Obama wrong on Kennedy family help in bringing father to USA

The Washington Post caught Barack Obama telling a tall tale. It's not on the level of Hillary Clinton's lie about being shot at by snipers when she arrived in Bosnia in 1996, but it it's worth looking at.

Addressing civil rights activists in Selma, Ala., a year ago, Sen. Barack Obama traced his "very existence" to the generosity of the Kennedy family, which he said paid for his Kenyan father to travel to America on a student scholarship and thus meet his Kansan mother.

The Camelot connection has become part of the mythology surrounding Obama's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. After Caroline Kennedy endorsed his candidacy in January, Newsweek commentator Jonathan Alter reported that she had been struck by the extraordinary way in which "history replays itself" and by how "two generations of two families -- separated by distance, culture and wealth -- can intersect in strange and wonderful ways."

It is a touching story -- but the key details are either untrue or grossly oversimplified.

Contrary to Obama's claims in speeches in January at American University and in Selma last year, the Kennedy family did not provide the funding for a September 1959 airlift of 81 Kenyan students to the United States that included Obama's father. According to historical records and interviews with participants, the Kennedys were first approached for support for the program nearly a year later, in July 1960. The family responded with a $100,000 donation, most of which went to pay for a second airlift in September 1960.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton, who is usually first on the scene in explaining these Obama-nations, told the Washington Post that the senator erred in his account of a Kennedy connection in bringing Barack, Sr. to America.

However, it sure is a nice story. Just like the one about John F. Kennedy authoring the book, Profiles in Courage. But he didn't. JFK speechwriter Ted Sorensen did most of the work, although Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for the effort of others. Audacity!

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