Monday, November 19, 2012

Remembering Good Gifts - Our Wedding Rings

Now that the election is over, I am turning my attention back to my business and my marriage. Tricia and I were willing to die to get out our story on young Obama's radicalism. Having potentially reduced Obama's mandate, we are turning our attention to rebuilding things at home. One of the things we like to do during the holidays is to review our scrapbook binder of previous Christmas cards and Christmas letters.

As we read through these letters we enjoy a fairly objective snapshot of our lives over time. It is one of the things that keeps us together as a married couple since we are developing a story of our lives together. I still remember that when we got married we exchanged wedding rings. Tricia's was considerably more expensive than mine. The pastor called them "good gifts."

They still are. Overtime, however, Tricia started to wear a simpler gold band, in part, because she was afraid of losing some of the diamonds in her setting and because the tines would catch on her dresses and sweaters.

I took sometime after the election to rub polish on my ring. It took a little work to get it shiny and new looking again. I am glad I did. I am proud to be married and I attribute a lot of my success to the connection the binds Tricia and me together. Below, here is a great graphic from Moissanite that details some of the history regarding wedding traditions including the one Tricia and I particated in - trading wedding rings.

A Brief History of Weddings | Moissanite.com
Presented By Moissanite.com visit moissanite.com

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Sunday, November 4, 2012

How I Confronted Obama Biographer David Maraniss


I pushed the envelope of citizen journalism a little further this week by introducing myself to Pulitzer-prize winning journalist David Maraniss. According to Maraniss, his research for Barack Obama: The Story took him to Hawaii, Indonesia and Kenya. Unfortunately, he did not have the time to Google search me or review any of the five books, multiple blog posts, YouTube videos or hundreds of websites that feature my take on young Obama’s ideological extremism.

Ironically, Maraniss got awfully close to confirming the details of my 1980 Christmas break debate with young Obama, a debate that reveals just how radical Obama was as a college student. Maraniss reports young Obama was in the San Francisco area at precisely the time when I indicated I first met and debated him. Maraniss, in fact, talked at length with my college-era Marxist girlfriend – Caroline Boss - at whose home the debate took place. Maraniss goes so far as to report that Caroline was part of the composite character “Regina” in Dreams from My Father.

I managed to converse with Maraniss during his recent visit to my alma mater, Occidental College, on October 29, 2012. My wife and I arrived at Occidental’s Thorne Hall early and picked out seats near the front. I learned Maraniss sees young Obama as a largely apolitical figure generally more interested in personal growth than raw political power. In Maraniss’s view, young Obama was largely untouched by the radicalism of either my ex-girlfriend or of his Pakistani roommate, Hassan Chandoo– the older student who admitted to his youthful Marxism in David Remnick’s The Bridge. Maraniss sees no evidence that young Obama was interested in pursuing elected office. For Maraniss, Obama’s lust for power only kicks in just prior to Obama’s application to Harvard Law School. Maraniss’s portrait of young Obama, of course, is absolutely inconsistent with my face-to-face observation that young Obama was 100% committed to preparing for a Communist revolution in the United States and was actively grooming himself to play a leadership role in that highly anticipated, potentially violent conflict.

Maraniss called for questions and I stood up. Speaking into a microphone, I dropped my well-rehearsed bombshell before an audience of about 200 listeners: “Mr. Maraniss, my name is John Drew. I’m a former professor and a former Marxist.” This opening line got a laugh.

“For several years now,” I continued, “I have been very public about my time with Barack Obama at Occidental, where he and I and my girlfriend were all fellow Marxists. A number of conservative authors have asked me about this and published my account in bestselling books. You’ve interviewed my girlfriend and others in our radical circles, but not me. I’d love to talk with you. Would you be open to that? I’m not looking to sell my story or for increased name recognition. I just want to share the truth.”

Maraniss’s response was curt. “Of course,” he said, “ I’m open to talk with anyone.” He shut up and immediately moved on to the next question. Nevertheless, I could see I was on his mind since Maraniss mentioned me by name two more times during his question and answer session. The good news is that he was nice enough to assert that he was not sure of my motivations. The bad news is that he seemed quite certain that everyone else who repeats, or depends, on my testimony -- including Jack Cashill, Paul Kengor, Stanley Kurtz and the editors of American Thinker -- is largely motivated by intractable racism.

While we failed to record video of the question and answer session, Tricia did capture my face-to-face encounter with Maraniss later on. See, http://youtu.be/r4sYJFguGpo

Crouched by the book table, I asked: “How did you find out Caroline was Regina?”

“Didn’t hear it from the president,” he said.

Maraniss seemed to be a bit of a perfectionist when it came to signing our dog-eared copy of Barack Obama: The Story. He graciously wrote: “To John and Tricia, All the Best, David Maraniss.”

I asked: “Do you want to stay in touch?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I’ll give you my e-mail address.”

I asked: “Did you know I existed?”

“After the book came out,” he said.

While I do not know yet if I have a new friend in the field of elite journalism, I think the fact that Maraniss says he never knew about my debate with young Obama until after his book came out indicates that there is something broken in America culture. Apparently, I live in a country where ordinary citizens need to write, research, record -- and perhaps even stage --the news, a country where informants need to go out of their way to share the truth to the preeminent gatekeepers of the mainstream media.

TRANSCRIPT

John Drew: It’s Drew…John and…John and Tricia Drew. How did you find out Caroline was Regina?

David Maraniss: Didn’t hear it from the president. John and Tricia?

John Drew: John and Tricia.

Tricia Drew: T-R-I-C-I-A.

John Drew: I was shocked when I read that…because I…I knew it was…

Tricia Drew: Thank you, sir.

John Drew: Do you want to stay in touch?

David Maraniss: Yeah, I’ll give you my e-mail address.

John Drew: I’m…I’ve written about six articles in American Thinker…Breitbart. Did you know I existed?

David Maraniss: After the book came out… American Thinker…Jack Cashill are not my favorite people. But, I…

Tricia Drew: Thank you, we’ll appreciate that time.

David Maraniss: What you’re talking about and what he’s talking about are two very different things. You’re talking about your relationship which is, for you know, is fact based--as far as you’re concerned. They’re talking about conspiracy theories which there’s just…you know…there’s no factual way to prove these things.

John Drew: If you read my article, you’ll see I actually was…I think was the first person to confront his faith in a Communist revolution in the U.S. …I swear as God is my witness…I think I changed his opinion…I’d place his political interest closer to Occidental.

David Maraniss: Thank you.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Mr Trump - I Can Verify Obama is an Affirmative Action President


I could not help but notice that Donald Trump is offering to donate $5 million to one of Obama’s favorite charities if only Obama releases a range of sensitive documents including his undergraduate transcript from Occidental College. I wish Trump would just give the money to me. After all, I believe I have the personal experience and training needed to verify the gist of Trump’s concerns: I can confirm that Obama is an affirmative action president.


I observed that the young Obama had the IQ of an average white college student when I first met him over Christmas break in 1980. Obama was then a sophomore at Oxy and I was a graduate of Oxy who was paying my dues as a political science graduate student at Cornell. I met young Obama when I was in Portolla Valley, CA, reconnecting with my college-era Marxist sweetheart, Caroline Boss. By then, Boss had shared two classes with young Obama, an international relations course taught by Larry Caldwell and Carlos Egan and a political theory class taught by Roger Boesche. Ironically, I taught alongside both Egan and Boesche while I was an assistant professor in the political science department at Williams College.

Boss knew young Obama well enough to let me know that he was “one of us” meaning that he shared our radical point of view and all the class warfare angst associated with it. For the life of me, however, I do not remember her saying anything to the effect that young Obama was one of the brightest students at Oxy--much less a genius.

