized Obama's Dreams from My Father as a 'dimestore Mein Kampf,'" an insane notion that Corsi doesn't criticize at all.(78) Corsi doesn't explain why he thinks it's reasonable to compare Obama to Hitler.

Another guilt-by-association smear by Corsi is against Rashid Khalidi, a brilliant Columbia University professor who once taught at the University of Chicago and held a fundraiser for Obama. Corsi offers only this baseless attack: "Khalidi's views are clearly anti-American" because he criticizes US support for Israeli settlements in Palestine.(142)

Corsi even condemns Obama for attending a 1998 Arab community fundraiser featuring the scholar Edward Said. Based on photographs of the event, Corsi makes this accusation: "Obama engages in what appears to be animated conversation with the professor. A second photograph shows Obama and Michelle paying close attention to Said as the professor delivers the evening's keynote address."(142) What a shocking revelation! Barack Obama actually listened to a world-renowned professor and then had a conversation with him.

Corsi even goes after the parents of Obama campaign workers. He attacks Obama advisor David Axelrod because his mother wrote in the 1940s for PM, a left-wing newspaper in New York.(216) Corsi even includes a bizarre section noting that Axelrod's father killed himself and "Obama's father killed himself driving drunk."(218)

According to Corsi, Michelle Obama "made herself look like a black racist."(233) How, exactly, did she do that? Michelle's senior thesis at Princeton on race included an analysis of "black separatism" and she helped define that term by using a 1967 book, Black Power, which was co-written by Stokely Carmichael, who has since often made crazy speeches insulting whites and Jews. So, even though Michelle never embraced black separatism, because she cited a book to define it written by a controversial figure, she is therefore a "black racist."(232) Incredibly, Corsi extends his guilt-by-association attacks even to the reading of books.

Nothing quite embodies the sleaziness of Corsi's attacks so much as his smear of Sam Graham-Felsen, one of Obama's official bloggers. Corsi recounts how "Graham-Felsen's bookcase in the Quincy House dorm included titles by Karl Marx and Howard Zinn..."(149) Imagine that: a college student who has books! Graham-Felsen is also deemed guilty for praising Noam Chomsky.(149) And then, as Media Matters pointed out, Corsi falsely presents an article Corsi wrote for the Nation as being written for the magazine "Socialist Viewpoint" (which in reality reprinted it from the Nation, as it reprints many mainstream publications). Corsi then describes the publication in breathless detail: "The Socialist Viewpoint is a magazine published by the Socialist Workers Organization, a group that describes itself as 'formed to advance the revolutionary Marxist political program in the United States.'"(150) Finally, Corsi declares, "Little Green Footballs has called Graham-Felsen 'a hardcore Marxist.'"(151) Wow, Little Green Footballs, there's an unimpeachable source. Corsi quotes another blogger who embraces his McCarthyism: "exactly what is a Democratic candidate doing with a staffer who acts as the campaign's public's face when the staffer is featured in Marxist publications?"(151)

Corsi concludes his chapter on Obama's radical views by writing: "How possibly can Obama argue his association with radicals such as Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn was a long time ago, when he continues to recruit a Marxist sympathizer such as Sam Graham-Felsen to be an official blogger of his 2008 presidential campaign?"(151) Corsi actually believes that Obama should be held responsible for the failure of his campaign to ban anyone who has read a book by Karl Marx or Howard Zinn. Perhaps it would assist the Obama campaign if Corsi came up with a list (let's call it a "blacklist") of books that anyone associated with his campaign is not allowed to have read at any point in their lives.

REVEREND WRIGHT

Not surprisingly, Corsi joins in the right-wing attacks on Obama for attending the church of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Twice in the book, Corsi observes that Wright is often "wearing a dashiki"(10) and "gives his sermons while dressed in African garb,"(180) as if his clothing alone should be used to condemn him.

Corsi attacks Wright's sermon after 9/11 that mentioned America's "chickens coming home to roost." According to Corsi, "Reverend Wright adapted the phrase to imply that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were divine retribution for white America's continuing racial injustice."(181) That's not true. Wright never said that 9/11 was due to "divine retribution" (that was Pat Robertson's theory) or "racial injustice." Wright was making the argument that America's foreign policy had bred resentment in the world, and "violence begets violence."

When Obama said that he hadn't heard the most outrageous comments of Rev. Wright being shown over and over again in the press, Corsi wrote: "Obama's denial spurred investigators to prove the contrary. On March 16, two days after Obama's denial appeared on the Huffington Post, new evidence emerged. NewsMax's Ronald Kessler reported that Obama had been in Trinity United Church of Christ on July 22, when Kessler was present. Kessler claimed he and Obama both heard Wright preach a sermon that day in which the preacher blamed the 'white arrogance' of America's Caucasian majority for the world's suffering, especially the oppression of blacks."(196) As Media Matters pointed out, Obama was actually in Miami giving a speech at 1:30pm that day. But for Corsi, facts don't really matter. Corsi also gets his basic facts wrong. It was Jim Davis, not Kessler, who falsely claimed to be in church with Obama that day. Corsi toldthe New York Times, "We can nitpick the date to death." But the whole point of this fake story about the date was to prove that Obama was in the church when Wright made one of his controversial remarks. If the date is wrong (and it is), then the accusation is false.

Corsi recounts how Obama criticized Wright's "distorted view" of racism and America and accuses him of "clearly contradicting" himself, writing about this gotcha moment: "How could Obama know these were the subjects of Wright's sermons unless he had heard them?"(197) Gee, I don't know, maybe it could have been the round-the-clock news coverage showing Wright's speeches over and over again. Is Corsi really this stupid? Or does he think his conservative readers are so stupid that they will swallow this nonsense without thinking?

Corsi regularly attacks Obama's faith. Corsi writes, "before Obama's baptism at Trinity, when he was nearly thirty years old, there is no other life incident evidencing he is a Christian."(187) It's a particularly bizarre accusation: Before Obama became a Christian, there was no "life incident" showing he was a Christian. But that's really the definition of what it means to become a Christian. Corsi seems to think that a Christian must prove that he was a Christian before he became a Christian in order to be called a real Christian.

