Sleaze misses mark.

• Author: Klein, Ezra
• Position: The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality - Book review

The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality

By Jerome R. Corsi

Threshold Editions. 384 pages. $28.

It is testament to Jerome Corsi's fine reputation that the experience of purchasing his new book, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, is akin to nothing so much as buying pornography. There's the moment you find yourself holding it near your hip and far below eye level, there's the quiet judgment of the store clerk, the thudding knowledge that there's no way you can talk to the cute girl behind you in line. From here on out, it's just you and Corsi.

Jerome Corsi, Ph.D. (as we're reminded on the front cover, the "related works" page, the title page, the introduction, and the back flap), is best known as co-author of Unfit for Command, the book-length screed of the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth." But that, as his eight-page preface about "who I am and why I wrote this book" says, is the least of his accomplishments. For instance: "In 2005 ... Dr. Corsi predicted oil prices at over $100 a barrel." That same year, I predicted the Earth would revolve around the sun no fewer than three times by the year 2008. I'm still waiting for my call from the Nobel Committee.

Corsi's new book is an attempt to recapture his 2004 glory, and so far as the bestseller lists are concerned, he's succeeded. Obama Nation shot up to #1 and, as of press time, hung there. Obama should be extremely thankful. A man can have no greater luck than to be blessed with incompetent enemies, and Corsi is as inept as they come. Unfit for Command had a clear line of attack against Kerry, and a clear claim to legitimacy in its association with other swift boat veterans. These virtues helped it outrun the fact that it was a pack of lies. Readers knew what they were to take from it and reporters knew what they were to plaster across the headlines.

But in Obama Nation , Corsi benefits from no such clarity of purpose or directness of smear. Instead, it's a mass of vague attacks and murky insinuations that soon creak beneath their own weight. Readers will quickly become confused as to whether they are supposed to detest Obama because his father was "an alcoholic polygamist" or because his mother was a grade school--yes, grade school--atheist. Obama himself is not merely a communist, but also a drug user, an afro-nationalist, a possible secret Muslim, a corrupt politician, a radical liberal, a cult commander, and a dishonest novelist. The...