Marathon Pundit: Obama: The man, the speech, and a thin résumé

I read somewhere recently, in The American Thinker I think, that Barack Obama has the thinnest résumé of any major party presidential candidate since Wendell Willkie carried the GOP banner in 1940.

What was your favorite moment of the Willkie presidency?

Jenny Backus, a senior Barack Obama advisor, spoke with the Rocky Mountain News a couple of days ago.

"No one more than Barack Obama understands how important it is to deliver a convention speech well," Backus said. "He wouldn't be where he is if he didn't know how to deliver convention speeches."

Of course he wouldn't! What are his accomplishments? One bill passed in the US Senate. Impressive. His record in the Illinois State Senate, as explained a few posts down in my New Yorker article analysis, was largely the work of others, particularly Senate President Emil Jones.

The Obama zealots like to point out that Abraham Lincoln didn't have much experience before he was elected president. The National Review shot that argument to pieces a few months ago. When he ran for the US Senate in 1858, Lincoln, NR said, was matched against Stephen A. Douglas, that body's top Democrat. The seven Lincoln-Douglas debates are still studied 150 years later. Obama ended up in the US Senate after his top two opponents imploded because of private life embarrasments, which left the cartoonish Alan Keyes as Obama's final "obstacle" to victory.

Lincoln's defeat in 1858 was much more meaningful than Obama's win in 2004.

As for Obama, "He wouldn't be where he is if he didn't know how to deliver convention speeches."

No one will ever say that about John McCain.

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