Corsi also makes another baseless attack on Obama's faith, claiming that Obama felt that he "did not necessarily have to be a believer" to join his church. Corsi tries to prove this by quoting what Obama writes in The Audacity of Hope: "faith doesn't mean you don't have doubts....religious commitment did not require me to suspend critical thinking...."(188) Amazingly, Corsi compares Obama to Machiavelli for this, calling Obama's faith "a calculated decision to position yourself favorably in the eyes of those you want to lead, whether you believe in the decision or not."(188) In Corsi's view, Christians are incapable of critical thinking and doubt, and by showing his ability to think rationally, Obama must not be a Christian.

Corsi tries to associate Obama with black radicals, and even mentions a short profile on biography.com about Louis Farrakhan that declares, "along with other prominent black leaders such as Al Sharpton and Barack Obama, Farrakhan helped lead the Million Man March on Washington."(191) Corsi writes, "Obama's supporters, who clearly want to move Obama as far away from Farrakhan as possible, will be certain to disavow that Obama had any leadership role in Farrakhan's 1995 march."(192) Actually, they'll be certain to disavow it because it's not true. Obama attended the event, but he never had a leadership role (in fact, he criticized the march organizers). Corsi seems to think it's perfectly acceptable to put false information in his book as long as he's quoting someone on the internet.

THE KENYA CONSPIRACY

According to Corsi, "Obama's 2006 trip to Kenya evidenced his continued ties to a Raila Odinga, a fellow Luo tribesman, who was running for president of Kenya as a Muslim sympathizer with well-known communist political roots."(93) Corsi falsely claims that Obama was "supporting Odinga openly in Kenya."(93)

What was the connection? When Obama spoke publicly to a crowd, Odinga was nearby. That's it. No endorsement. No mention of Odinga by Obama. Just this appearance where Odinga could be seen near Obama. According to Corsi, "Obama, by being seen this prominently with Odinga in public, had injected himself into the presidential contest on the side of his tribesman."(95-96)

From this slight connection, Corsi goes on for an incoherent 20-page diatribe against Odinga and the intricacies of Kenyan politics. Corsi condemns Odinga, a Christian, for making an agreement with a Muslim group to maintain "open links of communication" if elected president, which Corsi calls "an undeclared radical Islamic political agenda."(107)

Corsi also attacks Obama for criticizing the corruption of the Kenyan government that Odinga was opposing. Corsi seems to be arguing that there's no corruption in Kenya, and the shakedown fees reported by a local Chicago news team to enter Kenya were simply a miscommunication.(96)

After the disputed election, when violence broke out between supporters of each candidate, Obama recorded a message urging peace at the request of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Corsi condemns this by writing, "Senator Obama has continued to insert himself into Kenyan politics."(104) Corsi even repeats conspiracy theories by some in Kenya who think that Obama as president would overthrow the Kenyan government "by means either military or political" to install Odinga.(106)

In one particularly bizarre part of the book, Corsi recounts how political consultant Dick Morris showed up in Kenya to volunteer for Odinga's campaign (he was expelled from the country by the Kibaki regime Corsi admires). According to Corsi, "Morris's showing up in Kenya makes no sense outside the Obama-Odinga connection. Odinga critics speculated that Morris had been recommended by former Clinton associates working for Obama."(115) In reality, Morris worked in the past for both Democrats and Republicans before his sex scandal involving a prostitute drove him to the far right-wing. Corsi mentions that "Morris had been openly critical of Hillary Clinton's campaign against Obama"(115) without bothering to mention that Morris is a conservative who hates the Clintons but also hates Obama, even falsely reporting in a January 2007 column that Obama had voted against an ethics reform bill that Obama actually voted for. Like so much else in this book, Corsi's fantasy of an Obama-Odinga conspiracy has zero evidence to support it.

THE REZKO CONSPIRACY

Corsi falsely accuses Obama of taking bribes from Antonin Rezko. According to Corsi, "As we shall see, Rezko was persistent, ultimately convincing Obama to drop working for political organizing causes so he could supplement the dwindling advance he had received at Harvard to write a book with real income as a lawyer, working the small Chicago law firm where the lead partner did much of Rezko's slumlord legal work for him."(157) This badly-written sentence includes some astonishing accusations, namely that Rezko was the one who convinced Obama to work for a small law firm that specialized in civil rights advocacy so that "Obama could work for Rezko indirectly and benefit from Rezko's connections."(158) There's only one problem with Corsi's assertion: He doesn't have any evidence to support it. In a section completely free of footnotes, Corsi simply proclaims: "The likelihood is that Rezko played a role in getting Obama to join Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland."(158) Likelihood? That's a strong word for a completely baseless accusation.

Rezko had tried to hire Obama for his firm after he graduated from law school, which Obama turned down. But Corsi treats this as some secret conspiracy: "Alinsky taught that power was everything and that image, words, and positioning were just methods to capture power, working from communities up. Whatever Obama and Rezko talked about in their first meeting, the record shows Obama ended up working for the lawyer Allison Davis, who was one of Rezko's business partners."(159) None of this makes any sense. After law school, Obama could have worked almost anywhere and made a lot of money. Obama gave that up to work for a civil rights firm, not because Rezko made him some kind of a deal to promise him work at the law firm that he could have gotten anywhere.

Yet Corsi concludes that Obama "took steps that helped Davis and Rezko in their business relationship."(159) In reality, all Obama did was his job. He did about five hours of routine legal work on behalf of community groups doing affordable housing projects with Davis and Rezko, since it's not surprising that Davis would choose his former law firm to do the work. But this is Corsi's attempt to blame Obama for Rezko's corrupt business dealings and Rezko's failure to maintain low-income housing.

Throughout the book, Corsi demands that Obama should have quit his job even though no one knew about Rezko's crimes.  Corsi wonders why Obama "continued to work for a law firm that had Rezko as a client."(164)

Corsi declares, "There is no record that Illinois state senator Obama ever so much as placed a speech in the record objecting to the public-housing practices perpetuated in his district by Tony Rezko, let alone calling for investigation of Rezko and his business practices."(164) That's because there's no record that Obama ever knew about the problems with Rezko's business. The newspapers never reported on it until long after Obama left the state senate, and complaints from tenants would go to local aldermen and city officials, not to a state senator.  

