A contrast of First Ladies: Michelle Obama and Laura Bush

Last week while driving, I caught a little bit of Carol Platt Liebau (Carol was on Harvard Law Review with Obama) on talk radio. She was reporting that Michelle Obama had just given a talk to government bureaucrats empowering them as the “backbone of America.” No surprise, only confirmation of our march into Marxism by the Obamas.

Somewhat off topic, but a while back on another thread we were debating Obama and Harvard Law. Larry said there was no affirmative action; Carol confirmed that at the time of Obama, there certainly was, however,
there is no way to confirm if he got on by merit or AO
, only that it WAS possible to get on by random selection outside of merit.

She also added that he was “absent” more than he was ever there; often “preferred to work from home”, consquently, no one on HLR ever saw much of him. Go figure; fits right in with the most “gone from the WH president during the first month in office in US History!”

Correction, PDill.

It wasn’t I who said there was “no affirmative action.”

It was Bradford Berenson, conservative Republican, serving as a Bush administration White House lawyer between 2001 and 2003, and also serving, with Barack Obama, on the Harvard Law Review, during Obama’s tenure.

Following below are some relevant quotations from Berenson (below). I urge you to read all of his comments. They utterly refute the substance of PDill’s quotations from Carol Platt Liebau (who is a conservative ideologue, as anyone can determine with 5 minutes on Google). (Note, by the way, that Liebau was a year behind Obama, and was not present at the time when he was selected President of the Law Review and, thus, wasn’t in a position to refute any of Berenson’s account.)

But wait, even Carol Platt Liebau REFUTES the substance of PDill’s quotations from Carol Platt Liebau!

http://townhall.com/columnists/CarolPlattLiebau/2007/03/05/the_barack_i_knew

Here’s what Carol had to say, back in March of 2007:

Barack is a deeply committed liberal, and I am a proud conservative. Even so, he possesses five qualities that are genuinely praiseworthy — political ideology aside:

He’s intelligent. Clearly, his achievements reveal that Barack Obama possesses intellectual credentials that would impress even the snootiest resume snob. But (perhaps more importantly) he also possesses street smarts. As Hillary Clinton can testify, he knows how to throw a punch as well as how to take one. He is able to size up people accurately. What’s more, he respects “real world” intelligence, a quality that’s all-too-rare among those with stellar academic records – but one that’s vital to someone in public life who must rely on the assistance of an extensive staff.

He’s colorblind. When Barack became the first African-American President of The Harvard Law Review, it was big news. More radical black Review editors urged him not only to take controversial stands on a whole host of racial issues – they also pressured him to use his discretion to elevate black students to leadership positions within the organization. Barack declined to do so; though his choices were often left-wing (as, in fairness, was much of the Review’s membership), they weren’t race-conscious.

He’s self-confident. Even at age 29, Barack Obama had the self-possession and confidence of a much older man – a quality that, at times, manifested itself in amusing ways. At law school, he had apparently been urged by several professors to call them by their first names – and it was a prerogative he wasn’t shy about exercising, even in front of other students who hadn’t received the same invitation. He projected an air of self-assurance amid controversy, and always radiated an unshakable air of confidence in himself and his decisions – qualities that are no doubt essential to making a run for the nation’s highest office as a relatively untried first term senator.

He listens. Certainly, Barack is a liberal’s liberal, and his leadership of The Harvard Law Review in many ways reflected that fact. But unlike many of his left-wing compatriots, he treated his ideological adversaries with respect on a personal level. Indeed, he always offered the small conservative contingent on the Review a hearing, even though his decision-making consistently showed that he hadn’t ultimately been influenced by their arguments.

He has a sense of humor. In May of 2006, I encountered Barack in the hall of the Russell Senate Office Building, surrounded by a gaggle of advisors. To my surprise, he hailed me over, teasingly referencing a spectacularly fashion-backward pair of horn-rimmed glasses I had often worn during Review days. I complimented his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and then, for some reason, felt it necessary to remind him that my praise was qualified by the fact that “of course I don’t agree with any of your policies.” With that, Barack simply threw back his head and laughed. Can anyone imagine Hillary Clinton, John Kerry or Howard Dean reacting that way?

No doubt it’s a long, long road to The White House, even for politicians with significantly more experience than Illinois’ junior senator. But many of the qualities that he manifested during our joint tenure on The Harvard Law Review help explain why so many enthusiastically contemplate the prospect that Barack Obama’s journey to the Oval Office will be both a short and a successful one.

So now, apparently, Carol remembers him differently. So who is the real Barack Obama? The one Carol remembered in 2007 or the one PDill says that Carol now remembers?