The bad news, for Trump and others, is that I do not believe Obama’s transcripts would tell us anything about either his nationality or scholarship status. Mine do not. My nationality is not indicated and I do not see any field on the transcript where it would be noted by school officials. I should add that I got to Oxy on a track scholarship. (I ran a 4:23 mile in high school.) However, I see no mention of my athletic prowess or that scholarship on my undergraduate transcript. Reviewing my own transcript, I can report that I earned straight A’s my freshman year. These transcripts also show my SAT scores. I am sure Obama’s transcripts would show his SAT scores too. This would be useful information, in part, because we can estimate a person’s IQ from their SAT scores.

If Trump is reading this piece, I can report that I have gotten good at guessing someone’s IQ. I suspect that anyone who – like me – has made a living as a college professor, a college admissions counselor, or a management consultant gets good at this task. In my case, I also have the experience of growing up with a younger brother who has a genius level IQ and the rocket science resume to back it up.

I can report to Trump that the young Obama came across as an average white guy. This, of course, is exactly what he was. Obama had a white mother and grew up nurtured by his white grandparents. Based on my exposure to young Obama, I estimate that his grades were in the middle B’s and that his IQ was slightly above average for a college student. Personally, I am not surprised by his recent comments on the Jay Leno show to the effect that he was not particularly good at math--“Malia is now a freshman in high school. I’m pretty lost.” I suspect that Obama has been pretty lost for a long time since he does not report taking any college or graduate school classes that might have demanded skill in math, science or economics.

In conclusion, I should add that I have had the opportunity witness a number of former presidents speaking to live audiences. I feel confident making some comparisons. For example, I do not think Obama is blessed with a higher IQ than Carter or Clinton. Obama is not smarter than either George H.W. Bush or his son George W. Bush. Of all of these former presidents, including Reagan, the only one who startled me with his intelligence was Clinton who I saw during a recent business trip to Little Rock, Arkansas. All in all, I think it is reasonable to assert that the only reason Obama is now president is that so many people mistook him to be a genuine African-American, the sort of person who deserved an affirmative action boost to get ahead.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Dr. Drew's CA Voter Guide: A Tea Party Activist Reviews CA Ballot Propositions


Dr. Drew Hangs Out At
Southern California Beach
I thought it would be helpful to list my take on the California state-wide ballot measures. These were very confusing and took time to sort through. In general, I am proceeding along the lines that less is more and that it is probably a good idea to have fewer new laws than more new laws. (I am borrowing a lot of this information from the Orange County Register, even though I am saying "No" more frequently than they suggest...)

Proposition 30 - NO

Tax Hike: It is a silly idea to raise taxes right now. It is a better idea to cut the pay of government employees and trim back our bloated California government.

Proposition 31 - NO

2-Year Budget: Just creates a new layer of local government.

Proposition 32 - YES

Union Funds: This is the most important measure on the ballot and the only one I feel really strongly about voting yes on. It would prohibit union contributions to state and local candidates. It would also impose a ban on automatic paycheck deductions for political purposes by unions. Public employee unions are killing us and this is one of the few ways for us to fight back.

Proposition 33 - NO

Insurance: I just do not understand how this helps consumers and I think it is probably better for the legislature to figure this one out.

Proposition 34 - NO

Death Penalty: If you vote yes on this one, then California would no longer have a death penalty. I think we are all better off when these bad guys are no longer alive. At the very least, it keeps liberals from the future from freeing these people to hurt still more innocent victims.

Proposition 35 - NO

Sex Trafficking: Looks like it just adds more complexity to the existing law. As I said, I am in the mood of seeing government do less and less.

Proposition 36 - NO

Three Strikes Law: This would weaken the state's 18 year-old three strikes law. Frankly, I do not think there should be any crime at all. I do not understand how it helps us to allow these folks to roam free, terrorizing their law abiding neighbors. If you cannot avoid harming other people - in big or minor ways - then I do not want you on the streets.

Proposition 37 - NO

Food Labeling: This looks like an issue that would be better handled by the marketplace. If you do not want to eat genetically modified food, then I think there are providers out there to meet your needs.

Proposition 38 - NO

Tax Hike: Again, just another trick to raise revenue to pay the inflated, unfair salaries of unionized government employees.

Proposition 39 - NO

Tax Hike: This would eliminate the option for companies with headquarters out of state to choose the least-burden some formula for paying their California taxes. Just looks like more anti-business hate from the state.

Proposition 40 - YES

Redistricting: I just do not see any major advantages coming out of changing the existing rules or districts. This looks like more unnecessary instability. A "No" vote would reject the new state senate districts drawn by the Citizens Redistricting Committee.

My simple advice is to only vote YES on 32 and pretty much ignore everything else.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist. He applies his skills as a grant writing consultant in the Southern Calfornia area. His website is at the following link: http://drdrewguaranteedgrants.com/about-us/

Friday, October 12, 2012

Trust Me, I’m from the Past


I watched Mitt Romney dominate the presidential debate immediately after viewing the time travel movie, Looper. If I had access to time travel, I would use it now to leverage my role as the only person on Earth willing to testify that young Obama was a genuine Marxist socialist in 1980. Energized by Romney’s performance, I am asking myself what can I do - right now - to forestall a real life enactment of the future imagined by Rian Johnson, writer and director of Looper. After all, Johnson’s vision looked so bleak that my wife’s reaction was to say: “Looks like Obama won.”

If I had the advantage of time travel, I would go full on Bruce Willis right now. I would go to 2008 and introduce myself to the television studios of Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.

I believe public knowledge of my face-to-face confrontation with young Obama’s ideological extremism in 1980 would have helped prevent Obama’s election in 2008. My account of Obama’s anticipation of a Communist revolution would have alerted voters to the reality that Obama was not a bipartisan politician, but rather a long-standing advocate of class warfare and other hateful ideas promoted earlier by the likes of Frank Marshall Davis. My story would have highlighted the real Obama, the Obama who asserted, as he did at a at a Martin Luther King Day speech at the University of Chicago in 2002, “that rich people are all for non-violence” simply because “they want to make sure people don’t take their stuff.”


I would share with the people of 2008 that Obama is stuck in the ideological past. He is a partisan extremist who cannot imagine doing what Clinton did to save the American economy or uplift the black urban underclass. Obama is the sort of ideological purist who would never pivot to the middle. I would tell the people of 2008 that Obama’s lack of bipartisan skill would blow a perfectly good deal with House Speaker John Boehner for reducing the federal deficit. Instead of cutting the deficit in half, I would tell them Obama will increase the deficit more than all the presidents before him. I would alert the people of 2008 to the fact that Obama would be eager to weaken the previously rock solid work requirements of welfare reform. I would repeat a key line from the movie: “Trust me, I’m from the future.”

Lacking the option of time travel, I still think my story helps explain why it was fairly easy for Mitt Romney to defeat Barack Obama in a formal debate. I can report that young Obama was no genius. I saw signs of that young Obama last week when Romney pointed out that in 25 years in business he had never seen a special tax break for corporations who send jobs overseas. Obama - without his teleprompter and entourage of liberal sycophants – is apparently incapable of reacting forcefully to a verbal punch from a true business and political heavyweight.

Temperamentally, I remember young Obama treated my more accurate understanding of world history with an abrupt, even demagogic hostility. I distinctly remember young Obama’s dismissive, arrogant attitude even as I was presenting him with compelling evidence that Marxist theory was dead wrong at predicting the path of European social and economic events. I remember schooling young Obama so thoroughly in just one evening myself that he left my girlfriend’s house agreeing with my more moderate neo-Marxist perspective.

Culturally, I can report that when I debated young Obama in 1980 he talked like a white guy. I did not see a trace of the phony accent that highlighted Obama’s shocking comments regarding the redistribution of the wealth to a conference of black ministers at Hampton University in Virginia in 2007. In fact, the young Obama I met in 1980 talked like a wealthy, privileged white guy. It never occurred to me to think of young Obama as African-American. After all, the African-American students at Occidental College were largely uninvolved in radical campus politics. They were more likely to be active in the Gospel choir than the Democrat Socialist Alliance. Instead, young Obama seemed more like a foreign prince visiting in the United States.

