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.
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.
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.
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/
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/