Let’s go onto Berenson (again, I urge you to read the entire interview):

Bradford Berenson Harvard Law, class of ’91; associate White House counsel, 2001-’03

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/choice2008/obama/harvard.html

the classroom was very politicized. The debates and discussions of the law and of cases frequently pit conservatives in our class against liberals in our class, and the discussions often got quite heated. I would say the environment at Harvard Law School back then was political in a borderline unhealthy way. It was quite intense.

… Interestingly, race was at the forefront of the agenda. There were intense debates over affirmative action that sometimes got expressed through fights over tenure decisions relating to junior faculty at the law school. There were women professors and minority professors who either had come up for tenure or were coming up for tenure, and there were big fights, on the faculty and in the law school at large, over whether they should receive tenure, whether the quality of their scholarship merited that. …

[A]fter [Obama] became president of the Review, he was under a lot of pressure to participate and lend his voice to those debates. And he did, I think, to some degree. But I would not have described him as a campus radical or a campus political leader. He was the president of the Harvard Law Review, the leader of that organization. But, in that role, his job was to manage, in essence, a publication, and the editors who brought it forth and to do a lot of close editing of academic legal articles. …

You don’t become president of the Harvard Law Review, no matter how political, or how liberal the place is, by virtue of affirmative action, or by virtue of not being at the very top of your class in terms of legal ability. Barack was at the very top of his class in terms of legal ability. He had a first-class legal mind and, in my view, was selected to be president of the Review entirely on his merits.

… I never regarded him as kind of a racial special pleader, or a person looking for race-based benefits, either for himself or others. I think as a policy matter, he supported affirmative action and believed in the arguments for it. But unlike many people on the left, he was also willing to acknowledge that it had costs, and he could at least appreciate the arguments on the other side. …
Just in a political sense, what kind of a person were you looking for [to serve as president]? …

The block of conservatives on the Law Review my year I think was eager to avoid having any of the most political people on the left govern the Review. I mean, the first bedrock criterion, I think for almost all of the editors, was to have somebody with an absolutely first-rate legal mind who would be able to engage competently with the nation’s top legal scholars on their scholarship and on these articles, and who would provide the intellectual leadership for the Review that it always needed. That was non-negotiable for almost everybody right or left.

We had all worked with him over the course of a year. And we had all spent countless hours in the presence of Barack, as well as others of our colleagues who were running, in Gannett House [the Law Review offices], and so you get a pretty good sense of people over the course of a year of late nights working on the Review. You know who the rabble-rousers are. You know who the people are who are blinded by their politics. And you know who the people are who, despite their politics, can reach across and be friendly to and make friends with folks who have different views. And Barack very much fell into the latter category. …

[After Obama is selected,] he does a very able job as president. Puts out what I think was a very good volume of the Review. Does a great job managing the difficult and complicated interpersonal dynamics on the Review. And manages somehow, in an extremely fractious group, to keep everybody almost happy.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/choice2008/obama/character.html

I never saw Barack lose his cool, get angry, have a fit of temper, raise his voice. Most of the time if he was frustrated or bemused by something, there’d be kind of a wry smile, maybe a knitting of the eyebrows. But he was a very cool character, a very cool customer in all senses of that word. And any ribbing directed at him was taken in stride and with very good humor, very good nature. …
When I see him on the political stage now I very much feel like it’s the same guy that I knew and spent those years with on the Harvard Law School campus in Cambridge. He doesn’t seem like a new man, a different man, someone who’s radically remade himself, a Gatsby figure at all. He was then who he is now. And some of that same cool, some of that same affability, some of that same unflappability, that good faith, that good character, that intellect, they were all apparent then. And I think they all come through now and are part of the secret to his appeal.

Actually, the person Berenson remembers and the person described by Carol Liebau in 2007 seem to be the exact same man, don’t they PDill?

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA

It may have been Berenson’s view that Obama was

“selected to be president of the Review entirely on his merits.”

Obama, not so sure:

I’d also like to add one personal note, in response to the letter from Mr. Jim Chen which was published in the October 26 issue of the RECORD, and which articulated broad objections to the Review’s general affirmative action policy. I respect Mr. Chen’s personal concern over the possible stigmatizing effects of affirmative action, and do not question the depth or sincerity of his feelings. I must say, however, that as someone who has undoubtedly benefited from affirmative action programs during my academic career, and as someone who may have benefited from the Law Review’s affirmative action policy when I was selected to join the Review last year, I have not personally felt stigmatized either within the broader law school community or as a staff member of the Review. Indeed, my election last year as President of the Review would seem to indicate that at least among Review staff, and hopefully for the majority of professors at Harvard, affirmative action in no way tarnishes the accomplishments of those who are members of historically underrepresented groups

http://media.www.hlrecord.org/media/storage/paper609/news/2008/10/30/Election2008/Record.Retrospective.Obama.On.Affirmative.Action-3515294.shtml

There are other Obama HLR peers on the net whose comments aren’t flattering.