Corsi repeatedly tries to claim that Rezko overpaid for the lot he bought alongside Obama's house, but it's not true. Corsi admits that Rezko's wife sold the lot for a profit to Rezko's former attorney, Michael Sreenan, but treats this as part of the conspiracy: "in an article titled 'Obama is one lucky fellow,' Rezko Watch found it was unlikely that Sreenan would actually construct any condos on the lot he had bought from Rita Rezko."(167) Corsi omits the fact (revealed in a Salon.com article Corsi cites) that Sreenan currently has the lot for sale at $950,000, $375,000 more than he paid for it. As numerous reports have found, the price Obama and Rezko paid for their properties was perfectly legitimate.

Unable to show any wrongdoing, Corsi offers this desperate argument: "Even if no illegality is ever identified, Obama's continued willingness to take campaign contributions from his 'friend' Rezko, even after serious allegations about Rezko's low-income housing empire began to be raised, have the feel of impropriety."(170) But according to Opensecrets.org, Rezko's last donation to Obama came on October 3, 2003, long before any scandal about Rezko appeared—and two months before Rezko gave $4,000 to George W. Bush's campaign. Would Corsi blame Bush for the "feel of impropriety" of taking money from Rezko?

Corsi declares, "investigative reporters have drawn a line from Obama to Rezko to Saddam Hussein's Oil for Food scandal, with the key connecting point being billionaire Nadhmi Auchi."(173) But that same line could be drawn from George W. Bush or any other politician Rezko knew, since it's pure guilt by association.

Corsi concludes his corruption chapter with one final outrageous lie: Obama "overlooked Rezko's questionable activities to take money not just to finance his campaigns but to buy the mansion he feels his family deserves."(175) Corsi's claim that Obama somehow took money from Rezko to buy Obama's house is a total fabrication. There is not even the slightest bit of evidence to support it. Obama had a bank loan and a $1.2 million book advance to buy his $1.65 million home. It's insane to imagine that Obama, after winning a seat in the US Senate, took a massive cash bribe he didn't need from Rezko and somehow concealed all the money.

CORSI ON THE ISSUES

In the final line of the book, Corsi writes: "If he sticks to the issues, McCain will defeat Barack Obama."(304) That's ironic advice from a writer who devotes almost all of his book to false guilt-by-association smears. Corsi includes almost nothing in this book about Obama's policies, and what he does write about is usually wrong.

For example, Corsi claims that Obama "pledged to reduce the size of the military,"(257) and claims that there are "video clips that show his saying he wants to reduce the military"(279) but Corsi provides no evidence or citation for this assertion. In reality, Obama has pledged to increase the size of the military by 92,000 troops. Corsi attacks Obama for declaring, "America seeks a world in which there are no nuclear weapons."(261) Of course, he ignores the fact that Ronald Reagan (and many other presidents) have made similar statements.

Corsi even tries to attack Obama's opposition to the war in Iraq. Twice in the book, Corsi notes that "Obama's speech was not recorded by anyone."(258) The text of Obama's speech is widely available, and it's not clear if Corsi is claiming that Obama never made the speech or later on changed the content of it to oppose the war. Corsi even tries to refute Obama's claim that he was in the midst of a U.S. Senate campaign: "he gave his famous antiwar speech in October 2002 but didn't officially declare his candidacy for the U.S. Senate until January 2003."(258) Of course, anyone familiar with politics understands that candidates are often running for office long before an official announcement is made. Like so many other "gotcha" moments in Corsi's book, he's simply wrong.

Abortion is the issue Corsi is most obsessed about. According to Corsi, "Obama has consistently refused to support legislation that would define an infant who survives a late-term induced-labor abortion as a human being with the right to live."(238) In reality, Obama has said he supported a US Senate bill that protects the life of any infant surviving an abortion of any kind at any time. Corsi also claims, "He insists that no restriction must ever be placed on the right of a mother to decide to abort her child."(238) This is also factually wrong. Obama has endorsed the standard of Roe v. Wade, which allows for state restrictions on late-term abortions so long as the health and life of the mother is protected. In fact, Obama drew some criticism from abortion rights supporters because he said that a mother's "mental distress" alone should not qualify for the health exception. What Corsi calls "Obama's radical pro-abortion views"(240) actually represent what a majority of Americans believe.

On Fox and Friends, Corsi declared: "Obama on the floor of the Illinois state senate said that woman had an absolute right to abortion, to kill the baby even if it survived that abortion." When he was challenged, Corsi declared: "You haven't looked at the tapes, I'm sorry." In reality, the transcript of the 2001 senate session cited by Corsi shows that Obama says nothing close to what Corsi claims. Obama expresses support for caring for fetuses after botched abortions. He only objects to the wording of the bill out of fear that it might be used to "essentially bar abortions" by defining the fetus as a person entitled to Constitutional protections.

Corsi offers a particularly inept attack on Obama's support for raising capital gains tax rates on the wealthiest Americans. After confusing corporate taxes with capital gains taxes, Corsi claims that with higher taxes, "the government ends up collecting less capital gains tax revenue, not more. Why? The answer is fairly simple: under higher capital gains tax rates, investors realize their gains before the higher capital gains rates kick in."(245) Of course, a capital gains tax increase causes investors to cash out their gains (which provides a temporary revenue jump for the government). But that doesn't reduce future capital gains. Corsi argues that higher tax rates produce lower tax revenues, a standard conservative canard: "The economics of this principle have been proved repeatedly in the two decades since Reagan was president."(245) Actually, exactly the opposite is true: tax revenues have grown substantially since tax hikes were passed by George Herbert Walker Bush and Bill Clinton. By Corsi's logic, tax rates should be reduced to 0.01%, which would magically produce the highest tax revenues.

Some of Corsi's policy attacks on Obama are comical. According to Corsi, "Obama quietly steered his Global Poverty Act, known as S. 2433, through the Senate."(250) Corsi cites right-wing critics who declare that the legislation "would commit the U.S. To spending 0.7 percent of Gross Domestic Product on foreign aid, which amounts to a phenomenal total of $845 billion over and above what the U.S. already spends."(250) This is utter nonsense. The $845 billion figure is entirely fictional, although the Republican National Committee continues to push it for fundraising purposes. Nothing in the bill commits the US to any level of spending, as merely reading the text of the bill would show. Did Corsi even bother to do that? The fact that Corsi repeats yet another right-wing crackpot fraud as if it were real shows how little journalistic credibility he should have.

