The Obama-Chicago Way

One sign of the biased media coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign was that one major outlets took the Democratic nominee’s claims of being a new kind of post-partisan at face value while failing to wonder how someone could be such a reform-minded politician having cut his political teeth in one of the greatest political cesspools in the United States today, the Chicago Democratic machine.

Over at the Washington Examiner, the ever-insightful Michael Barone looks into the Chicago roots of Barack Obama:

An interesting thing about Barack Obama is that he chose, on two occasions, to live in Chicago — even though he didn’t grow up there, had no family ties there, never went to school there.

It was a curious choice. Chicago has a civic culture all its own and one that is particularly insular. Family ties and personal connections are hugely important. Professionals who have lived and worked there for a quarter-century are brusquely reminded, “You’re not from here.”

It’s Barone.  Read the whole thing.