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New Anti-Obama Book Takes Aim at Young Audience

Michael O'Brien

Posted: 08.27.2008 / 7:59 AM PDT

Tracts by National Review’s David Freddoso and Human Events columnist Jerome Corsi this August have attracted interest and criticism as they have tried to recreate the torpedoing of Sen. John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) 2004 White House bid.

But a new book, “Who is the Real Barack Obama?” seeks to tread new ground; it is the first book written by the Democratic presidential nominee or his GOP counterpart, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) both by and for young voters.

“We’re not part of the people in our generation who want to hand over the White House to Obama,” says Francisco Gonzalez.

Gonzalez is Director of Development for the James Madison Institute, a free-market think tank in Florida, and co-author of the new book along with Steve Bierfeldt, National Field Program director for the conservative Leadership Institute, and federal and state campaigns director Brendan Steinhauser of FreedomWorks.

The new book is a product of conversations between the trio during the Democratic primaries earlier this year. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) was still the favorite to win the Democratic nomination, Steinhauser said, and a wealth of literature on Clinton’s record was readily available. But as Obama emerged as a more viable candidate, the three kept wondering: Who is the real Barack Obama?

The answer, according to the book, is twofold. “The two themes that run throughout the book are that Obama is not who he says he is,” Steinhauser said, “and that he and his associates are far-left, and his ideology comes from that.”

The message is unapologetically conservative. Gonzalez said that the book seeks to reach out to young voters while stressing messages of traditional values, limited government, and individual freedom—values more typically associated with conservative ideology.

“We ultimately don’t tell people who to vote for,” Gonzalez stresses, however. The authors say that while they all have their own very strong politics, they seek to differentiate themselves from other books, which traffic in rumors or misinformation about Obama. They seek to present what they see as the facts; they simply want to better inform young voters.

“To the people who are getting caught up in Obama mania, we’re just asking them to slow up and think for a second,” Steinhauser said. “We want to put enough doubt in their minds so that they reevaluate their decision.”

“We’re not necessarily supporting candidate X or Y, but we’re trying to inform people about Barack Obama,” Bierfeldt said.

The authors concede that while the hype for Obama among young voters is very much real, they
hope the values of the book will resonate with a younger generation of voters.

“What appeals to them is the more libertarian approach,” Steinhauser said, noting that there is even disagreement among the authors. “It does seem that young people today aren’t subscribing to Republican ideas or conservative ideas,” he said.

A Greenberg Millenial Survey released Tuesday lent credence to the idea that young voters are not especially conservative.

“Millennials [those born between 1978 and 2000] are post-ideological because they are uninterested in learning about and defending the ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ approaches to the problems our country faces,” a release from Generation WE said Tuesday. “However, although they reject both traditional ideological labels, they are shifting decisively away from conservatism.”

But Steinhauser is also careful to note an idea shared by the other authors: that young voters’ views are not solidified, and are fluid, especially as they grow older.

Nonetheless, the authors believe their book expresses the views of what they see as a significant minority of voters who are rejecting Obama’s candidacy, while staking out different territory from the books by Corsi and Freddoso.

“Our book is unique in that it speaks to young people, and is by young people,” Gonzalez said. “The young voter category is the one that’s been talked about the most, and we’ve written the one book talking to them.”