Rather than examining issues, Corsi concludes one chapter with a section titled "Obama, Secret Smoker,"(234) in which he actually asks this question: "If Obama takes pains to hide his smoking from us, what else does he take pains to hide?"(235) His book features subheadings such as "Obama: Angry in Hawaii"(71), "Obama's Communist Mentor"(84), "Obama Can't Bowl"(212), "Michelle, the Angry Obama"(230),  and "Obama Fails to Hold Hand over Heart During National Anthem."(253)

Corsi misreads Obama's books, selectively cites bits of information from the mainstream press, quotes unsubstantiated smears from right-wing bloggers, and then adds his own mix of lies, unsupported speculation, and conspiracy theories to this stew of slime.

Crossposted at Huffington Post and DailyKos.

Freddoso's lies begin on the very first page of his book (repeated on the back cover) when he proclaims that Obama is "the least experienced politician in at least one hundred years to obtain a major party nomination for President...."(ix) Freddoso seems to be conveniently forgetting that George W. Bush in 2000 had served only six years as governor, far fewer years of experience as an elected public official than Obama's 12 years of experience (eight as state senator, four as US senator). Obama's experience in politics also exceeds that of Ronald Reagan (eight years as governor), Jimmy Carter (four years in state senate, four years as governor), Dwight Eisenhower (no political experience), Harry Truman (10 years as US senator, one year as vice president), Herbert Hoover (eight years as Secretary of Commerce), Woodrow Wilson (two years as governor), and William Howard Taft (four years as Secretary of War, two years as Solicitor General). Compared to 17 presidents in the past century, Obama has more political experience than eight of them, and less experience than eight of them (he's tied with Warren Harding).

Like any good conspiracy theorist, Freddoso is careful to condemn the conspiracy theories he doesn't believe in, hoping that doing so will make him seem reasonable by comparison. He writes, "Too many of those criticizing Obama have been content merely to slander him," listing some of the false rumors about Obama refusing to salute the American flag or being sworn into office on a Koran.(x) Yet throughout his book, Freddoso charges Obama with being a part of some secret liberal plot. A plot to help Daley by knocking Alice Palmer off the ballot. A plot to have "silently and at times vocally cooperated with Chicago's Democratic Machine."(x) A plot by Axelrod to let Blair Hull take the lead and then leak his damaging divorce data. A plot to help Rezko by passing legislation for affordable housing. A plot to spread socialism revealed by his associations with communists and Marxists, proven by the fact that he actually read award-winning books written by communists!

Freddoso uses a common trick of conspiracy theorists: deny that you're proposing a conspiracy theory, but add on "there is this set of facts" to support that exact conspiracy theory. And so Freddoso writes:

There's no evidence Obama's campaign was the force behind dragging down Blair Hull, but there is this set of facts:
*Axelrod knew about Hull's marital problems
*Axelrod's former employer, the Chicago Tribune, unearthed Hull's marital problems just weeks before the primary, and not until Hull had already sucked the wind out of Hynes's sails
*Obama benefited—immensely--from these revelations.(48)

All of this might lead a reasonable reader to conclude that Obama's campaign did secretly smear his opponent. Except that it's not true. Chicago Tribune reporter David Mendell recounts in his book Obama: From Promise to Power that he was the first to report on the court order sealing Hull's divorce file, and he also reports on how it happened: "I met with a Hynes operative for lunch....I was handed a folder of opposition research on Hull. Among the papers was a copy of the outside sheet of the filing of one of Hull's two divorces in Illinois....The order contained only one salient fact: Hull's second wife, Brenda Sexton, had once been granted an order of protection against him."(212-3) It was the Hynes campaign, not the Obama campaign, that brought down Hull. It's hard to imagine that Freddoso could have overlooked this lengthy passage in Mendell's book about Obama, since Mendell is cited 39 times in Freddoso's book.

Even the cover of the book is an attempt to spread Freddoso's attacks. Beneath a glowering, dark-faced photo of Obama are photos of Obama dancing with his wife (they're black), smiling with Ted Kennedy (according to Freddoso, he's a communist KGB agent), his arm around Jeremiah Wright (they're black and racist), and next to Mayor Daley (they're corrupt).

In one of the many red-baiting sections of his book, Freddoso denounces Obama's predecessor Alice Palmer for covering the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1986 as a journalist, and expressing praise for some of the Soviet plans, along with criticism of Ronald Reagan. Because Obama was endorsed by Palmer as his successor (and attended a Palmer fundraiser at Bill Ayers' home), Obama is deemed guilty by association. But Freddoso also denounces Obama's campaign for successfully challenging Palmer's improper petitions when she made a late decision to enter the State Senate race after failing to gain traction in her run for Congress.

Freddoso offers a particularly hilarious claim that Chicago Mayor Richard "Daley considered Palmer a serious threat, a potential mayoral rival."(5) According to Freddoso, "By clearing the ballot, Obama had done more than just elbow his way into power without a real election--he had also erased any doubt of Daley's path to his next term."(5) This anecdote shows how little Freddoso understands about Chicago politics. It's laughable to imagine that Palmer, after she failed miserably in her race for Congress, could take on Daley. Indeed, the last thing Daley would have wanted is an appealing black politician like Obama winning an election in Chicago, since Obama was probably the only threat to Daley's permanent occupation of the mayoral position. Yet Freddoso compares Obama to Karl Rove and Machiavelli, imagining some kind of conspiracy where Obama was secretly doing Daley's bidding.(6)

Freddoso also promotes Obama's guilt by association with Chicago politics. Astonishingly, Freddoso devotes 14 pages of his book to the Stroger family's corruption in Cook County politics, and links it to Obama because Obama didn't endorse anybody in the primary and endorsed the Democrat over the Republican in the general election. Yet Freddoso admits, "He did not campaign for John Stroger or even endorse him...."(14)

One could make an analogy here: what if a Republican candidate for president had failed to speak out about the political corruption of a Republican office-holder? Indeed, that's exactly the case with John McCain. Except that McCain, unlike Obama, endorsed the incumbent George W. Bush in the 2004 primary and actively campaigned for him. And what McCain did was far worse: part of the job of a U.S. Senator is to monitor the activities of the executive branch, while no one imagines that the job of a U.S. Senator is to intervene in local county politics.