_________________________________________________

Back to the topic.

Mata,

I read the Laura Bush article yesterday(comfort food) and visited a few of the links offered by the newspaper about the Obama’s, President Bush,etc. we were again, on the same page.

I corrected my e-mail addy.

My thinking, both the Obama’s are thin skinned. We see it with his attacks on talk show hosts and now this fashion thing is her little problem. She’s upset with the negative reviews. She shouldn’t have worn that bedspread to the Inaugural balls. Then there was a comment about her Parade outfit.

“Michelle didn’t need a purse that day, she needed end tables.”

The Obama White House stressed to me that Rogers did much more in New York than attend fashion shows. She had a full schedule — the aide wouldn’t say exactly what it was

Looks like she may be borrowing from a couple of other first ladies(walking billboards) and will allow a designer or two to rework her wardrobe, hopefully she will be going with someone other than the campaign days and first month in the WH. Bet that’s what the aid was out scouting.

Larry I was just reporting what I heard on AM radio. You can listen to it yourself if you want to take the time (Feb 20th). I seem to remember the first hour she was talking about Michelle Obama, and by the time I had gotten back into my car the 2nd hour, a caller called in and asked how one gets selected for the Harvard Law Review. From there, it became a pretty interesting converstation, with Liebau being very careful to give Obama the benefit of the doubt.

For what it’s worth, I never even knew who Liebau was; just happend to get into my car with the dial on 1170 AM Los Angeles, of which I admit to getting sucked into the conversation, while running errands in La Jolla. There you have it!

Here’s the link:

http://townhall.com/talkradio/show.aspx?radioshowid=5

Greetings:

But, still no interest in why the State of Illinois revoked Mrs. Obama’s license to practice law.

I agree with Missy both Obama’s are thin skinned, neither can take even a hint of criticism and that will compound their downfall, the world will see two very psst off sore losers blaming everyone except themselves.

Missy, Bradford Berenson said that Obama’s election as PRESIDENT of the Harvard Law Review had nothing to do with affirmative action. This is exactly how I quoted him.

What Obama wrote was that his appointment to the law review itself (as opposed to the PRESIDENCY of the law review) “may have” been aided by affirmative action. Do you understand the distinction? First, you get appointed as a Law Review editor. Then, among all the editors, you are elected President. I urge everyone to read Berenson’s entire account of Obama’s law review days and compare them with the account of Carol Platt Liebau (the latter a very hard core conservative, in the Flopping Aces mold). Both conservatives are effusive in their praise.

Also, getting “affirmative action” at Harvard is nothing in the world like getting affirmative action at most state schools. It’s in a different orbit.

Are you suggesting that Harvard made a mistake in appointing Obama to the Law Review or that the students on the law review who elected him President made a mistake? Looks to me as if both knew what they were doing, by any objective standard.

Someone else called Barack Obama “thin skinned.” Where is the evidence for that? Berenson said that he was always cool and unflappable under pressure, and that’s certainly the way he’s come off, since entering into the public eye. Perhaps you were thinking of John McCain, whom everyone agrees is certifiably “thin skinned” in temperament.

What was interesting is that two different conservatives who knew Obama from his law review days were virtually identical in their praise of the man and his intellect and his leadership.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA

http://24ahead.com/michelle-obama-court-ordered-inactive-status

“Rather, prior to 2000, attorneys who wanted to become inactive had to seek the permission of the IL Supreme Court, and that’s the court order being referred to. Since 2000, no such court order is necessary, but prior to 2000 it was. Further, I’m informed that if there were any sort of disciplinary action taken against her it would be listed on that page.”

For goodness’s sakes, of course Obama got into Harvard Law School based on AA and with the support of the Sutton family sponsoring him. He only has a basic degree with no honors, right??? How to get into Harvard Law like that???? Unless you have a powerful backer sponsoring you???

Come on, wake up.

Whether he is talented??? How to see if we can’t see his articles or transcripts??? From what I see his main talent is in conning people to support him with smooth lies and false promises. He can sense what you want, and will promise it to you in a way you are most gullible for. He is able to sense where our weaknesses and needs are and is able to exploit them for his own benefit.

There is no moral courage, integrity or truthfulness in this man. Just a lowdown cunning, a good ability to exploit others for his own gain. He is the ultimate conman.

And people who can’t sense this are just dumb, and will pay the price in due time.