PrintMarch 23, 2008
Obama's Problem Mentors
First there was Jeremiah Wright. Is Emil Jones next?
The press had a field day with Obama's religious mentor and friend. But the story behind Obama's political mentor also contains some disturbing elements.
Emil Jones, the Democratic leader of the Illinois State Senate is the man who is credited with propelling the little known state senator to the political heights in Washington.
“You have the power to elect a US senator,” Obama told Emil Jones, Democratic leader of the Illinois state senate. Jones looked at the ambitious young man smiling before him and asked, teasingly: “Do you know anybody I could make a US senator?”Jones helped Obama prior to his run for the US senate by assigning high profile legislation to the candidate thus filling out his fairly pathetic record as a state senator. Most of Obama's "accomplshments" in Springfield were the result of Jones allowing Obama a prominent role in getting legislation through the senate - legislation that in many cases had been introduced and championed over the years by other lawmakers.
According to Jones, Obama replied: “Me.” It was his first, audacious step in a spectacular rise from the murky political backwaters of Springfield, the Illinois capital.
[snip]
At one point during Obama’s 2003 Senate campaign, Jones set out to woo two African-American politicians miffed by Obama’s presumption and ambition. One of them, Rickey “Hollywood” Hendon, a state senator, had scoffed that Obama was so ambitious he would run for “king of the world” if the position were vacant.
When Jones secured the two men’s support, Obama asked his mentor how he had pulled it off. “I made them an offer,” Jones said in mock-mafioso style. “And you don’t want to know.”
Jones is now at the centre of a long row over his attempt to block proposed laws cracking down on his state’s “pay-to-play” tradition – whereby companies hoping to win government contracts have to contribute to the campaign funds of officials.
Jones staff say he blocked the bill because he intends to produce something tougher. No proposals have appeared.
Again, no one is accusing Obama of doing anything illegal. But as the evidence grows that he is just another politician and someone whose mentors are anything but paragons of virtue and probity, whatever otherworldly sheen that surrounded him begins to fall off and we can see him for what he truly is; a shrewd, politically gifted, far left politician.
HT: Ed Lasky
