Media Only Just Notices Obama Has Thin Resume?
Posted on November 20, 2008
-By Warner Todd Huston
Interestingly, Dan Morain of the L.A. Times had discovered back in April that Barack Obama has a pretty thin resume prior to being elevated to the presidency. Between 1993 and ‘96, Obama, the much-ballyhooed “Constitutional scholar,” had only an unusually low 3,723 billable hours of legal work accrued over a four-year stint with his law firm employer Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Gallard. Further, he seems to have worked on but few cases and made little impact commensurate with his reputation. Yet, just this month the Orlando Sentinel decides to re-print the Morain piece. The question I have, of course, is why is the Orlando Sentinel only NOW interested that Obama was “involved in relatively few cases before entering politics”? Where was this investigating before the election?
The Morain piece begins by recounting how Obama has so often made a big deal out of his days as a “civil-rights attorney” claiming it a key ingredient of his early, formative community development years. Yet, Morain finds that there isn’t much record proving that Obama did a whole heck-of-a-lot back in those days. (bold mine)
Senior attorneys at the small firm where he worked say he was a strong writer and researcher, but was involved in relatively few cases before entering politics.
So, Obama, for all his claims of being involved in the lives of “churches and community groups” as a lawyer with the firm is… what? Blowing smoke? If the paper trail reveals he didn’t work on many cases or have very many billable hours, how is it that he found this experience to be a monumental involvement in the community that shaped his career?
Morain doesn’t directly ask these questions in his piece, wisely preferring to let the facts talk to the reader. But, a careful read of his L.A.Times piece cannot help but elicit the pertinent question: what the heck was Obama doing during those four years, anyway? After all, it sure doesn’t look like he was doing much legal work!
Here’s how Morain sums up Obama’s paper trail:
30: The approximate number of legal cases Obama was involved in:
4: The number of years Obama was a full-time lawyer
70%: The amount of time Obama spent on voting rights, civil rights and employment, generally as a junior associate. (The rest of his time was spent on matters related to real-estate transactions, filing incorporation papers and defending clients against minor lawsuits.)
3,723: The number of billable hours Obama accrued while working at Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Gallard.
According to Morain, some of Obama’s “big” cases were the case of a shortchanged babysitter, the case of a cold building tenant, and a lawsuit against a corporation that owned low-income housing on behalf of a guy that slipped and fell down. Additionally, Obama was involved in the enforcement of the federal Motor Voter law in Illinois — at lest that one being a higher profile case.
So, it appears Obama has less billable hours during those four years than most young lawyers are expected to accrue (which is up to 2,000 hours a year according to some estimates), worked on but few cases, and only on one notable one. On top of that, he was rarely more than a “junior associate” the whole time.
This is the man that was praised for his extensive legal career? A slighted babysitter and a guy that fell down are the amazing legal challenges he faced as a young lawyer?
Of course, the biggest question is, why are we only now seeing this report from the L.A. Times? Where was this report two months ago or more?
Need I even ask?
» Filed Under Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections, Liberal Media/Bias, News
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10 Responses to “Media Only Just Notices Obama Has Thin Resume?”
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Of course the McCain campaign might have brought some of this out in clever + humerous commercials over the summer … and doesn’t the LA Times have some video tape that still might be of interest?
But what about the Hope, STOPTHEACLU? What about the Hope? Obama didn’t need results, or experience. You are seeing things from a hidebound, White, Western perspective. Obama’s tradition is subjective, emotional, rooted in the deep mysteries of non-Western thought. This means that he can cure cancer with a poem, create jobs with a minor tree-incantation, stop violence with good feelings. Meanwhile my clients are busy prepping for massive layoffs, worker training overseas, a huge ramp up in hiring outside of the USA. The single reason? Obama. Wooo! Obama! Sending jobs running for the hills. A senior exec at “large computer services corporation” told me just the other day that they will seek to reduce their US employment exposure by up to 35%. He explained that they don’t want to end up like the Automakers, strapped to union contracts that make operations unprofitable, uncompetitive, and unsustainable. You think the unemployment figures are bad right now? Just wait. Carter-esque before the end of Obama’s first half-year. We have clients looking to offshore every job that can be done remotely. These are some of the best jobs in the USA that are leaving and once they are gone they will never be coming back, friends. Never. Never. Not thing one Obama can do about it.
More unions to ruin more industries. More affirmative action financing to destroy the value of assets and reward the stupid, the lazy, and the unproductive. That’ll get our economy going. Sho yo right, Obama. Better learn an Asian language or get enough skills to emigrate. Otherwise you’re going to get to live in Detroit writ very large, friends. Unless you are a Congresscritter or multimillionaire and can afford one of those gated-guarded compound things.
My expectation is that now that their candidate has been elected, the MSM will seek to demonstrate its objectivity and lack of bias with hard hitting investigative research and inquiries such as “Who is he?” and “What has he done?” Wouldn’t dare do that BEFORE the election, because it wasn’t important or relevant like Palin’s wardrobe or Joe the Plumber’s property taxes. Sorry SOB’s.
George Soros and the MSM are the real enemies of the USA.
“Where was this report two months ago or more?
Need I even ask?”
Priorities, Sir.
FIRST, get him in.
THEN, worry about making him into a competent president.
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Wow Carl, what waxing eloquence. Why I can see to the depth of my withering soul now and realize that I have finally become part of the dustbin of history. No more will I have to worry about trying to save the lives of the unborn that the liberals would slaughter, no more will I have to worry about
capitalism once we are marxist socialized. Speaking of that, you sound like a very astute intelligent man by your writings and thus probably make more money than I, a lowly engineer, why I can now live on your redistributed monies. Oh thank you great liberal leveler. I also see now that the media lies and the abrogation of media moral
values was required to achieve the destruction of the vile US of A that your parents, granparents and ancestors sacrificed so much for. Yes..yes..yes..Mordred has finally returned to Camelot. Thank you thank you thank you.
Things have taken a decidedly weird bent as I struggle against conceits and falsehoods foisted by the uninformed, and on top of that, and I can’t get anybody interested in thoroughbred racing at Hollywood Park. Faced with a divorce of reality and ideas courtesy of FOX, Rush, Hannity, etc., I attempt to unify the two not only to make a convenient target, but to further understanding of the incomprehensible, I often use a variety of Hegel’s concepts in conjunction with a nearby convenient Louisville Slugger upside the cranium of obstinate dittoheads. I’ll let you know how successful I was after I post bail.
Something not right in a patient mimicking his shrink!
Mr. Gordon,
I’ve lost 56% of my life’s savings in the market due to the fear of, and the the reality of Obama’s election. So, I cannot afford the luxury of travel or betting on horses. I will bet that since you shun Fox News, you know nothing of facts in politics.
If you do not know these associations of Obama, then you should Google each and every one to realize what a catastrophe you uninformed people have wrought.
Bill Ayers
Bernadine Dohrn
Khalid Rashid
Tony Rezko
Nadhmi Auchi
Rev. Jeremiah Wright
Father Fhliger
Citibank
ACORN
I urge each and every uninformed person to Google and study the relationships between Obama and each individual in that list.
Tne media is bringing out some of this ‘news’ now (late and buried in the back of the paper) so they can claim to be unbiased down the road.