My friend Bill Whittle of Declaration Entertainment has launched a new “Firewall” video series, this time focusing on a subject that got little in-depth attention in 2008 — the life and times of Barack Obama and his family.  The Obama campaign talked often about the influence of his mother on the young Obama, and Obama himself made occasional references to his extended family, but the national media largely ignored the narrative — even though plenty of it had already been reported by Chicago newspapers or by Obama himself in his memoirs.  Bill leads off with Part I of “The Enigma,” covering the formative family issues into which Obama arrived:

Bill is careful here to keep his approach limited to facts and reporting already in the public domain, and to avoid the controversies of the circumstances of Obama’s birth. I spoke with Bill about this project earlier this month when Bill headlined at Tax Day Tea Party events here in the Twin Cities, and he wanted to demonstrate how the media seems anxious to avoid any sort of investigatory reporting into Obama, even on those points not in dispute.  Along the way, Bill weaves his own narrative to show that the picture of Obama that emerges from all of this publicly available and undisputed reporting is more radical than the 2008 Hope and Change campaign put on, and perhaps to give an explanation of why the administration itself has never really tried to live up to its post-partisan promise.

Bill does an excellent job with this, but as Bill himself states, most of this information did get out and about in 2008.  At that time, Bush fatigue and the lack of a charismatic Republican at the top of the ticket made it less than relevant for most voters.  Some may revisit history in the second campaign, but I suspect that for most voters, the track record of incompetence and failure will probably be more germane to their decision-making process.  That doesn’t make this superfluous, though, and Bill does a good job of making his case.