While I cannot enjoy the benefits of time travel, I do live within six hours of Las Vegas, NV. I suspect my Bruce Willis moment will come when I share my story of debating young Marxist Obama with swing voters in the nearby Silver State. My wife and I have signed up to spend a weekend in Las Vegas walking precincts for the Romney/Ryan campaign. We will enjoy some meals, hotel accommodations, a night on the town and an opportunity to impact this historic election. I have my tagline ready: “Trust me, I’m from the past.”

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist. He applies his skills as a grant writing consultant in the Southern Calfornia area. His website is at the following link: http://drdrewguaranteedgrants.com/about-us/

Thursday, October 11, 2012

New Photos From Occidental Years Show Real Obama

The New Yorker blog features new photos that verify my take on what our 44th president acted and looked like as a sophomore at Occidental College. Readers will note the real Obama, the young revolutionary extremist with a soft spot for Islam, that I got to know as a participant in Occidental’s radical student politics.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/10/barack-obama-at-occidental-college-photographs.html#

Curiously, the photos show Obama wearing a band on his left ring finger that WND alleges to read “there is no God but Allah.” 

http://www.wnd.com/2012/10/obamas-ring-there-is-no-god-but-allah/

The photo I find to be most historically significant is the one that shows details from of the anti-apartheid rally of February 18, 1981, the rally that debuted Obama’s famous first skit in Obama’s Dreams from My Father. In contrast to Obama’s story, the banner above the event proclaims the somewhat more complex cause of “Affirmative Action & Divestiture NOW.” The photo features many of the real life figures who would become composite characters in Obama’s autobiography. These include my white ex-girlfriend, Caroline Boss, the radical student leader who improbably lent her grandmother’s name - and much of her scintillating personality - to the big-boned, black “Regina” character.

For the record, I view these photos from the perspective of an accident victim looking at a long ago car wreck. Caroline and I had parted ways just weeks before this rally. As I recall, the split was painful enough to cause us to temporarily adopt the roles of imaginary divorce lawyers, lawyers who combed through our conflicting feelings and amicably laid out the details of what became our eventual, imperfect separation.

For many years, young Obama was simply a footnote in my own intellectual autobiography. He was an early witness to the process in which I abandoned my expectation of a Communist revolution, dropped my old Occidental College friends, and eventually became a Republican business owner. In contrast, Obama held tight to his Occidental College friends and their causes.

“Decades later,” Margot Mifflin writes in response to these photos, “Obama would spur a new generation of students into political action, forging a connection between sixties radicals and media-savvy millennials.” Mifflin, of course, is only telling part of the story. She leaves out the part where at least one of Obama’s friends was not so pleased by the impact of affirmative action and never quite forgot what it was like to sacrifice everything he had for scholarly achievement only to learn, at the end of the process: “Sorry, you’re white.”

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Monday, September 17, 2012

Dr. Drew Reacts to Article on Young Obama's Radical Oxy Professors

I was pleased to read this new article regarding the radicalism of the professors who were part of young Obama's education at Occidental College in the early 1980s. Charles Johnson combed through the on-campus publications and isolated some great examples of the ideological extremism that was considered normal at the school during the 1980-1981 school year when my path crossed that of the young Obama.

As the teaser notes, "Larry T. Caldwell, the president's foreign policy mentor at Occidental, argued the same policy of 'reconciling' with the USSR that the administration applies today with the Muslim Brotherhood."

One of the ironies in my life, of course, is that when I was a radical student at Occidental College, I considered most of these professors to be sell outs who were not extremist enough including Prof. Lare and Prof. Caldwell. As a political science professor at Williams College in MA, I taught in the political science department and I can verify that both Egan and Boesche were socialists at least during the early and mid-1980s when I knew them the best. By the way, I did speak at Occidental College last year regarding my take on young Obama.

All in all, I think my confrontation of young Obama's Marxist socialist views must have come as something of a shock, given the uniformity of revolutionary thought at Occidental College.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Gaydar Gap: MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Attacks Dr. Drew's First Impression of Young Obama

As I said, whenever I am asked what I first thought about Barack Obama I tell the truth: I thought he was gay. Apparently, my take on young Obama's metrosexual appearance was worthy of being attacked last week on the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC.



Maddow is apparently seeking to make me look like some kind of a nut simply because I have been honest about my first impression of young Obama. She and I both have Ph.D.'s in political science. I would think that she would give me some credit for being an honest and truthful person. I would also like to point out that David Maraniss, in his new book Barack Obama: The Story, verified that both young Obama and young Chandoo were in the San Francisco area at exactly then I indicated they were up there visiting with me and my ex-girlfriend.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Dr. Drew Appears on Romney Radio - September 14, 2012

I was honored to appear on Romney Radio last week. I was interviewed by Clint Cox and his friends. I was billed as "...a former Marxist who knew the young radical Barack Obama and many of his closest friends at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA in the early 1980s."

"Dr. Drew's college era girlfriend," they pointed out, "was so close to young Obama that she became part of the composite character Regina in Obama's first book, Dreams from My Father. Dr. Drew is among a handful of people in the world who not only knew the young Obama but are willing to go on the record about what they knew of his ideology." For the radio interivew, click below:


I would also like to point out that David Maraniss, in his new book Barack Obama: The Story, verified that both young Obama and young Chandoo were in the San Francisco area at exactly then I indicated they were up there visiting with me and my ex-girlfriend.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Quit Your Crying: Obama's Speech Shows Why One-Term Is Enough

The most striking feeling I have after watching Obama's speech on television tonight is that I expect the folks who voted for this guy in 2008 now realize that he simply was not up to the job of being a successful president.

I first listened to his speech on the radio in my office. It did not sound quite so bad to me in that environment. Maybe I was not really paying attention. On television, however, his speech was clearly a disappointment. On that stage, Obama looked small...like a little ant in a suit. He looked grey and ashen. It looked to me like his eyes were tearing up for about 15 minutes of his speech. All in all, he did not have the usual energy I associate with his standard stump speech, certainly not the energy of his famous 2004 speech.

I also noticed, when I watch the speech on television, that the camera brought to my attention that Obama's face was twitching with stress. Finally, he seemed to be droning on in the same, boring pace - not much vocal variety or spontaneity in this presentation.
  • The most chilling moment for me? Obama's assertion that Al Queda is more dangerous that Russia. What, after all, is Obama going to be more flexible about after the election?
  • The most bizarre? Praising the guy who won the lottery, but then went back to his factory job.
  • The reference to Lincoln? It made me feel Obama is overwhelmed, frightened and incompetent in his job.
  • My advice? Send all the illegal aliens and their children home and I will be just fine with our existing roads and bridges. 
All in all, there was a surprising lack of facts and details in his speech. It was as if he made no effort at all to persuade me to vote for him. Instead, he offered a silly idea that the economic crisis was worse than we expected and that we should endure more and more pain until he figures out how to turn things around.

Ironically, this poor performance comes to us on the heels of a couple of stories which call vivid attention to Obama's short-comings as a leader. The first is Bob Woodward's new book, "The Price of Politics," which goes on sale Sept. 11, 2012. It shows how Obama underestimated Boehner and pressed him for additional tax increases after Boehner thought a deal had been made. Obama's insistence of pushing Boehner further ended up breaking the whole deal apart.

(There is, by the way, a great story in Woodward's book: The bored Pelosi put Obama on mute while he was delivering an empty pep talk to her while she was doing the real work of hammering out the stimulus package.)

