Obamaniacs should accept the hard facts of politics
Business Times - 10 Feb 2009 Obamaniacs should accept the hard facts of politics By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT DURING the 2008 presidential race, candidate Barack Obama's meteoric political rise reminded some observers of Chance the Gardener aka Chauncey Gardiner, the character played by Peter Sellers in the 1979 film, Being There (adapted from a novel by Jerzy Kosinski). Chance the Gardener finds himself homeless upon the death of the owner of a house in Washington and becomes the central figure in a comedy of misunderstandings. His ordinary silence and unremarkable utterances ('As long as the roots are not severed, all is well') are mistaken for profundities. He is embraced by a group of politicos and eventually the general public, and seems to be on his way to the White House. Mr Obama's detractors who compared Barack the Candidate to Chance the Gardener, suggested that not unlike the character in Being There, Mr Obama was uttering empty slogans ('Yes. W...