By JEFF EMANUEL
May 27, 2008

Exaggerations and fabrications are, and always have been, part of political and campaign rhetoric. From John Edwards' ridiculous and pathetically exploitative declaration in 2004 that, under a President John Kerry, "people like [paralyzed Superman actor] Christopher Reeve" would "get up out of that wheelchair and walk again," to Hillary Clinton's high-profile Bosnia "sniper fire" lie earlier this year, politicians on the campaign trail often succumb to the deadly combination of a yearning to promise a utopian future and a shameless, almost pathological need to be a part of the Great Events of History declarations of historical greatness.

Barack Obama, the neophyte Senator from Illinois and presumptive Democrat presidential nominee (though don't tell Hillary Clinton that!), has provided example after example of this combination, to which he has added an exploitation of gravely serious issues in hopes of capitalizing politically on history and on the emotions that such issues spark.

The litany of issues and events Obama has attempted to take ownership of via family involvement reads like a proposed script for Forrest Gump 2, this time starring the Obama family tree, played by well-known black actors (since the Obama campaign and its supporters have demonstrated that they care very deeply about the skin color of any actor who would portray an Obama onscreen).

Remember Selma, Alabama? Obama staked his claim to the historic "Bloody Sunday" event there by crediting that activity with his parents' marriage, and with his birth. On March 2nd, speaking at the 43rd anniversary of Selma, Obama :

"They looked at each other and they decided, 'We know that in the world, as it has been, it might not be possible for us to get together and have a child, but something is stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Ala., because some folks are willing to march across the bridge.' And so they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma, Ala.!"

Of course, as Jake Tapper wrote for ABCNews the following Wednesday, "Obama was born in 1961; the Selma march was four years later."

Last year, Obama announced, in an attempt to co-opt the Kennedy legacy in the Democrat party, that he traced his "very existence" to the generosity of the Kennedy family, which he said paid for his Kenyan father to travel to America on a student scholarship and thus meet his Kansan mother.

As the Washington Post's Michael Dobbs wrote of that claim at the end of March, "It is a touching story -- but the key details are either untrue or grossly oversimplified." Dobbs continued:

Contrary to Obama's claims in speeches in January at American University and in Selma last year, the Kennedy family did not provide the funding for a September 1959 airlift of 81 Kenyan students to the United States that included Obama's father. According to historical records and interviews with participants, the Kennedys were first approached for support for the program nearly a year later, in July 1960. The family responded with a $100,000 donation, most of which went to pay for a second airlift in September 1960.

The most recent -- and most heinous -- addition to this list of the attempted co-opting of history for personal political advantage came on Memorial Day, May 26, when Obama apparently decided that Selma, the Kennedys, and other exaggerated historical connections simply weren't enough to build his faux reputation with a big enough swath of voters -- so, in a blantantly dishonest attempt to simultaneously pander to the military and Jewish votes, he decided to take ownership of the ending of the Holocaust and the liberation of Auschwitz, as well.

"Despite not having served in the military himself, wrote CBS News' Maria Gavrilovic:

Barack Obama used his Memorial Day remarks to speak about his family’s service. “My grandfather marched in Patton’s army, but I cannot know what it is to walk into battle like so many of you,” he told a small group of veterans [in Las Cruces, NM]. “My grandmother worked on a bomber assembly line, but I cannot know what it is for a family to sacrifice like so many of yours have.”

Charming.

Further, according to Gavrilovic:

Obama also spoke about his uncle, who was part of the American brigade that helped to liberate Auschwitz. He said the family legend is that, upon returning from war, his uncle spent six months in an attic.

Now, Barack Obama has never been known for having the best grasp of history, geography, or international affairs -- something that he demonstrates in nearly every speech and at nearly every event. However, a statement of that sort, while possibly attributable to sheer, monumental ignorance, rings far more of blatantly dishonest revisionism, complete with a healthy disrespect for the intelligence of his veteran and Jewish target audiences.

The truth here is quite simple, and Mr. Obama comes down directly on the wrong side of it. As any child who paid attention in school knows, Auschwitz was liberated on on Jan. 27, 1945 by the Red Army of the Soviet Union, which was moving through Poland on its march to Berlin.