Further evidence of dysfunction showed up in a report by Jodi Kantor who sees in Obama some of the same perfectionistic dysfunction which made Jimmy Carter such a poor president. Her behind-the-scenes report shows Obama majoring in the minor things with a misplaced confidence in his own greatness and skill. Meanwhile, Obama's arrogance is thoughtfully considered by Thomas Sowell who remarks that Obama is "...seldom right, but never in doubt." (This, of course, is consistent with my own take on the young Obama who thought he - as a sophomore - had a stronger take on the possibility of Communist revolution in the U.S. than I did as a graduate student at Cornell.)

He also seems to be underestimating my intelligence once again. Obama seeks to suggest that Romney is inexperienced in foreign policy when it is perfectly clear that Obama himself had little experience in foreign policy when he was first elected president. Obama offers us a path for the future and does not address the natural questions of whether or not that path is working out for us now. He argues "everyone plays by the same rules" and yet supports affirmative action policies that make it harder than ever for young white boys and girls to succeed.

The internal contradictions are just mind-numbing. The vacuousness of Obama's lazy thinking was on full display tonight. He tries to score points when he makes fun of Republicans who seem to offer tax cuts as the inappropriate solution to having a cold, but then undercuts his own argument by reminding us that he has made tax cuts. He praises entrepreneurs, but takes away from their success by demanding that they become better citizens. He praises government and then talks about the need to reform it more - something he has neglected to do in situations like junkets in Las Vegas or Solyndra. He asserts that the Republicans are vague about their plans for the future, but then only offers vague ideas himself.

I suspect at this point in his political career Obama expected to be teaching us the value of socialism and wealth redistribution. Instead, he is suffering from the failure of his own collectivist ideas. It frightens me to imagine what Obama will be doing to our country when he no longer fears the verdict of the American people regarding his foreign policies or Supreme Court appointments. Give our reduced family income and abnormally high unemployment I think Clint Eastwood is right: We need to get a new president - a smart one who knows how to create economic prosperity.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Monday, September 3, 2012

Dr. Drew's Contribution to Today's Empty Chair Campaign

I thought I should add my two cents regarding the Obama empty chair campaign today. I'm not quite sure what the empty chair is supposed to signify except that Obama has not done a lot to bring back jobs. Sadly, new data shows that family income has decreased during the Obama years. As the Wall Street Journal points out: "For household income, in other words, the Obama recovery has been worse than the Bush recession."


As for me, I'm still mystified about why the Romney campaign fails to dig into the now substantial literature regarding young Obama's ties to Marxist socialist extremists like Frank Marshall Davis - a known Communist on the FBI's watch list. At any rate, this is how I would have set up Mr. Eastwood's famous performance piece at the RNC.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Dr. Drew Debunks ConWebBlog: Five Authors with Ph.D.s See Me as Credible

I have been reflecting on the irony that five authors with Ph.D.s all find my take on young Obama credible including Michael Savage, Jack Cashill, Stanley Kurtz, Paul Kengor and Jerome Corsi, and yet I get attacked by less credentialed critics who assert I have no credibility. What is up with that?  At any rate, I thing it is important to quickly debunk the folks who attack my credibility, so I thought I would jot out some ideas here and now.


As you may know Jerome Corsi just published an article featuring my first impressions of young Obama: I thought he was part of a wealthy gay couple. In a world where Obama uses his marriage and family for political gain, I guess it is fair to ask folks like me what we first thought of the sexual orientation of the young Obama. What ticks me off, however, is when the guy running ConWebBlog suggests that I am a "discredited source." Terry K. writes:
But as we've also detailed, Drew -- who has cited his encounters with Obama to claim that he was, as Corsi wrote, a "Marxist revolutionar[y]" -- met Obama only twice in social occasions, making it highly unlikely that he could have made such sweeping conclusions of Obama's purported nature based on brief, casual encounters. Further, some of Drew's details about Obama have been discredited by actual college friends of Obama.
Corsi makes no apparent effort to fact-check anything Drew says.

It seems Drew is nothing more than an Obama-hater who's embellishing his brief, long-ago encounters to curry favor with fellow Obama-haters. Why? Presumably to sell some books -- he's supposedly working on one. And Corsi is swallowing every word he says.
Let me unpack this for you and illustrate why I have such a low opinion of ConWebBlog.

First, my assessment of Obama's commitment to Marxist revolutionary thought was not based simply on brief, casual encounters. The girlfriend who introduced me to Obama, Caroline Boss, was so close to him that she became part of the composite character "Regina" in Obama's book, Dreams From My Father. The very name "Regina" was taken from the real life name of Boss's grandmother.

Second, I did not have a casual encounter with young Obama. Instead, he and I engaged in an intense, sometimes angry debate about whether or not Communism was a realistic objective and whether or not a violent Communist revolution was or was not a realistic possibility. It was an important debate that - potentially - impacted young Obama's early career decisions. I remember that debate no so much because of young Obama, but because of how my changing views on Marxist ideology impacted my relationship with Boss. (No one else has provided anything close to the detailed description of young Obama's thinking as I have provided in various articles.)

Third, many of the details of my story have been confirmed, not discredited including my report on Obama's GQ style of dress which was confirmed by Margot Mifflin in Remnick's The Bridge, my report that both young Obama and young Chandoo were in the San Francisco area over Christmas break 1980 which was confirmed by David Maraniss in his book, Barack Obama: The Story, and my take on the lack of African-Americans in young Obama's social circles is verified by reports which indicate that none of Obama's supposed African-American friends from Oxy attended his wedding to Michelle even though his Indian and Pakastani friends from Oxy did attend his wedding to Michelle.

My report on Boss's radicalism was confirmed, in part, when Remnick pointed out that the Democrat Socialist Alliance, where she was the co-chair, displayed a large banner of Karl Marx in the Occidental Quad and later when Remnick confirms Obama's roommate, Chandoo, admitted to his youthful Marxism.

I was on the phone with Jerome Corsi while he was writing that article and I can verify he was doing his fact-checking by running various photos, scenarios and stories by me prior to publication. I am consenting to interviews because I am still quite frustrated that the mainstream media failed to pick up on young Obama's radicalism in 2008. I have no doubt that if my story had gotten proper media attention in 2008, Obama would never have been elected president in the first place.

Although I have not been interviewed by liberal authors like Remnick or Maraniss, my story has been considered credible enough to be featured in a number of other publications by four authors with Ph.D.s including, as Corsi has written, the following references:
Author Paul Kengor discusses Drew’s testimony that Obama was a Marxist-Leninist at Occidental in his 2010 book “Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century,” beginning on page 445, and in his 2012 book “The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis – The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor,” beginning on page 10 and resuming more extensively on page 249.

Author and WND columnist Jack Cashill mentioned Drew’s testimony of Obama’s Marxist views on page 224 of his 2011 book “Deconstructing Obama: The Life, Loves, and Letters of America’s First Postmodern President.”

Author Stanley Kurtz discusses Drew’s contention that Obama was a “pure Marxist-socialist” at Occidental in his 2010 book “Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism,” on pages 9-10 and again on pages 88-91.
Finally, I have debunked many of the on-line critics of my face-to-face report on young Obama's ideological extremism in the posts I created usually on the same day that attack appeared including the following work:

In response to the "Oh For Goodness Sake blogger," Anne Stoddard, who first wrote about me on February 17, 2010, I immediately debunked her silliness in an article I wrote on the same day her article was posted which appeared at the Patriot Action Network website.

I also debunked the "Oh For Goodness Sake" blogger once again when she wrote another inaccurate smear piece attacking me on March 11, 2011. I immediately debunked this article too.

For recent articles that provide more details of my take on young Obama's ideological extremism, please see the following articles in American Thinker, Breitbart.com or PJMedia. As far as I am concerned, I think it is extremely unfair to describe me as a discredited source when so many of the things I said about young Obama and his friends in February 2010 have rung true as subsequent literature - from liberals and conservatives - has verified my take on young Obama's radicalism.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Friday, August 3, 2012

Dr. Drew Asks: When Exactly Did Barack Obama Renounce Communism?

