Last weekend Saturday Night Live opened its 1,000,000th season with “Barack Obama” marveling at his recent good fortune. But in truth the evidence of Obama’s almost superhuman luck has been mounting for years. It started in 2006, when Obama first decided to run for a U.S. Senate seat in Illinois. Republicans in the state sensed Obama’s potential, so who from among a long list of qualified candidates did they choose to challenge him? A failed presidential candidate from Maryland, Alan Keyes. Yes, the same Alan Keyes who staged a hunger strike when he was excluded from a debate, who once threw himself into a mosh pit, and who can predict how Jesus will vote in various elections. The same Alan Keyes who had a television show on MSNBC that his producers viciously titled “Alan Keyes Is Making Sense”—a program during which Keyes inexplicably changed from a suit to a sweater in the middle of each show.
Then, in 2008, presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton ignored the polls and the advice of some of her aides, and decided to compete to win in Iowa, where she was running third. Her decision made Obama’s eventual victory all the more devastating, leaving her literally in tears. Obama never really looked back, even as the Reverend Jeremiah Wright hit the airwaves and a tape leaked out where he belittled those who “cling to their guns and religion.” Colin Powell jumped on board the bandwagon, then Oprah.
This year, of all the people the Republican electorate could have picked to challenge Obama, they choose the guy who lost to McCain four years earlier or, as someone once put it, “the guy who lost to the guy who lost.” Maybe the “birthers” have a point after all. Obama obviously wasn’t born in America; he was born on Fantasy Island, under a rainbow, in a pot of gold, serenaded by unicorns.
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