Senator Barack Obama would like the country to believe that snubbing the private sector adds to his qualifications to be President of the United States. For the past eighteen months, he has touted that he turned down Wall Street after college for community organizing and walked away from lucrative big law firm jobs after law school for civil rights lawyering. In the Obama campaign narrative, the candidate’s rejection of corporate America is a badge of honor, a manifestation of what Obama’s wife refers to as his commitment to closing the gap between “the world as it should be” and “the world as it is.”

Self-congratulation and self-adulation are not the same as reality. Each day, clients of large law firms and Wall Street, not just political activists, take concrete actions that make the world a better place. Senator Obama does not understand, so he refuses to acknowledge the possibility.

Who are these clients that Obama could have served as a corporate lawyer or a Wall Street banker? They include: energy companies that produce solar power; steelmakers that manufacture products used in automobiles, highways and trains; food companies that deliver meat to supermarkets; technology giants that invent computer hardware, software and information systems used by ordinary individuals from Seattle to Mumbai; and private equity firms that invest in and improve such companies. There are numerous other examples. For a profit, companies of all stripes serve the U.S. and global economies, and are served by large law firms and Wall Street entities.

But big law firms and Wall Street were not good enough for Senator Obama. He likes to remind voters that he opted for much more meager earnings as a community organizer and a civil rights lawyer. He forgets, however, that in a market economy, salary often reflects the work performed and the sacrifices exacted.  Instead of writing memoirs about themselves, law firm and Wall Street types write memos, conduct analysis and devise strategies for their clients. Their higher salaries reflect everything ranging from all nighters pulled, vacations cancelled, personal lives postponed-prices paid far less frequently by community activists or nonprofit idealists.

This does not mean that community activists and nonprofit idealists do not serve the public good.  Nor, as the turmoil in today’s financial markets reminds us, does it mean that profit driven adventures are anything close to perfect. But rejecting the private sector for low-paying jobs is not a stand-alone virtue. It is not even an indication of success.

Obama and many of his leftwing supporters, however, prefer to believe that making a difference must come from community service, political activism, pro bono legal services or activities that generate little or no income. Not surprisingly, the presidential hopeful advocates policies and viewpoints that reflect his bias against private enterprise, such as soaking the rich (e.g., increasing taxes on those making $250,000 per year); slapping a windfall tax on big oil companies (whose shareholders consist of pension plans and ordinary Americans); or blaming the current financial crisis on deregulation promulgated by Republicans (when a major piece of deregulation legislation affecting the banking industry, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, passed the Senate on a 90-8 vote and was signed into law by a Democratic President, Bill Clinton, in 1999).

Elsewhere in the world, even some Communist countries seem to have more faith in the private sector than Senator Obama.  China and Vietnam, for instance, have in recent decades rapidly moved away from their command economies in favor of the imagination and entrepreneurship of their respective private sectors. China’s annual economic growth has averaged 10 percent for much of the past 30 years while Vietnam’s has averaged 7.5 percent for much of the past decade. Along the way, these countries have alleviated much poverty, brought about impressive modernization and drastically altered ordinary lives.

Mr. Obama, the self-proclaimed citizen of the world, draws no inspiration from the transformation of other parts of the world or from the realities of his own country. He prefers to remain the hero who rebuffed corporate villains to do the American people’s work. This is a great narrative, but only for those predisposed to seeing the world as worse than it is.

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I hate snotty Europeans. They show up in America’s major cities and bring with them not only their hatred against President George W. Bush, the Iraq war and U.S. foreign policies, but also their disdain for Americans and American culture in general.

More often than not, these snotty Europeans display their disdain toward America openly, with the ignorance of people who do not fully understand their subject matter and the ill manners of a guest telling his host at a cocktail party that his wife is ugly.

On a slightly humid summer night in Washington, DC, I attended a farewell party for a friend who worked for a prominent international organization. The crowd drew heavily from this international organization and hailed from all over the world, including from countries whose names I had previously never pronounced and whose geopolitical significance I did not care to remember. But I put on a smile and tried to be friendly.

Someone introduced me to a young man from Switzerland who had moved to the United States only some nine months ago. Doing what people do at parties, I made small talk. I inquired how he was enjoying himself in this country. He said things were going pretty well but emphasized that he was lucky to be in Washington, DC. I assumed that like most young people, he merely enjoys city life (which, by the way, DC offers only in pitiful fashion). As it turned out, the Swiss believed that the rest of America, the big swaths between the two coasts (i.e., the heartland), would not be a welcoming place for him.

“Why not?” I demanded. By now, my party smile had come unscrewed. This European was killing my buzz and worse yet, he was beginning to piss me off.

“Because the people in those places are not that open minded and would not be very welcoming of foreigners,” he explained matter-of-factly. The two or three other European guests who were part of this conversation nodded instinctively and knowingly.

“In what ways are they not open minded?” I persisted, my voice slightly raised from clear annoyance. He paused and by now his cocktail party smile had come unscrewed as well.

“You cannot possibly tell me that people in Kansas City would be just as open minded as the people in Washington, DC or New York?”

Yes, I am telling you exactly that, I informed him, restraining myself from including any profanity in my response. “They may be less cosmopolitan but they are certainly not less open minded.”

The bystanders of this conversation had stopped nodding knowingly and were beginning to look a bit uncomfortable. Comments that berate Americans, often uttered by snotty Europeans, were not supposed to elicit a response, at least not from Americans who sip wine in the company of international types bent on saving the world.