As an ex-Marxist I am somewhat hypersensitive to the conversion stories of other ex-Marxists. In my case, I remember where I was the exact moment I realized I no longer believed in the ideals of Communism: I was walking through the basement of McGraw Hall at Cornell University in September 1983. I had just finished an argument with my radical thesis advisor, an argument which left me thinking he was ideologically blinded and alarmingly out-of-touch with reality.


For previous generations, such moments of clarity often occurred in the wake of a violent, oppressive event. As Whittaker Chambers describes it in Witness, that moment arrived with an unheeded cry in the Moscow night. As David Horowitz describes it in Radical Son, that moment arrived with the recognition that the Black Panthers had murdered an accountant he had placed with them. For Barack Obama, however, that moment never arrives.

My visceral reaction to Obama’s lack of a conversion story was the topic of an interview I did with a film crew I met last week. I am grateful they took their time to get my face-to-face report on young Obama’s faith in a coming Communist revolution.

As I understand it, the producers will eventually add this footage into a larger documentary called “Simply America” which is “…a journey across our country to give a voice to the American conservative.”

I am still embarrassed for having once wanted the USSR to win the Cold War - even though I last thought this way over 30 years ago. I have a conversion story which explains how I dropped my faith in Communist ideals and how that decision changed my friendships, my mentors and my career goals.

In contrast, President Obama has never expressed remorse for the Marxist revolutionary views he defended during his sophomore year at Occidental College. He has never shared the conversion story that highlights the exact moment when he realized he disagreed with his sophomore year Marxist roommate, Hasan Chandoo.

“If Barack Obama has a story about how he stopped being a Marxist socialist,” I told the film crew, “I’d like to hear it.”

Later, I pointed out that “We never hear where he (Obama) turns to Caroline Boss or Hasan Chandoo and says: ‘Look. You’re wrong. It’s crazy. Communism would actually make us worse off - not better off.’”

“We never hear the story where he confronts Bill Ayers or Alice Palmer or Rev. Wright and tells them ‘Look. You guys are wrong.’”

I am still ashamed of the dangerous, alien and un-American views I once shared with Barack Obama. Nevertheless, I am happy to share my conversion story. Eventually, I expect swing voters will want to hear Obama’s conversion story too – if it exists. For now, however, the details of Obama’s conversion story seem as scarce as Mitt Romney’s tax returns.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Dr. Drew Appears in "Barry's Bud" a Brand New Simply America Documentary Film

I have been waiting to get my story out in a professional quality video. Here is the first successful effort from the folks at Simply America. They spent about three hours working with me and produce about five minutes of the best stuff on their new mini documentary. As I review this tape, I am reminded that Barack Obasma has never shared his conversion story, the story that explains how he stopped being a Marxist socialist.



My conversion story is already out there. As such, I am happy to do whatever it takes to keep this series of documentary films rolling along. You can help too by donating $20 at the Simply America website.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Rush Limbaugh Reports: John Drew Dated "Regina" One of Obama's Composite Women

I was pleased to run across the bit of tape where Rush Limbaugh called public attention to my story about dating the real Marxist Regina for two years and my additional comments regarding young Obama's ideological extremism.



As far as I can tell, Rush was genuinely pleased by this bit of news even though he was not surprised to learn young Obama held to Marxist socialist beliefs. I was startled at the calls and e-mails I got after Rush mentioned my story on the air. This went out to about 20 million listeners.

Apparently, Rush had read through, or scanned, my recent article in American Thinker on how my white college era girlfriend, Caroline Boss, became the black Regina in Obama's Dreams from My Father. Here's the actual transcript right off of Rush's website.
RUSH: There's also a guy out now, John Drew, I forget where this is. I've got somewhere in the stack. Apparently this guy dated one of the composite women in Obama's book. The woman named Regina, this guy dated her for two years. And according to this guy, Regina was not black. She wasn't from the south side of Chicago. She was white. They were all left-wing radicals. They spent their summers in San Francisco. Obama, at Occidental College, was a Marxist. This is this guy's writing. We finally found a friend of Obama's from back then. Now, this is not gonna get a wide berth, but it's out there. I don't care about the labels, communist this, we don't even need 'em. Obama is now telling us who he is. And I must admit, there's a bit of rejoicing going on with me, El Rushbo.
This, my friends, is something that I've been confident in knowing since Obama was a Senator. It's not hard. Like I said, you don't even need a high school diploma. All you have to do is understand who modern liberals are and what they are, what they want to do. After that it's easy. The hardest part is admitting that there are people like that amongst us in positions of power with so many friends. But it ought not be. The more people that could come to grips with that, the farther along we would be.
Of course, what Rush may not have realized is that I have been trying to get my story to his attention for about four years now - ever since I first realized that I had valuable insight into the real Barack Obama. Ironically, I discovered that my take on young Obama's ideological extremism was also a topic of discussion on the Sean Hannity radio program featuring Paul Kengor and his new book, The Communist - Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist. He applies his skills as a grant writing consultant in the Southern Calfornia area. His website is at the following link: http://drdrewguaranteedgrants.com/about-us/

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Here At Last: PJMedia Welcomes Dr. Drew as Blogger

As you may know, I am very honored to have my first article appear in PJMedia this afternoon. This is a top-notch publication which supports the work done by the on-line television programs of PJTV. This article was called, "Barack Obama's Marxist Ghosts of Christmas Past."

This imaginative title inspired a series of cartoons from Chris Muir over at Day By Day Cartoon.



All in all, I'm grateful that we are going into the 2012 presidential campaign with a lot more visibility regarding Obama's past than was the case in 2008. Back then, no one knew I existed for that my story could be verified. Now, it is up and running at American Thinker, Brietbart.com and PJMedia. It looks like my testimony of young Obama's ideological extremism is now available despite the mainstream media.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

The Tale of Two Road Trips: Sanitizing Obama’s Radical Past

A striking clash between those who feel a profound duty to report that the young Obama was nurtured by Marxists, socialists and Communists, and those who think it is a better idea to erase this information from the public record is on display in two current books. One book provided key, politically significant details of a heated debate I had with the young, Marxist-Leninist Obama over Christmas break 1980. The other book only confirmed that young Obama was in my vicinity at the time. The gap between how Paul Kengor covered Obama’s Christmas break in The Communist, and how David Marannis covered this same moment in Barack Obama: The Story is chilling.

As an eye witness to young Obama’s Marxist-Leninist ideology, I count myself among those who think it is our duty to report the truth about young Obama, especially if it helps us understand the persistent, contemporary influence of Frank Marshall Davis, the Communist who became young Barack Obama’s mentor. I do not think it is any exaggeration to suggest that in the long-run mainstream media’s failure to confront the reality of young Obama’s ideological extremism is almost as important than the reality of Obama’s tenure in office.

In The Communist – Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor Threshold Editions/Mercury Ink (2012), Paul Kengor writes that “The people who influence our presidents matter.” (p. 298)

Kengor, a political scientist, builds on his long-standing expertise in Cold War politics to write a balanced and well-documented account of the life, writing and political beliefs of Frank Marshall Davis (1917-1995). To keep the focus on Davis’s political views, Kengor modestly leaves out the unpleasant, possibly salacious details of Davis’s earthy self, including Davis’s roles as a producer of both visual and written pornography. Davis’s pornographic writing is so deviant that it describes ugly details of child sexual abuse. Skipping this aspect of Davis’s unseemly life, Kengor seeks to create a credible account of Davis’s thinking which addresses genuine examples of racially motivated hatred which scarred young Davis’s life, while still focusing unremitting attention on how Davis excused the brutal violence of Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Ho Chi Mihn.

