I'm going somewhere with this, Part 1

I think John Derbyshire was the first I saw note that Barack Obama may sound good, but his words are drivel. His original post is here.

I dunno, I must be missing a gene or two. Everybody, including even some conservatives, is telling me what a fine uplifting orator Barack Obama is. All I see is great gusts of hot air. When he says something that actually has any semantic content, either it is just false, or else it is naked socialism.

I was just looking through Obama's latest oratorical masterpiece. It strikes me as obnoxious, where it is not just flatulent.

… we've got young people all across this country who have never had a reason to participate until now.

The "reason to participate," for people of any age, is the sense of citizenly duty. This sense didn't exist before Obama showed up?

We're up against the belief that it's all right for lobbyists to dominate our government, that they are just part of the system in Washington.

But lobbyists are part of the system in Washington. It says so in the First Amendment: "… to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Obama wants to repeal the First Amendment?

Since then, Fraley and Uncle Jimbo have piled on, and the discussion continues at The Corner.

Either O'B made a long-strategic decision very early on in life that he was going to climb the political ladder, and that therefore the less of a trail of opinions he left behind him, the less trouble he'd get into; or he really is a quite exceptionally empty suit. Which is it? Which is scarier?

A reader:

Mr. Derbyshire, as a law student, I find it amazing that Obama could leave Harvard without a pretty serious paper-trail. I side more on commercial law stuff when comes to selecting classes, and yet I've written fairly substantial (30+) policy papers on religion in the public sphere; the death penalty; Gitmo; Supreme Court justices, etc. And that's for a guy who tries to avoid the fluffy stuff.

I find it impossible to believe that the editor of the Harvard Law Review doesn't have anything substantial with his name on it from then (the George Washington Law Review requires not 1, but 2 essay contests each requiring 20+ papers on various public policy and legal questions to be an editor).

More later ...