After giving us an endless description of the Cook County corruption that Obama had no role in, Freddoso goes on for seven more pages to discuss the city of Chicago corruption that Obama also had no role in. The only thing Obama did was endorse the inevitable re-election of Mayor Daley, even though Obama criticized the corruption scandals which he said "give me huge pause."(22)

I have no love at all for the corruption of the Strogers and the Daleys in Chicago. But having written a book about Obama, I understand why he gave his lukewarm support to them. Obama is not the patron saint of progressive hopeless causes. He won't undermine his political movement in pursuit of an impossible quest to take down Mayor Daley.

But Obama is also not part of the "Chicago Machine." He developed his own power base in the independent Hyde Park neighborhood, and never ran for local office. He was only endorsed for the U.S. Senate by Daley and Stroger after he won the Democratic nomination.

Obama's Record of Achievements

In every case, Freddoso tries to downplay any of Obama's accomplishments, even if it requires twisting the truth. Freddoso tells the story of Illinois state senator Rickey Hendon: "Hendon had been the original sponsor of two bills that Obama often writes and speaks about as if they had been his own. One required the taping of murder interrogations to help eliminate mistakes in the [sic] Illinois's death penalty system, and the other was designed to reduce the incidence of racial profiling by the police." According to Freddoso, "Obama had the privilege of stealing important bills. Other senators had a name for this practice: 'bill-jacking.'" (30) However, Freddoso stole that phrase from Hendon, who had told another reporter exactly the opposite about this particular bill, "I don't consider it bill jacking."

According to Freddoso, "The murder interrogation bill—requiring videotaping of interrogations in all capital cases—was an excellent example of something with a broad bipartisan consensus in all but the minutest details, coming as it did after thirteen death row inmates were found to have been falsely convicted in Illinois."(31) But the citation Freddoso offers to support this claim is an unrelated 2000 press release from then Gov. George Ryan announcing a moratorium on executions.

In reality, there was strong opposition to the bill before Obama took charge. When Obama began, the idea was opposed by police, prosecutors, most of the Senate, and Democratic governor Rod Blagojevich, who promised to veto any proposal for mandatory tapings. Obama worked with all of these groups, made some compromises, and it passed in the Illinois Senate by a 58-0 vote. Blagojevich reversed himself and signed the bill, making Illinois the first state in the country to undertake this reform.

Freddoso also doesn't mention this quote from Hendon praising Obama's compromises in getting the other bill passed to monitor racial profiling by police: "In hindsight, it was best to go ahead with the weaker version because a lot of police attitudes changed when we passed it."

So Obama didn't "bill-jack" anybody's legislation. He took unpopular proposals and built an unprecedented level of consensus behind it. In the divisive world of Illinois politics, it was one of the finest examples of skillful political work in recent memory.

Freddoso also recalls how Senate President Emil Jones did Obama the "favor" of having him handle ethics reform to make "Obama look like a reformer."(31) It wasn't a favor—few other legislators wanted to deal with it and as Jones noted, "He caught pure hell." Freddoso doesn't mention what Republican state senator Kirk Dillard recalled: "Barack was literally hooted and catcalled in his caucus." And Republicans on the Senate floor "would bark their displeasure at me, and then they’d unload on Obama." But Obama built a consensus and got the legislation passed by a 52-4 vote.

So much for Freddoso's claim that, "If Barack Obama is a reformer, he may be the first reformer ever to become president of the United States before doing anything serious in the name of reform."(26) In fact, Freddoso contradicts this himself later in the book, admitting that Obama's co-sponsorship of The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 "was a real accomplishment for Obama in the name of reform,"(94) along with his ethics legislation on the state level.

According to Freddoso, "there’s never been a single time in Senator Obama’s political career where he did something that was difficult and would cost him politically for the sake of needed reforms and change." In fact, there is: when Obama spoke out in 2002 against the war in Iraq. As Freddoso himself admits, "He deserves full credit for opposing the war at a time when his position was not necessarily popular."(177) Of course, Obama likes to work by building bipartisan consensus, so it's not surprising that he doesn't take a lot of symbolic stands that hurt him politically. But Obama has proven both his political skills and his integrity in his legislative work.

Obama's Campaigns

Freddoso also tries to dismiss Obama's campaign abilities, asserting that "Obama has enjoyed success due to the failures of others"(44) and argues that he won his US Senate seat in 2004 solely due to "two men and their messy divorces."(44) In a large field, Obama's main competitors were Dan Hynes, whom Freddoso calls "the clear favorite" backed by the Democratic establishment, and millionaire Blair Hull, who spent $28.7 million of his personal fortune to build a small lead a month before the election. According to Freddoso, "In the final weeks, everything was pointing toward a Hull victory."(47) Not at all. Hull's 10-point lead in the polls was shaky at best, since Obama had saved his money until the end of the race. Voters began paying more attention to the election, Obama started running commercials, and most of the state's newspapers endorsed Obama (almost none supported Hull, and most expressed disdain at his effort to buy a Senate seat). In the end, Obama won 53% of the votes, beating Hynes by 29 points and Hull by more than 40 points.

To Freddoso, the sole factor in Obama's overwhelming victory was the release of Hull's divorce papers, in which his ex-wife accused him of abuse. Even if scandal affected Hull, how can that explain why Obama defeated Hynes (who had no scandals) by such a large margin?

Then in the general election, Obama held a large lead in the polls over Republican Jack Ryan. But Ryan dropped out when his divorce papers were leaked, revealing that he had tried to convince his ex-wife to go to sex clubs with him.

Freddoso had his own role in the Ryan case. Freddoso and his colleague John Gizzi interviewed Ryan and asked him off the record about his divorce file. When the file was released, Freddoso and Gizzi decided to violate their own word and report on their conversation with Ryan. The story shows both bad reporting (no good reporter makes a question off the record without even being requested to do so), and a serious lack of ethics (Freddoso violated his promise to keep the answer off the record by later printing it). Freddoso predicted at the time that Obama would win easily against Ryan, which may help explain why Freddoso was willing to break his word and attack the Republican nominee in order to push him to withdraw. Unfortunately for him, Obama's massive lead in the polls discouraged any serious candidates from running, and the Illinois Republican Party picked perennial loser Alan Keyes from Maryland to run. Keyes lost by more than 40 points.