In the context of describing how, possibly, Frank Marshall Davis influenced the thinking of young Barack Obama, Kengor shares a warts and all transcript of an interview he did with me on a radio program in 2011. If I had known my words were going to appear in a book, then I would have used more of my rusty Toastmaster’s skills to eliminate the unnecessary words in my oral communications that morning. Nevertheless, Kengor’s objective is to provide readers with every opportunity to judge my character and credibility for themselves. I am embarrassed, but I am okay to take one for the team.

Surprisingly, I am not the only one who appears to be more than eager to help Kengor set the record straight. The back story behind Kengor’s book features the crucial role so many of Kengor’s acquaintances and mentees have played in digging up archival information on the writings of Frank Marshall Davis. Kengor, in particular, credits Spyridon Mitsotakis – an enterprising student at New York University - who discovered that every issue of Frank Marshall Davis’s Chicago Star was available at NYU’s Tamiment Library, a library which also holds the archives of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).

The political significance of Mitsotakis’s discovery is sobering when Kengor writes that the Library of Congress one asserted it had archives of the Chicago Star, but “...upon taking a closer look, discovered it does not.” Even worse, Kengor shares: “The reels of micro-fiche from the Chicago Star seem to have disappeared from the shelf.” (p. 300) Accordingly, Kengor’s new book is the timely result not only of his skill as a writer, but also of his ability to inspire the heroic efforts of an all volunteer research work force in the midst of a national crisis.

I am a big fan of Paul Kengor, so it pains me to offer even the most gentle criticism. Nevertheless, my only complaint with Kengor’s work in The Communist comes on page 299 where Kengor writes: "More than that, Frank even more likely explains how and why our president, as a young man at Occidental College circa 1980, was possibly once on the Marxist left." As an eyewitness to young Obama’s ideological extremism, I would have more comfortably switched out "...possibly once on the Marxist left" to read “...solidly on the Marxist left.” If I had had the opportunity, I would have made the case for stronger language on that point, not only because of my face-to-face observations of young Obama, but also because of my familiarity with his social and intellectual environment.

When I debated young Obama, I did so in the company of two of young Obama's closest friends, Caroline Boss - the radical student leader who became part of the composite character Regina in Dreams, and Hasan Chandoo - the Marxist student who was Obama's sophomore year roommate. If the real life Obama had been to the right of either Boss or Chandoo as Maraniss reports, then I am certain I would have noticed this gap.

Part of the reason I can still remember such details is because it was no small thing to consider yourself a Marxist in 1980-1981. Similar to Obama, I remember I chose my friends carefully too. As I recall, our nation was still deep into the Cold War and my heartfelt ideology controlled my career choices, influenced the mentors I picked, and placed me on a certain collision path with some of the most powerful forces in the world. I would say that this is the ideological and cultural space that Obama, Boss and Chandoo and I all shared in December 1980, as potentially grandiose -- or as actually silly -- as this thinking seems today.

As Kengor writes, "Nonetheless, whatever our biases, reality is reality, history is history, truth is truth." After reading Maraniss's book, I'm chilled that a Pulitzer Prize winning presidential historian like Maraniss does not seem to share these common sense assumptions.

Maraniss’s book is particularly frustrating to me because he verifies -- through the testimony of Sohale Siddiqi, who was Obama’s roommate in New York -- that young Obama was on a road trip in the San Francisco area at precisely the time I indicate I debated the young Obama. Maraniss's account also suggests Chandoo made a brief visit to the San Francisco area too during Christmas break 1980.

Unfortunately, Maraniss did not interview me. I think it is quite strange that Maraniss does not mention any of the reports of my debate which have surfaced in books by other authors including Michael Savage’s insightful appreciation of Marxist ideology in Trickle Down Poverty or Stanley Kurtz’s well-researched investigation of Obama’s extremist ties in Radical-In-Chief.

My frustration with Maraniss is only enhanced because he has revealed that my old college era girlfriend, Caroline Boss, provided Obama with the name of the composite character “Regina.” The name “Regina” was the name of Boss's  working-class grandmother. I think this is highly significant because Obama tells us in Dreams that the character “Regina” helped inspire his decision to become a community organizer in Chicago. As Obama writes:

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I can construct a certain logic to my decision, show how becoming an organizer was part of that larger narrative, starting with my father and his father before him, my mother and her parents, my memories of Indonesia with its beggars and farmers and the loss of Lolo to power, on through Ray and Frank, Marcus and Regina; my move to New York; my father’s death.” (pp. 133-134.)
Along with Maraniss’s verification of the significant role Boss played in young Obama’s life, Mariniss simultaneously verifies other key elements from my first February 2010 testimony as recorded by Ronald Kessler. As careful comparison shows, Maraniss’s new book ends up supporting my original take on young Obama’s friends including the radical beliefs of both Hasan Chandoo and Caroline Boss, and their mutual closeness to Obama.

Unfortunately, Maraniss’s account does little to help us understand President Obama’s attitude toward our capitalist system. Of course, this is a difficult challenge. I am still trying to wrap my brain around Obama’s bizarre suggestion that the success of my management consulting business is more dependent on the pavement outside my office than the cold calls I make every Thursday. From my perspective, Adam Smith is right. My success as a businessman and a scholar seems more dependent on the favors I have done for others than on anything others have done for me.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Friday, July 20, 2012

ABC Quick to Associate Tea Party Member with Aurora, CO Shooting

I am starting to think I have seen this movie before. Today, I woke up to learn that the folks at ABC were seeking to make it look like a Tea Party activist was associated with the Aurora, CO shooting. For a look at the shocking footage, watch this video from Breitbart.com.

In this brief tape, Brian Ross and George Stephanolpoulos seek to associate this violent crime with the peaceful Tea Party movement.


I was incensed in 2011 when the leftist media, including the soon-to-be-fired Keith Olbermann, started making similar statements in reaction to the mass shooting in Tuscon, AZ.

In the end, as I was among the first to report the truth - that Jared Loughner was a mentally ill leftwing extremist. It is difficult to think about politics today given the shock of this mass murder. In the long-run, however, I am expecting that even independent voters are waking up to the reality that ABC news is a biased organization that does not deserve their viewership or support.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Rush Limbaugh Rejoices: We Finally Found a Friend of Obama's Who Knew Him from College

I was startled today by a large number of phone calls and e-mails alerting me to the fact that my story about the real, white Regina was mentioned on the Rush Limbaugh radio program this morning.


Apparently, Rush had read through, or scanned, my recent article on how my white college era girlfriend, Caroline Boss, became the black Regina in Obama's Dreams from My Father. Here's the actual transcript right off of Rush's website.
RUSH: There's also a guy out now, John Drew, I forget where this is. I've got somewhere in the stack. Apparently this guy dated one of the composite women in Obama's book. The woman named Regina, this guy dated her for two years. And according to this guy, Regina was not black. She wasn't from the south side of Chicago. She was white. They were all left-wing radicals. They spent their summers in San Francisco. Obama, at Occidental College, was a Marxist. This is this guy's writing. We finally found a friend of Obama's from back then. Now, this is not gonna get a wide berth, but it's out there. I don't care about the labels, communist this, we don't even need 'em. Obama is now telling us who he is. And I must admit, there's a bit of rejoicing going on with me, El Rushbo. This, my friends, is something that I've been confident in knowing since Obama was a Senator. It's not hard. Like I said, you don't even need a high school diploma. All you have to do is understand who modern liberals are and what they are, what they want to do. After that it's easy. The hardest part is admitting that there are people like that amongst us in positions of power with so many friends. But it ought not be. The more people that could come to grips with that, the farther along we would be.
Of course, what Rush may not have realized is that I have been trying to get my story to his attention for about four years now - ever since I first realized that I had valuable insight into the real Barack Obama. Ironically, I discovered that my take on young Obama's ideological extremism was also a topic of discussion on the Sean Hannity radio program featuring Paul Kengor and his new book, The Communist - Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor. The day before, Kengor cited my take on young Obama extremism on The Blaze TV - see my story featured at 12:20.


