Words Mean Something

Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can’t be bothered.

A couple of weeks ago, in my local newspaper, I spotted an AP story headlined, “Obama criticizes Palin on earmarks.” In that story, Senator Obama is quoted as saying: “Come on! I mean, words mean something, you can’t just make stuff up.”

After I picked myself up off the floor and cleaned up the coffee I had just spewed all over my breakfast table, I started thinking about this. And after having the phrase rattling around in my head for a couple of weeks, I’m compelled to ask the good senator a couple of questions:

In 2004, right after you were elected to the United States Senate, you said, “I can unequivocally say I will not be running for national office in four years, and my entire focus is making sure that I’m the best possible senator on behalf of the people of Illinois.” Did those words mean something?

Four days later, a reporter asked why you had “ruled out” a 2008 run for the Presidency. You replied, “I am a believer in knowing what you’re doing when you apply for a job…and I think that if I were to seriously consider running on a national ticket, I would essentially have to start now, before having served a day in the Senate. There might be some people who are comfortable with doing that, but I’m not one of those people.” Did those words mean something?

In January of 2007, you told Larry King, “I’m a big believer in public financing of campaigns.” In November of 2007, you told 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.” In April, 2008, you told FOX News that you would be “very interested in pursuing public financing, because I think not every candidate is going to be able to do what I’ve done in this campaign and I think it’s important to think about future campaigns.” Did any of those words mean something?

In March, 2008, you said of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother…” What, exactly, did those words mean?

Those 130 times that you voted “present” instead of “yea” or “nay” in the Illinois State Senate – on bills like the one that wanted to prevent adult book/video stores and strip clubs from being within 1,000 feet of schools and churches, or the one that wanted to prosecute students as adults if they fire guns on school grounds, or that much-discussed bill that had to do with partial-birth abortion – what, exactly did that word mean?

I guess that words mean something only as long as they’re not your words. Although I did find some words that I'm sure do mean something. They're from your book Audacity of Hope where you said, "I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views. As such, I am bound to disappoint some, if not all, of them." Over the next few months, we'll all get to see what those words mean.

Thanks for listening. No, not you, Barak, because I know you’re not.