Freddoso dismisses Obama by declaring that "Obama is currently running the first real political campaign of his life."(53) However, Obama wasn't given a US Senate seat by anyone. He didn't have a popular name or an overflowing bank account or a powerful political sponsor. Unlike most of his colleagues in the US Senate, Obama won by running an incredible campaign. His wide margin of victory showed how real Obama's campaign really was. It's true that Obama might have won his elections by "only" 20 points if not for the stumbles of some of his opponents. Even if someone superficially examined Obama's Senate race and wrongly concluded that his victory was due to being the "luckiest man alive,"(53) no one can say that about the 2008 Democratic primary, when Obama beat one of the most powerful and popular political families in America to obtain the nomination. No one except Freddoso, who claims that Obama was "fortunate to have the opponents he did."(54)  

Freddoso provides filler for his book by recounting people who give over-the-top compliments to Obama and are excited by his candidacy, which Freddoso compares to "the Gospel stories of sick people hoping to touch even the hem of Christ's garments, or hoping that Saint Peter's shadow might pass over them and bring healing."(65) This shows, in Freddoso's mind, that Obama is treated as "a secular Messiah."(68) According to Freddoso, "any criticism of Obama is a 'smear,' ipso facto."(71) That would be odd considering that Obama has received more negative coverage than any presidential candidate in American history (he's also gotten more positive coverage than anyone else). No one thinks that every criticism is a smear. But any criticism of Obama based on lies, factual errors, and distortions of reality actually is a "smear." And that's what Freddoso does repeatedly in his book.

Freddoso is fond of seeing a secret plan behind this "stealth liberal": "hidden in Obama's shapeless rhetoric about 'Change' and 'Hope' is a dangerous agenda that will take on real substance if he is given power."(xiv) Yet Freddoso says almost nothing about Obama's policy work in the past or his proposals for the presidency. Perhaps that's because Freddoso recognizes that Obama's ideas for reforming health care and improving government are very popular. This 240-page book says little of substance about any issue except abortion, where Freddoso dramatically distorts Obama's record.

Obama and Abortion

Freddoso condemns the Freedom of Choice Act, which Obama co-sponsored along with 13 other senators, including Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman: "This bill would effectively cancel every state, federal, and local regulation of abortion, no matter how modest or reasonable."(204) To the contrary, the bill would simply codify Roe v. Wade and assure abortion rights before viability and allow for a health of mother exception at any time. It's an outright lie to claim that there could be no restrictions at all on abortion under this bill. Yet Freddoso falsely declares, "Obama is one of the very few pro-choice advocates who accepts no restrictions on late-term abortions, or any kind of abortions."(203)

Freddoso is so obsessed with attacking Obama's support of abortion rights that the photo section of the book includes a full-page photo of Gianna Jessen, who "survived a saline abortion in 1977." What does this have to do with Obama? Absolutely nothing.

Freddoso notes how Obama opposed a vaguely-worded Illinois bill banning "partial-birth" abortion. Obama feared that it defined the fetus as a person, and said, "this is probably not going to survive constitutional scrutiny."(196) (In fact, Freddoso repeats the same lengthy quote from Obama again four pages later, for mysterious reasons.) The US Senate passed a similar bill 98-0, but it included a key provision that the bill did not define the fetus as a person. And Obama said he would have voted for the  US Senate bill.(198)

While he's falsely smearing Obama, Freddoso also accuses him of "smearing pro-lifers" in this quote from Obama's book: "Most antiabortion activists, for example, have openly discouraged legislative allies from even pursuing those compromise measures that would have significantly reduced the incidence of the procedure popularly known as partial-birth abortion, because the image the procedure evokes in the mind of the public has helped them win converts to their position."(208) According to Freddoso, "This questions not only the sincerity of pro-lifers but also their dedication to their own cause."(209) As usual, Freddoso is misreading Obama. Obama simply said that the antiabortion activists wanted a total ban on "partial-birth" abortion rather than compromise legislation to reduce the most objectionable abortions. That's factually true and doesn't question anyone's sincerity. The fact is, anti-abortion activists want to ban all abortions, and so they are happy to use the so-called "partial-birth" abortion as a tool to do that. Obama was making a point about how he prefers political compromise to ideological purity, but Freddoso is so determined to smear Obama as a radical that he misreads these clearly stated views.

Ironically, Obama was attacked by the left for voting "present" on several votes as part of a strategy by abortion rights groups. Freddoso writes that Obama "avoided many controversial votes" by voting present in the Illinois Senate, which counts the same as a "no" vote.(116) According to Freddoso, Obama voted present "about 130 times over his eight-year career there, which other Illinois senators say is unusually high." As Media Matters pointed out, the New York Times article cited by Freddoso to prove this doesn't say anything about whether Obama's present votes (130 out of more than 4,000 votes) were unusually high, and quotes no senators who say this; in fact, the article noted at least 50 cases where Obama's vote was part of a Democratic Party strategy with many other legislators, and only 36 cases where fewer than five senators had voted present with Obama. If Obama had wanted to avoid controversy, he could have easily voted for popular bills as most of his colleagues did. Instead, he voted present when he wanted to express constitutional concerns about legislation, or objected to the process used to pass a bill.
Obama's Policy Views

Freddoso attacks every policy stand by Obama, even if it requires twisting the facts and distorting Obama's position. Freddoso reads in Obama's book about his visit to a mostly black suburb of Chicago where budget cuts had led a shorter school day and the students were asking to spend more time in school. Freddoso claims the problem is overpaid teachers: "the average teacher in Thornton Township District was earning $83,000 that year."(80)  In reality, the average teacher was making $74,171 (Freddoso increased it by adding pension contributions), and this average was inflated by the fact that budget cuts had led to layoffs, with the less experienced, lower paid teachers usually being the first to go.