The U.S. was fighting the Battle of the Bulge at the time -- on the other side of the Rhine River. In his attempt to stake a familial claim to the end of the Holocaust and the liberation of Auschwitz, Mr. Obama appears to have inadvertently enlisted his poor uncle in Joe Stalin's Red Army.

What a multicultural, international history the Obama clan has! A screenplay for Forrest Gump 2, indeed.

Mr. Obama has absolutely no excuse for getting those facts wrong; after all, he was serving in the United States Senate in January 2005, when the United Nations General Assembly marked the 60th Anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation -- again, by the Russians -- and when Vice President Dick Cheney joined the presidents of Poland, Russia, France, Germany, and Israel for an event at Auschwitz itself. Did Senator Obama simply forget about this historic commemoration of the notorious concentration camp's liberation by the Red Army 60 years before? Or did he conveniently ignore it in hopes of slipping one past his audience, and gaining support and votes for his bloodline claim to the end of the Holocaust?

This capitalizing on the horror of the Holocaust and the Auschwitz liberation is, of course, inexcusable for countless reasons. The lying about familial involvement, though, is so profane that it borders on evil itself -- especially in light of the fiery protestations that emanated from the Obama campaign after President Bush dared use the 60th anniversary of Israel's foundation to warn against the dangers of appeasement.

Obama supporters railed ad nauseam about the "political treason" committed by the President in that speech by referring to Nazi Germany "in the very nation that was carved out from the horrific calamity of the Holocaust." Fairness would dictate that a boldfaced attempt to falsely stake a familial claim to the ending of the Holocaust itself would provoke a similarly vitriolic response. However, I would not suggest that anybody hold their breath waiting for such a response to come.

Mr. Obama has been struggling to capture the military and Jewish votes, due to his vigorous anti-military stances and the support he has garnered from the leaders of Iran (whose President denies the Holocaust altogether) and the terrorist group Hamas. Blatantly calling soldiers and Jews stupid by attempting to put such a blatant lie over on them should not help gain their support -- nor should the continued exaggerations and stumbles that Obama continues to perpetrate and to endure at seemingly every event allow him to continue projecting the aura of unfailing Messiah that so many followers have seen, and so desperately wish to believe in.

Blogger Dan McLaughlin wrote back in 2004 about the attempt by many politicians to "substitute biography for policy," saying:

his is a second and related example of the Democrats taking a tried-and-true campaign tactic and trying to pass it off as a strategy, and another one in which Kerry represents a nadir. Again, all candidates use their biography when possible to shore up both the strong and weak points in their images. But what we've seen increasingly from Democrats is efforts to use biography as a shield to cover the candidate's policy positions. Get asked about gun control? Don't talk about the issue - go hunting! Get asked about war? Talk about your service record!

...As a practical matter, there are two problems with this approach. First, voters aren't stupid; a dove with medals is still a dove, and a hunter who favors gun control is still in favor of gun control. Second, nobody has enough biography to cover every issue, and the need to have something personal to say on issue after issue is one of the roots of the exaggerations and resume-padding that got Gore and Kerry into so much trouble. Look at Bush and Cheney for a comparison: Bush's bio story is well-known, but he rarely tries to connect it to a particular policy debate, and Cheney only reluctantly talks about himself at all despite having a genuinely impressive up-by-the-bootstraps story.

Mr. Obama's need to expand his biography, often at the expense of the truth, in order to make up for his lack of experience and policy savvy will come back to bite him -- especially if historical gaffes of this level continue.

As MSNBC's Mark Murray wrote after the Selma exaggeration, "What is it about politicians trying too hard to be part of history? Sometimes, there isn't a destiny; that's ok too."

Apparently it's not "ok" enough for the Obama campaign, which continues to conduct itself as though it is, in fact, auditioning not only for the Presidency, but for a familial role in Forrest Gump 2.

Update 3/27@1639CDT: The Obama campaign has retracted and corrected the Auschwitz liberation claim.