 All in all, I'm particularly grateful to everyone who worked behind the scenes to assist me with writing the article that eventually came to Rush's attention this morning. For a short YouTube video including my take on young Obama's ideological extremism, please click here.

  John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist. He applies his skills as a grant writing consultant in the Southern Calfornia area. His website is at the following link: http://drdrewguaranteedgrants.com/about-us/

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Ghosts of Marxist Christmas Past: Why Didn’t David Maraniss Call Me Regarding Young Obama’s 1980 Road Trip to San Francisco?


John Drew with Caroline Boss
in June 1981.
 I met the young Obama over 32 years ago while I was visiting Caroline Boss, an undergraduate at Occidental College, at her home in northern California, over the Christmas break in 1980. I had met Boss in the spring of 1979 and maintained a relationship with her up until her graduation from Occidental College in 1981. She had met the young Obama in early 1980. She knew him well because she had been in two classes with him by the time she introduced him to me along with his friend, Hasan Chandoo. As evidence of my relationship with Boss I have a number of her old cards and letters still laying around along with a photo of us together in 1981, a photo which was taken in the yard of my parents’ house in Newhall, CA.

In a story first released in February 2010, I shared my face to face account of how I later confronted young Obama’s naïve faith in an inevitable Communist revolution during a heated debate at the Boss’s home in Portola Valley, CA. This small but significant memory remains as a powerful bit of evidence that the young Obama was not always committed to the pragmatic centrism that President Obama claims as his long-standing, guiding philosophy.

Luckily for historians, Maraniss new book, Barack Obama: The Story, supports my account of young Obama’s general whereabouts during Christmas 1980, but unfortunately Maraniss distorts the specifics both, I suspect, to protect Obama and potentially to discredit me.

To put Maraniss’s new information into its correct perspective, I need to share that Maraniss reports that young Obama was in San Francisco over Christmas break in 1980 only to tell a larger story of how young Obama first meet Sohale Siddiqi, the Pakistani who later became Obama’s Columbia University roommate. “During the Christmas break that year,” writes Maraniss, “Sohale Siddiqi, a friend of Hasan’s and Wahid’s who lived in New York, came out to visit.”

In Maraniss’s book, Siddiqi is the recipient of some minor good fortune during his trip out west since he is able to use young Obama’s empty room in Pasadena during Obama’s absence.

“There was a room available at the apartment in Pasadena,” Maraniss writes, “Obama had left on a road trip and ended up in San Francisco. On the night of December 31, Hasan and Sohale and some buddies drove up to San Francisco for a New Year’s Eve party, and it was there that Siddiqi encountered Chandoo’s roommate for the first time.” (See, Maraniss, 2012, p. 367.)

What is highly inaccurate about Maraniss’s account - from my perspective - is that I met with both young Obama and his roommate Chandoo while I was staying at Caroline Boss’s northern California home. I would have been happy to verify that fact for Maraniss if he had interviewed me. As I recall, the debate with Obama and his friends ended, in part, because both Obama and Chandoo needed to leave to meet up with some other people. I do not recall the exact details of where Obama and Chandoo were heading later on after visiting with me and Boss.

If Maraniss’s was working to minimize public attention regarding my comments on young Obama’s extremist ideology, then Maraniss’s efforts to disconfirm my story were probably thwarted by new information from his interview with Sohale Siddiqi. Whether Siddiqi appreciated the gravity of his observation or not, Siddiqi’s comments inadvertently confirmed my earlier report that young Obama was in Portola Valley, CA sometime after Christmas and prior to New Year’s Eve.

Maraniss’s decision to suggest that Obama and Chandoo were travelling separately leads to some bizarre and implausible events regarding the pair’s return to the Los Angeles area. Specifically, Maraniss writes that the very next morning - New Year’s Day, 1981 - Obama joined Chandoo, Siddiqi and at least two other individuals for the drive back to Los Angeles. Whether or not this was Maraniss’s intention, his report on Obama’s lonely road trip has the impact of making it harder for me to have debated with both Obama and Chandoo at Boss’s home in Portola Valley.

Given the great distance between Los Angeles and San Francisco, however, I think most readers of Maraniss’s book will find it highly implausible to imagine that anyone would to drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco for a one night party and then drive all the way back to Los Angeles on the very next day.

For now, my best theory is that Maraniss knows all about me and that the last thing he wanted to do was to verify my story that young Obama was in the San Francisco area over Christmas break 1980. Maraniss, for what it is worth, knows me well enough to have blocked me as one of his Twitter followers.

Given Siddiqi’s comments, however, there was no way Maraniss could leave this important, historically significant detail out of his book. To lessen the damage, in my theory, Maraniss separated Obama and Chandoo as travelling companions and sought to make my story appear less than completely accurate – even as he confirmed one of my story’s most highly significant and unusual facts.

So far, my take on young Obama’s ideological extremism has appeared in at least five books by serious authors including Stanley Kurtz’s well-researched Radical-In-Chief. It seems odd to me that Maraniss did interview me for his book. My theory, of course, is that it is easier to get President Obama to talk with you if you promise to leave out the parts of Obama’s story that are most connected to my face-to-face knowledge of young Obama’s Marxist-Leninist perspective.


John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Yes She Did: My White Girlfriend Inspired Obama’s Big, Dark Regina in Dreams from My Father

John Drew and Caroline Boss
in June 1981.
As far as I know, I am the only person in the nation willing to verify that young Barack Obama was an ardent Marxist-Leninist. Bloggers who have sought to discredit my story have asserted that I never met young Obama, that I was not part of young Obama’s inner circle and that I was in no position to verify his most private ideological views. I am expecting that these defenses of young Obama’s credentials as a pragmatic centrist will fall apart now that David Maraniss has revealed in Barack Obama: The Story that the Occidental College coed who introduced me to young Obama was one of the inspirations for the composite character “Regina” in Obama’s Dreams from My Father. True, Regina appears in Dreams as “a big, dark woman,” but why deny Obama a little poetic license.

According to Maraniss, a Washington Post editor and Pulizer Prize winning journalist, Obama created the composite character Regina out of the European adventures of a black female student at Occidental named Sarah Etta-Harris, the Chicago family stories of Michelle Robinson – the President’s future wife, and anti-apartheid activism of my then 22 year-old white girlfriend, Caroline Boss. This somewhat disconcerting news came to my attention last month along with the even more shocking news that the very name Regina was the name of Boss’s real life grandmother, a Swiss woman who worked as a maid.

When I first read Dreams in 2008, I remember thinking the character of Regina reminded me of Boss, a girl I dated - and lived with - off and on for slightly over two years between the Spring of 1979 and the Spring of 1981. Much of the information I have shared about my relationship with Boss has recently been published in Paul Kengor’s new book, The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor. There, Kengor reports on my relationship with Boss along with details of a heated debate over the 1980 Christmas break where I confronted the impracticality of Obama’s anticipation of an inevitable Communist revolution.

Obama introduces composite Regina by writing: “I had seen her around before, usually sitting in the library with book in hand, a big, dark woman who wore stockings and dresses that looked homemade, along with tinted, oversized glasses and a scarf always covering her head.” (Dreams, pp. 103-104.) In contrast to this description, I can report the real Regina was a fun, scintillating, hyper-extraverted figure on the Occidental College campus. In contrast to the seriousness of Michelle Obama, I would say the young Caroline Boss was more like that character played by Lisa Kurdow on Friends - the fiercely independent, quirky, nurturing Phoebe Buffay.