Freddoso asks, "With teachers that expensive, how could any such school district 'afford to keep teachers for a full school day'?"(80) Actually, it's difficult to find any wealthy suburb of Chicago that pays its teachers less than Thornton Township, and they can all easily afford a full school day. The problem is an unequal system of funding public schools, not millionaire teachers getting rich. More importantly, Freddoso omits what Obama writes in his book: "those on the left often find themselves defending an indefensible status quo, insisting that more spending alone will improve educational outcomes."(161)

Freddoso also repeats a common lie that I've exposed about Obama's decision to reject public financing: "A few months earlier, Obama had supported the system. He had praised it repeatedly. He had promised to stick to it."(86) Freddoso quotes Obama's statement to the Midwest Democracy Network: "If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election." Freddoso even quotes Obama again from the same questionnaire. Yet he somehow misses this part of Obama answer: "My plan requires both major party candidates to agree on a fundraising truce, return excess money from donors, and stay within the public financing system for the general election." As this makes clear, Freddoso is wrong: Obama never made an unconditional promise to take public financing, and his plan required McCain to "agree on a fundraising truce" that included party funding, something that Obama's campaign says McCain refused to do.

Freddoso explains that in voting against the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), "he was simply voting the party line—the union line."(111) But he omits the fact that Obama supported free trade agreements with Oman and Peru. According to Freddoso, "In the U.S. Senate, Obama has yet to find a tax increase that he does not support. He has voted dozens of times to raise federal taxes."(119) Actually, Obama has supported greater tax cuts on low-wage and middle-class taxpayers than John McCain. But Freddoso doesn't care about the facts because he's determined to claim, "He is a rigid, doctrinaire liberal who votes and thinks along his party line."(120)

Guilt by Association

Freddoso favorite attack is guilt by association. He calls Obama's distant connection with Bill Ayers "a remarkable relationship for a presidential nominee to have." (122) It reality, it's not remarkable at all, but Freddoso devotes five pages to detailing the radical activities of Bill Ayers before Obama was a teenager, activities that Obama has condemned. Obama served on a foundation board with Ayers, but he didn't have any connection with Ayers' appointment. He spoke on panels with Ayers, but he wasn't responsible for inviting him. He attended a 1995 event for Palmer's Congressional race with Ayers' home, but Obama never arranged any of it. The notion that people should resign from foundations and refuse to speak in public in order to avoid any connection to a former radical never convicted of a crime is absurd.

In what might be the most mindless passage in the book, Freddoso even attacks Obama for reading Native Son author Richard Wright ("a communist") and W.E.B. DuBois ("a fellow traveler") as well as "other black authors."(128)

Freddoso asks, "What do these relationships tell us about his judgment and the type of people with whom he will entrust executive powers if elected?"(123) The answer is: absolutely nothing. The suggestion that Obama would be appointing Bill Ayers (or the ghost of Richard Wright) to run the government is nothing but insanity.

Freddoso attacks the Black Commentator website for an article calling Condoleezza Rice a "race traitor." What has this got to do with Obama? Well, the publication also attacked Obama in 2003 because his name appeared on a centrist Democratic Leadership Council list of 100 rising stars. Obama responded by asking the DLC to take his name off.(108) According to Freddoso, "This incident reveals far more about Obama's political thinking than did the words of his conciliatory keynote convention speech."(108) What? So a writer on a website alerts Obama to an endorsement he didn't want. Why would anyone think that Obama should be smeared based on anything written on that website?

Freddoso reports that Obama "sought the endorsement of the Marxist 'New Party' in Chicago."(130) Even worse, Freddoso reports that some members of the New Party were also members of Democratic Socialists of America. Let's all gasp together. But the New Party wasn't Marxist. It was a progressive party criticized by the Green Party for being too moderate. It's not exactly shocking to learn that Obama sought to convince progressives to support his campaigns.

Freddoso also reports that a poet named Frank who was a friend of his grandfather's "can be only one man: Frank Marshall Davis. Davis was reportedly a Communist who worked on behalf of the Soviet Union."(133) Freddoso devotes no less than seven pages of his book to recounting (and even quoting) the dangerous communist poems of Davis and speculations on how the teenage Obama might have been influenced. Freddoso writes, "It would be foolish to fear Barack Obama just because he had a communist father-figure when he was young,"(137) which certainly raises the question: If it's foolish, why did you just spend seven pages stoking that fear?

Freddoso writes, "If Obama could understand and get along with radicals like Palmer, Ayers, and Dohrn, it is not because he agrees with everything they stand for—it is probably because they share similar ideological influences."(139) Actually, it's because Obama can get along with radicals on both the left and the right, a concept that apparently is beyond Freddoso's comprehension. Instead, Freddoso claims that Obama was effectively brainwashed into adopting Saul Alinsky's ideas, which Freddoso goes into six pages of detail explaining (and often distorting) them.

All of this is red-baiting of the lowest (and dumbest) sort, and even Freddoso seems slightly embarrassed by his own pathetic arguments. After inflating Obama's distant connections with former radicals, Freddoso admits: "Of greatest significance are the radical advisors with whom Senator Obama surrounds himself even now. Should he become president, will he entrust such men and women with executive power?"(150) Who are these "radicals"? Freddoso names Clinton's National Security Advisor Anthony Lake (denounced for not being sure about the guilt of Alger Hiss in a 1996 interview), Princeton professor Cornel West (for being a progressive socialist and visiting Venezuela) and Harvard professor Charles Ogletree (for supporting reparations for slavery). Freddoso admits, "It would be unreasonable to expect Obama to accept as advisors only those who agree with every single belief he holds,"(138) but Freddoso seems perfectly happy to be unreasonable. He even denounces Obama for accepting money from Jodie Evans, who is deemed guilty of radicalism by Freddoso of being a co-founder of Code Pink, protesting the Guantanamo Bay prison, and praising Hugo Chavez.(139)

Freddoso also targets Obama's former church to smear him, asking: "Would you join a church that proclaimed itself to be grounded in the writings of a racist?"(158) Playing a game of six degrees of separation, Freddoso condemns Obama because the church's website says that its vision statement is "based upon the systematized liberation theology that started in 1969 with the publication of Dr. James Cone's seminal book, Black Power and Black Theology." According to Freddoso, "Cone's writings provide the context from within which the founding influences of Obama's former church come."(160) I asked Rev. Andrew Greeley (whom Freddoso quotes denouncing Cone) if he agreed with Freddoso's critique of Obama and his church. Greeley called it "nonsense!" Even for guilt by association, Freddoso's claim is pretty weak. A church is much more than the most objectionable statements from a writer who helped found a theological movement that helped inspire the church's vision statement. There's no evidence that Obama ever read Cone, or agreed with him. The fact that Obama was willing to listen to people such as Jeremiah Wright he didn't always agree with is a good qualification for being president, not a disqualification.

