PrintDecember 8, 2009
Obama's Afghan Pickle
Barack Obama's outsized ambitions and his progressive politics have been on a crash course since that fateful day in October 2002 when the Chosen One truly began his public life.The occasion was an antiwar rally in Chicago's Federal Plaza. Although the Obama faithful would memorialize the day, and Obama operatives would use it to flank Hillary Clinton to the left, the event itself had all the freshness of a Crosby, Stills & Nash reunion show on PBS. Among its highlights: two thousand or so protesters dancing to the lively tunes of a kazoo band led by a marching skeleton only slightly distinguishable from the creaky SDS veterans who organized the show -- Marilyn Katz and Carl Davidson. For all their seeming obsolescence, however, the '60s-era radicals have become an increasingly potent force on the left side of the political aisle. An out-of-the-closet communist, Davidson first met Barack Obama in 1996, when the aspiring state senator actively sought the endorsement of...(Read Full Article)
