Gimme Some Truth

People everywhere remember John Lennon's classic 1971 song "Imagine" and the solo album by the same name.

Fewer, perhaps, recall the song "Gimme Some Truth" from that album, although it seems to be appropriate as today's Democrats pursue their party's presidential nomination.

Here's a sample of the lyrics:

"I'm sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocritics.
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth.
I've had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians.
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth."

I was reminded of this song today while reading a column by the Washington Post's Robert Samuelson. The Post, by the way, is published by the Washington Post Co., which in our increasingly corporate world also publishes Newsweek. Samuelson's columns can be found at websites for both publications.

In the column, titled "The Obama Delusion," Samuelson observes that, because of their lengthy careers in the public spotlight, he feels Hillary Clinton and John McCain are "known quantities," but Barack Obama is "largely a stage presence defined mostly by his powerful rhetoric. The trouble, at least for me, is the huge and deceptive gap between his captivating oratory and his actual views."

Obama was here in Dallas today. I wasn't able to attend the rally, and I've only seen snippets of it on the local newscasts, but apparently he was greeted by an enthusiastic crowd of thousands at Reunion Arena. And he appears to have delivered a speech that, like most of his previous campaign speeches, carried a "powerful appeal," in Samuelson's words.

"But on inspection, the metaphor is a mirage," Samuelson writes. "Repudiating racism is not a magic cure-all for the nation's ills. It requires independent ideas, and Obama has few. If you examine his agenda, it is completely ordinary, highly partisan, not candid and mostly unresponsive to many pressing national problems."

Samuelson outlines his complaints about Obama, then concludes by saying, "He seems to have hypnotized much of the media and the public with his eloquence and the symbolism of his life story. The result is a mass delusion that Obama is forthrightly engaging the nation's major problems when, so far, he isn't."

In the aftermath of our experience with the current administration, isn't truth at the top of the list of the things we need from our next president? I say that not just with Obama in mind. The voters need truth from Clinton and McCain as well. But candor seems to be most lacking in Obama's campaign. No matter how pleasant the poetry or how uplifting the prose, just gimme some truth.

Please.

And Obama's campaign is the one that received an endorsement from the Teamsters today.

That's right.

The same organization with ties to organized crime, the same organization that Jimmy Hoffa ran in the 1950s, the same organization that is run by Hoffa's son today.

One of my favorite comedians, George Carlin, observed that the Teamsters joined forces with the Moral Majority to produce the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Carlin called it a coalition of "organized religion and organized crime."

Now I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to just about anyone. Because I realize that anyone can make a mistake and needs a second chance to demonstrate a change of ways. But the persistence of racketeering charges that has followed the union's presidents makes it a little difficult to do that with the Teamsters.

When you consider the number of "second chances" the Teamsters have been given to prove themselves over the decades, you have to figure that we're well into double digits by now.

If you're wondering how the endorsement might affect the vote in the Texas primary on March 4, I can't say for sure. But I would remind you that Texas doesn't have a reputation for being a union-friendly state. And I would guess that regard for organized crime is even lower.

Several observers in the foreign media are convinced that the Democratic race is over. Or, if it isn't, it might as well be.

Richard Adams writes, in The Guardian, that Clinton actually lost the nomination two weeks ago, on "Tsunami Tuesday," because she and her advisers believed they would wrap it up by then and failed to plan for a campaign that would go on beyond that day.

Gerard Baker, in the London Times, says that Clinton may have no choice now except to take a negative approach to Obama. She "could turn toxic" as the options dwindle, Baker says.

And no matter who wins the nomination, warns Michael Lind in the Financial Times, it may be a false assumption that "[w]ith the country mired in an unpopular war in Iraq and perhaps in a prolonged recession, voters will treat the November election as a referendum on George W. Bush and punish his party."

In fact, Lind suggests, "freakish circumstances" in 1976, 1992 and 1996 led to Democratic victories -- otherwise, Republicans might have held the White House continuously for the last 40 years. And, he says, "The era of Republican presidential hegemony that began with Richard Nixon may not be over."

And, Lind contends, whoever wins the Democratic nomination must appeal to millions of Democrats who are "the heirs to the Wallace and Reagan Democrats" if he/she wants to capture the White House.

A nominee who hasn't been candid with the voters probably won't win their support in November.

So my advice to Obama and Clinton is simple: Take your cue from John Lennon. Give us some truth.