Like Phoebe, Boss had long blond hair which she wore pinned back in a bun or twisted up in a pony tail. Her posture was terrible. When she stood up at her full 5’8” height, however, she was somewhat taller than me – especially in her clogs. By the time Boss introduced me to young Obama – who she had known for almost one year - she was a thin, almost anorexic girl.

I remember she dressed like a hippie from the 1960s complete with a woven ankle bracelet, blouses that reflected her Swiss heritage, and big colorful Indian print skirts. Boss did wear big sunglasses. She was also fond of wearing scarves round her neck. I cannot remember her ever wearing a scarf over her head. What I recall best about her clothing was that she had a habit of wearing shirts tucked inside bulky overalls. I clearly remember the real Regina also had a sensible, if somewhat guilty, appreciation for the superior fit of designer jeans from Gloria Vanderbilt.

In contrast to the composite Regina, Boss was a Marxist and a socialist looking forward to a Communist revolution in the United States. She believed this revolution would be the inevitable result of larger social forces working through the dialectic logic of Marx’s scientific socialism. In the end, however, I do not remember Boss so much as a Stalinist leader as I remember her as an uninhibited girl with a permanent, mischievous smile who pushed the boundaries of social norms.
Boss appeared in her own Occidental College magazine, Tattooed Lady, as a tasteful nude in a manner that still reminds me of Gwyneth Paltrow in the film Great Expectations. At Occidental, my circle of radical friends deeply enjoyed mixing politics with art, literature, film and photography. According to Maraniss, Boss is the person who referred young Obama to her friend, Lisa Jack, the student photographer for whom young Obama posed in those now famous photographs that document his straw hat and rakish style as a cigarette smoking freshman.

I remember that my Marxist girlfriend was bookish, but struggled in school. As I recall, she often failed to turn in papers on time and piled up strings of incompletes that would stretch out her academic career. As I recall, she would take about five years to finish the normal four year program at Occidental. She ended up being something of a perpetual student. Although I lost track of her whereabouts in 1982, I learned later that she earned an M.S. in Political Philosophy from the London School of Economics and another M.Phil. in Politics from Columbia University.

It is not hard for me to imagine that Boss’s intense interest in politics might have made for good reading in a more truthful version of Dreams from My Father. In 2011, for example, I was interviewed by David Garrow – a Pulizer Prize winning author himself – and I quickly discovered that Garrow was less interested in my college or graduate school memories than he was in a tattered green address book that contained Boss’s old contact numbers.

Although I was thrown off by Obama’s statement that Regina was a big dark woman, I had noticed highly significant traces of Boss in the character Regina. There were numerous clues that matched up with my memories of Boss including the fact she and I had both enjoyed - practically lived in - Occidental’s on-campus coffee shop, The Cooler. As I recall, The Cooler was the center of our lives because it was open at the times when you could not get a meal at the student union and because we could smoke our Marlboro Light cigarettes.

Similar to the character Regina, Boss expressed an exceptional interest in my graduate school papers, what I was reading, and my future ambitions as a scholar. Her positive vision for my future as a great scholar was a striking contrast to my own family’s lack of support. In retrospect, Boss’s interest in my academic work was particularly noteworthy since even subsequent girlfriends displayed only the most cautious indifference to my political science research. (In spite of them, my doctoral dissertation ended up winning the William Anderson Award from the American Political Science Association.)

Boss, as I recall, fed into my ambitions. In one of the many cards and letters she sent me, she wrote: “Go for greatness!”

Much like the Boss I remember, the character Regina is highly curious about Obama’s reading and academic work. Regina speaks in such an overwhelmingly encouraging and uplifting fashion that she seemingly transforms Obama. Referring to his heart-to-heart with Regina, Obama later writes: “Strange how a single conversation can change you.” (Dreams, p. 105.) I can report that those vignettes featuring Regina are an accurate echo of the curious, enthusiastic, and intellectually supportive Caroline Boss I knew between 1979 and 1981.

Obama’s Regina, however, struck me as distant from Boss’s life when Regina begins to share that she grew up in Chicago, with an absent father and struggling mother. This is because the real life Regina I knew had been adopted by her Swiss parents. Boss, in fact, had grown up as the only child of a wealthy family. (A younger brother had died in early childhood.) In contrast to Regina’s poverty, the real life Boss family lived in a spacious house with a pool in the Portola Valley - close to both San Francisco and Stanford University in Palo Alto.

Boss’s father was very much alive. Mr. Boss was a gruff, materialistic Swiss businessman who was more than happy to share with me the fact that he could live a much richer lifestyle in California than he could in his native Switzerland on the same annual income. I remember him once disparaging a waitress who was doing an exceptional job of serving us at a Lawry’s Restaurant. “She thinks she has a good job,” Mr. Boss remarked.

Looking back, I think I had more rapport with Boss’s adopted mother. She had refined tastes in antiques and jewelry. I remember Mrs. Boss wore a huge diamond ring. She once shared a story about how she had evaded a mugging attempt inspired, in part, by the size of that diamond. Mrs. Boss also enjoyed giving lavish gifts to her daughter and taking her on shopping sprees at the most elite stores in San Francisco. Around graduation time, Mrs. Boss even talked her daughter into cutting off her woven ankle bracelet so that she would wear a pretty formal dress with nylons.

In understanding Boss’s role in Dreams from My Father, however, I think it is important to point out she was not a spoiled rich kid.

Although she had her own car and could afford her own apartment, she did work as a house cleaner on the side to make money. For example, I remember vividly that Boss had a job cleaning the home of one of Occidental College’s political science professors, Jane Jacquette. In Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama makes a big deal about Regina being angered at the rude treatment Obama and his friends offered their maids when they messed up their Haines Hall dorm rooms and hallway.

I would not be surprised to learn Boss might have lectured young Obama on the value of housework and on the importance of not making fun of people, like her grandmother, who worked as maids.

Politically, the most significant issue missing from Obama’s composite Regina is that the real life Caroline Boss was a strongly committed Marxist socialist. Boss served as the co-president of the Democrat Socialist Alliance (DSA) at Occidental College while Obama was a sophomore.

We also know from David Maraniss’s book that Boss held a leadership role on campus because she was one of the main speakers at the anti-apartheid event on February 18, 1981. In Maraniss’s book, the young Obama’s stirring portrayal of a soon to be arrested South African activist offers a stark contrast to Boss’s speech in which – reminiscent of Phoebe Buffay – she is so nervous that she flubs the introduction of the guest speaker, a visitor from South Africa named Tim Hgubeni.

Looking back on my own memories, I think it is safe to say the story of the real life Caroline Boss would have been much more interesting than the story of the fake Regina – even the parts of the fake Regina that seem to drawn on the real life of Michelle Obama.

I am asking myself why would Obama delete a vivid white girl from his autobiography and replace her with a big, dark composite character from Chicago? As a political scientist, I think the best theory is that the story of my real life white girlfriend would not have scored Obama many points among his potential black constituents in Chicago. Acknowledging the influence of the white, Swiss-American Boss would have called attention to the fact that virtually all of the women who played an intense role in young Obama’s life were white and not black.

Moreover, if Obama had been deeply in love with Boss, then the story might have revealed his discomfort with the way I would routinely disrupt his romantic plans through my frequent visits to the Occidental campus. (Maraniss, oddly enough, does discuss how Boss’s future husband, Thomas Grauman, battled with young Obama for the attention of Alexandra McNear.) More significantly, if Obama told a story about the influence of the real life, white Regina, it would show Obama had little interest in black girls and instead displayed much greater interest in hanging out with - and perhaps falling in love with - wealthy white girls including Caroline Boss, Alexandra McNear and Genevieve Cook.

Finally, a white Regina would have more quickly led objective readers to the real Barack Obama, the young guy I met during Christmas break in 1980 who seemed like a white guy to me. It might have more quickly introduced the American people to the prickly young Obama, the one who got in my face when I confronted his naïve faith in a Communist revolution.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

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