The Swiss began to look rather annoyed. You can’t be serious, he said. All these people in places like Kansas City don’t know anything about the world; they dislike Europe and believe everything that Fox News tells them.

“No, Americans are warm and they are kind from all over the country,” I glared at him. “Just because they don’t know where you come from does not mean that they will refuse to get to know you.”

“Besides,” I added, for special effect, “95 percent of the nasty things that Fox News says about Europe are true and I’m already being quite charitable.”

The special effects worked. The conversation ended and the Swiss walked away to find more polite and enlightened company. I had obviously succeeded in killing his buzz too.

About a year later, I remembered this exchange with the Swiss, when at a hip restaurant on New York’s Lower East Side, two effeminate Frenchmen loudly and proudly declared their contempt for Americans and American culture to me, an American they had just met.

It was rude, as it always is, and the two Frenchmen were disgusting, as snotty Europeans often are. One would expect such Europeans, often well paid and well educated, to behave more respectfully toward their host country. Unfortunately, many of them do not.

Perhaps when Barack Obama becomes President, Americans can all become citizens of the world and eagerly nod at European insults toward our fellow countrymen. Until then, those of us who are far less “open minded” will continue watching the Fox News Channel and remain citizens of just the United States.

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Throughout the Democratic primaries, Senator Barack Obama emphasized that the choice for voters was between the past, represented by his main rival, Senator Hillary Clinton, and the future, which belonged to him. Yet on serious issues involving race in America, Obama has stood time and again with the attitudes, grievances and failed policies of the past rather than with the bold solutions of the future. While wowing Americans with his post-racial rhetoric, Obama has consistently supported egregious policies that classify Americans by race and engaged in despicable practices that attack legitimate criticism as racist.

Most notably, Obama talks in lofty terms about racial unity but opposes efforts (like voter initiatives on the ballot in Arizona, Colorado and Nebraska this fall) that promise to end the sordid status quo under which the government dishes out contracts, employment and university admissions based on race. He chooses to believe that opposition to the country’s race-based programs is stoked by the cynicism of conservative politicians and talk show hosts and fueled by anger within the white community. The candidate who believes in bringing people together unfortunately appears completely unable or unwilling to understand that policies that divide Americans by race might be inherently unjust and unfair.

Senator Obama also eloquently exhorts blacks, especially black men, to take responsibility for their own lives and chart their own destiny. Yet he slyly practices the grievance politics that has greatly contributed to modern day racial intolerance. Under America’s sordid status quo, too many black leaders have preyed on the guilt of white Americans to demand handouts and different standards, as too many mainstream politicians of both left and right have failed to challenge this corrosive mentality. In this paradigm, not only is affirmative action the prerequisite for black success, legitimate criticisms of blacks by non-blacks also become racial attacks.

Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Senator Obama’s controversial former pastor, showed America just how such grievance politics is played when he accused the media of attacking the black church when it in fact attacked his hateful sermons and anti-American rhetoric. Though Obama has denounced and disowned Wright, he has not, however, moved beyond the Jeremiah Wright-style of politics that produces hate. Instead, his campaign has subjected critics to a nasty racial politics that exploits the black community’s worst insecurities about racial stereotypes.

When Senator Hillary Clinton observed (not inaccurately) in the run up to the South Carolina primaries that the passage of the Civil Rights Act required the experience of President Lyndon B. Johnson, not just the inspirational rhetoric of Reverend Martin Luther King, the Obama campaign simplified her argument about experience into an insult against the black race. “In her eagerness to point out how white presidents can get things done, she in effect relegated Dr. King’s sacrifice for racial equality to nothing more than a supportive role,” stated the SC Black News, the largest African American paper in South Carolina. The Obama campaign has endorsed this crass, racial depiction by displaying the editorial in which this quote appears prominently in the African American section of its website.

No doubt the Obama campaign has been aided by black leaders and voters who have been all too willing to condemn any criticism of Obama as racist. When President Bill Clinton observed in New Hampshire in January that Obama’s long-standing objection to the Iraq War was the “biggest fairy tale ever,” a legitimate criticism on one of the most important issues of the 2008 campaign, numerous blacks saw it as a racist attack on the viability of a black presidential candidate. Unfortunately, the black presidential hopeful peddling hope for a future of racial reconciliation did nothing to counter or condemn the unfair and unjustified racial misperceptions.

In contrast to Senator Obama’s embrace of the status quo, there are bold proposals that seek fundamental change in the flawed assumptions that govern policies affecting race in America. Against affirmative action, there are proposals to end race-based admissions, contracting and employment. Against playing the race card, there is the suggestion to stop pandering and treat blacks like anyone else. Against the culture of grievance that restricts how Americans can even begin to talk about race, there is the possibility that we can begin by talking honestly.

On these serious issues that affect daily life in America, the post-racial candidate of 2008 unfortunately presents a future that harks back grotesquely to the past. Before November, voters who believe in a race-blind society should ask themselves whether this grotesqueness is in fact the change that they have been waiting for.

Right Commentary is pleased to have Ying Ma as a new author/contributor to the blog. Ying writes about issues ranging from international affairs to race in America. Her op-eds and articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal Asia, the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Boston Globe, The American Enterprise, Policy Review, National Review Online and other publications.

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