Obama's Foreign Policy

Freddoso devotes four pages to Obama's ambivalence on the International Criminal Court without getting anywhere, and finally concludes: "The rap against Obama on foreign policy is not that [sic] so much that he's inconsistent but that he doesn't know what he's doing."(173) Freddoso doesn't provide much evidence for this claim, beyond the "gaffe" in a 2007 debate stating that he would meet with foreign leaders "without precondition." Of course, this wasn't a gaffe at all—it was a repudiation of the failed Bush Doctrine that demands concessions as a condition for negotiation, a tactic that has failed in North Korea and almost everywhere else Bush has tried it.

Freddoso asks: "Is Obama informed? He has not visited Iraq since January 2006, or has he spoken to David Petraeus, the commanding general of the Multi-National Force in Iraq, about the situation on the ground there."(182) Of course, Obama just did exactly that, not that it was necessary to be informed. Has Freddoso personally spoken to David Petraeus? If not, does that prove that Freddoso is uninformed about foreign policy? The notion that Obama can't be regarded as informed unless he talks to (and agrees with) Bush appointees is ridiculous.

Freddoso tries, ineptly, to find contradictions in Obama's campaign, quoting Obama saying that the surge in Iraq would not "make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground."(184-5) and then quoting various advisors to Obama who said that a surge would make some difference. Of course, the surge did make a difference on the ground, as Obama predicted, but not a substantial difference. Instead, better negotiations and tactics reduced killings in Iraq down to the still unacceptable levels of a few years ago.

Freddoso also blames Obama for not embracing the foreign policy hallucinations of the far right: "Obama seems wholly unaware of liberal Democrats' opposition to the policies that helped destroy the Soviet Union, and even certain legislators' collaboration with the Soviets" (a reference to Ted Kennedy).(187) Obama's unaware of them because they're not true. For example, Freddoso writes: "He is especially disdainful of the so-called 'Star Wars' program, which was crucial to bankrupting the Soviets then..."(189) The failed Star Wars program, which still doesn't work 25 years and many billions of dollars after its inception, didn't bankrupt the Soviets or cause perestroika and glasnost. It was the failure of the Soviet system, and the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, that caused reforms.  

Obama and "Corruption"

Freddoso repeatedly tries to paint Obama as corrupt, such as by linking him to his donor and friend Tony Rezko, a Chicago real estate developer. Freddoso makes a factual error in claiming that "Obama paid twice the tax-assessed price for a ten-foot-wide strip of Rezko's lot."(214) It wasn't a tax-assessed price. It was an estimate that was deeply flawed (probably because no home could be built on such a small plot of land, making it less valuable by itself). Instead of paying that price (which would have raised questions about Rezko giving him a benefit), Obama bought the land for one-sixth of the price Rezko paid for one-sixth of his lot.

Obama said: "I've never done any favors for him." According to Freddoso, "But he has. Obama performed official acts while in office that benefited Tony Rezko." (215)  But plenty of people benefit from the official acts of legislators: it's only a favor if Rezko requested it and Obama didn't do the same for others.

Freddoso mentions that Obama wrote letters to support a project to build senior citizen housing that Rezko was involved with. But Freddoso omits the fact that Rezko didn't ask him to write the letters, that these were routine letters often handled by his office (it doesn't appear that Obama was even aware of them, or of Rezko's involvement), and that similar letters were written by several other public officials. There is not the slightest evidence that these letters had any impact on the decision about the senior citizen housing,

Freddoso writes, "Obama is surrounded by developers. Why?"(215) Surrounded is a strong word for four Obama supporters identified by Freddoso who are involved in development. It's not unusual at all in Chicago or other major cities for developers to be deeply involved in the political process. Yet Freddoso sees a vast conspiracy afoot: "the developers financed his political career. He wrote letters to get them government money and supported legislation that helped their business."(216) As evidence of corruption, this falls far short of pathetic. Obama has long supported public funding to aid low-income housing, because of the poor people who benefit from it. So it's not surprising that he would sponsor legislation to support low-income development (it passed 58-0) or write letters encouraging all specific developments around his district. One can argue that the "privatization of public housing" supported by Obama was a waste of money due to developers like Rezko, but it's not the slightest evidence of corruption (or a left-wing devotion to government programs, since Obama was embracing a market-based alternative to public housing).

Freddoso even tells us this horrible fact: "Obama has three bankers involved in his campaign."(225) Needless to say, one suspects that anyone could find three bankers involved with John McCain's campaign (or almost any senator).

Freddoso also repeats a story from the Los Angeles Times about Robert Blackwell Jr. of Electronic Knowledge Interchange (EKI), who hired Obama's law firm and put Obama on retainer in 2001 and 2002. After Obama stopped working on behalf of EKI (which ended his agreement not to contact government agencies on behalf of Blackwell), Blackwell asked him to help get a $20,000 state tourism grant for another company owned by Blackwell, Killerspin, which runs ping-pong tournaments. Still, this story is meant to be the concluding bombshell of Freddoso's book, and it amounts to evidence of no wrongdoing.

For all of his ridiculous attacks on Obama, Freddoso acknowledges that Obama is not worse than any other politician: "he's like all the rest of them. Not a reformer. Not a Messiah. Just like all the rest of them in Washington."(233)

Even though Freddoso rejects the lunatic ideas such as Obama being a "closeted Muslim," he blames this on "Obama's ambiguity" rather than right-wing nuts and equates anyone who thinks Obama "is a reformer" with the bigoted morons who think Obama is a secret Muslim, claiming that both ideas are equally false and have the "same origin."(55)

Freddoso's embarrassing excuse for a critique has received virtually no critical attention, thanks to the right-wing press promoting it and the compliant mainstream outlets. A fawning story in the Politico called Freddoso's book "serious" and "a fact-based critique." According to the Politico, it occupies "a small island in the often-shrill sea of criticism of Obama." In reality, Freddoso's book is one more example of that polluted sea of criticism, filled with numerous factual errors, unproven innuendo, guilt by association attacks, and lunatic conspiracy theories that would be laughable if not for the seriousness of these false accusations.

Crossposted at DailyKos.