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Toot: a very convenient grandmother
Grandma Dunham has played a key role for Obama. But she’s never been more valuable than now, says Charles Laurence
Could there be a more opportunistic use of a personal moment in American politics than having Barack Obama rush off to Hawaii to say what he fears will be his last goodbye to Grandma Dunham? For Madelyn Dunham, 85 and reported to be on her deathbed, is his mother's mother, his white grandmother.
Obama has made frequent use of the grandmother he once called Toot, the woman who, with her husband, took the young Barack in when he was abandoned by his Kenyan father and left at home by his feckless, globe-trotting mother Ann Dunham.
In a TV ad, he intoned that Grandma Dunham "taught me values straight from the Kansas heartland". In his speech accepting the nomination, he said: "She's the one who taught me about hard work." Under attack for going to church with the race-radical Rev Jeremiah Wright, he said: "I can no more disown him than my white grandmother."
Now, apparently dying, she is useful one more time. She will be at the emotional centre of the campaign as the nation watches its favoured candidate deal with the trauma of losing the woman who gave him love and stability as a boy, and who survived his own mother, who died of cancer in 1995.
The timing is perfect. As those crucial blue-collar, not-sure-about-black-folks voters make up their minds in the next few days, they will contemplate Obama and see a white woman whose life reflects their own.
Whatever access the photographers are allowed during the trip to Hawaii, the people's hearts will surely be drawn to an unmatchable testament to Obama's whiteness, and American votes follow hearts rather more than minds.
Obama is being as sharp and ruthless as ever. But then again, those are qualities he will need to succeed as president. ·
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I want to try to see beyond the sentiments expressed in this article. Dear God, what is so unusual about a human being, any one at all, including a presidential nominee, attending the bedside of the seriously ill person who brought him up, especially a mother or grandmother? Do journalists always have to write/comment? Would it not be better to say nothing, rather than make or write banal comments, bordering on offensive?
This time, Mr Laurence, I believe you've gone too far. I rather doubt Mrs Dunham purposely broke her hip and is near death's door just to provide her grandson an opportunity to grandstand. And by the way, his mother only trotted off to Indonesia rather than round the globe, where she did valuable work with women and finance.
I would hope better from you than this article. The whole tone of your writings on Obama has exhibited a dismissiveness and an unwillingness to wholly consider him a viable candidate for president; though I will say that the final sentence in this piece shows that he's earned some grudging respect on your part.
I did enjoy reading your trials and tribulations on Salt Cay; I spent an interesting summer on Grand Turk some years ago working on the archives on a volunteer project and rather thought it was like living in a Graham Greene novel.
Rather cynical, isn't it, to assign political motives to Sen. Obama's decision to visit his dying grandmother? What would the author have him do in such a situation? If he allows cameras at the bedside, I will believe his visit to Hawaii was politically motivated. Otherwise, it seems quite a stretch to suggest that this man is making political hay by leaving the national spotlight--for two days--during a hotly contested political campaign for the highest office in the land at a time when every public appearance and statement is significant.