If the New Yorker article that accompanied its ill-considered satirical cover meant to help Barack Obama by humanizing him, they missed the mark.  The Obama campaign quickly objected to the cover yesterday — and for good reason — but the cover may help distract people from the article and some of its revelations.  As Time’s Mark Halperin notes, Obama threatened to assault a fellow legislator in 1997, and in response to the 9/11 attacks, evinced sympathy — for the attackers.

First, let’s hear what Obama had to say eight days after the mass murder of 3,000 Americans:

We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.We will have to make sure, despite our rage, that any U.S. military action takes into account the lives of innocent civilians abroad. We will have to be unwavering in opposing bigotry or discrimination directed against neighbors and friends of Middle Eastern descent. Finally, we will have to devote far more attention to the monumental task of raising the hopes and prospects of embittered children across the globe—children not just in the Middle East, but also in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and within our own shores.

Poverty, ignorance, helplessness — actually, none of these describe the 9/11 attackers.  The lead terrorists came from wealthy or upper-middle-class families, and even the “muscle” hijackers mostly came from comfortable settings.  Osama bin Laden’s family is very wealthy, and Ayman al-Zawahiri came from enough wealth to put him through medical school.  The impulse for these terrorists comes from their embrace of radical Islamist philosophy, not from poverty or ignorance.

Besides, as  Drew at Ace o’ Spades asks, do we want a Commander in Chief who wants to wear hair shirts after a terrorist attack, or do we want one who will respond forcefully to defeat our enemies?  Obama talks about our “rage” and warns against what he sees as our likelihood to start killing people indiscriminately, rather than the terrorists and their already-proven indiscriminate killing.  He sees our primary mission in the days when the fires still raged at Ground Zero as some sort of touchy-feely crusade to “rais[e] the hopes and prospects of embittered children across the globe”.

That wasn’t our primary mission then, nor is it now.  The primary mission of the American federal government is American national security and the protection of its citizens.  Provide for the common defense outranks raising hopes and prospects of “embittered children” regardless of their location.  A President should know the difference, and almost every American did know the difference on 9/19/01 — except Barack Obama.

On the question of temperament, the Democrats have tried painting John McCain as a dangerous, unstable ex-POW.  However, as we noted in May, Obama has the history of physical threats in performance of his office.  In 1997, he allegedly threatened to kick another state Senator’s ass for showing him up on the floor of the legislature:

Obama’s relations with some of his black colleagues from Chicago were dreadful from the beginning. On March 13, 1997, Obama introduced one of his first pieces of legislation, a modest bill to make a directory of community-college graduates available to local employers. There was a response from Rickey Hendon, a state senator from the West Side of Chicago who had been close to Alice Palmer. After Obama explained his bill, Hendon, who has dabbled in film and television work, earning him the nickname Hollywood, rose to ask a question, and the following exchange occurred:

HENDON: Senator, could you correctly pronounce your name for me? I’m having a little trouble with it.
OBAMA: Obama.
HENDON: Is that Irish?
OBAMA: It will be when I run countywide.
HENDON: That was a good joke, but this bill’s still going to die. This directory, would that have those 1-800 sex line numbers in this directory?
OBAMA: I apologize. I wasn’t paying Senator Hendon any attention.
HENDON: Well, clearly, as poorly as this legislation is drafted, you didn’t pay it much attention either. My question was: Are the 1-800 sex line numbers going to be in this directory?
OBAMA: Not—not—basically this idea comes out of the South Side community colleges. I don’t know what you’re doing on the West Side community colleges. But we probably won’t be including that in our directory for the students.
HENDON: . . . Let me just say this, and to the bill: I seem to remember a very lovely Senator by the name of Palmer—much easier to pronounce than Obama—and she always had cookies and nice things to say, and you don’t have anything to give us around your desk. How do you expect to get votes? And—and you don’t even wear nice perfume like Senator Palmer did. . . . I’m missing Senator Palmer because of these weak replacements with these tired bills that makes absolutely no sense. I . . . I definitely urge a No vote. Whatever your name is.
Although the exchange was part of a longstanding tradition of hazing new legislators, the tensions between Hendon and Obama were real. On another occasion, Obama voted—a parliamentary error, Obama says—to block funding for a child-welfare facility in Hendon’s district. Hendon rose and criticized Obama for the vote. The two men became embroiled in a yelling match on the Senate floor that looked as if it might become physical; they were separated by Courtney Nottage, then the chief of staff for Emil Jones. Nottage led Obama off the floor to a room that legislators used to make telephone calls. “It looked like two men that were having a serious disagreement and they had walked up to one another really close,” Nottage told me. “I didn’t think anything good could come of that.”

Hendon told me, “He’s the one that got mad, because he said I embarrassed him on the Senate floor. That’s when he came over to my desk.” Before Nottage broke them up, Obama, who had learned to box from his Indonesian stepfather, supposedly told Hendon, “I’m going to kick your ass!” Hendon said, “He said something like that.” He added that more details will appear in a book that he’s written, entitled “Black Enough, White Enough: The Obama Dilemma.”

I wonder why Obama didn’t take the time to consider raising the hopes and dreams of an embittered Hendon before threatening to kick his ass…

The article paints a picture of a political dilettante — someone whose ambition outstripped his impulse to work.   He got bored quickly of the state legislature and launched a disastrous run for Congress.  He complained about politics but did nothing to change it.  He ran for the Senate, and once there did almost nothing except prepare his run for the Presidency.

The cover is hardly the worst of the article for Obama.  They had better pray that people buy this issue of the New Yorker strictly for the pictures.