Lineage Is Not Enough

By Richard Thompson

The United States has a lot to learn from South Korea about single-payer national health insurance. Former First Lady Hillary Clinton favors mandatory health coverage. That alone separates her from Illinois Senator Barack Obama, who opposes the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), as did former presidential candidate Ross Perot.

During the so-called IMF crisis here, direct aid to South Korea was arranged under the Exchange Stabilization Act, just as it had been in 1995 for Mexico; this without the approval of the U.S. Congress. By June 1996 Mexico managed the early repayment of $4.7 billion to the U.S. The Korean government is to be saluted for repaying the loan before it was due.

Yet the record loan package of $57 billion to Korea would not have been possible, nor would the intervention have been made in time to make any difference (specifically, as of Dec. 3, 1997), without Bill Clinton's personal initiative. Some of the ``super delegates" to the Democratic Party National Convention were members of Congress who voted in favor of NAFTA.

James Rubin, the U.S. State Department spokesman, also said (on Dec. 1, 1997) in regard to the U.S.-DPRK. Framework Agreement: ``It was a milestone agreement that froze the North Korean nuclear program in its tracks and was a boon to stability and non-proliferation in the region.''

Zchagiel Monroe wrote in his letter to the editor of The Korea Times: ``Some pundits argue that his being of mixed lineage enables him to appeal to all people. According to the Berliner Morgenpost, the second leading newspaper in Berlin, Germany, Obama is the `... Black American [that] Has Become the New Kennedy!' Obama's influence is so infectious that President John F. Kennedy's daughter, Caroline Kennedy, and Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy are endorsing him. What type of change he will implement when and if he wins the election in November remains uncertain.''

In the March 2008 Vanity Fair, the candidate's lineage is put into the foreground: ``The couple divorced in 1963, when their son was just 2, and Barack met his father, who ultimately claimed paternity of a total of eight children by four women before dying in a car crash at age 53, in 1983, precisely once more in his life: December, 1971. His mother, Ann Durham, remarried an Indonesian national named Lolo Soetoro, and Barack spent four years of his childhood there.'' She left her son in Honolulu in the care of his maternal grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Durham, during his adolescence. He entered Punahou School in fifth grade. Seven years later Barack was graduated; thereafter, studying at Occidental College for two years, before a transfer brought him to Columbia College. The future senator and presidential candidate was in his senior year of college when his father died.''

Obama's Kennedy/Shriver endorsement, and his own lineage is not enough.

The consensus expressed in favor of Senator Obama reminds one of ``The Importance of Being Earnest,'' a play by Oscar Wilde, and more specifically of the reasons Gwendolen gives for her loving Jack: ``The story of your romantic origin, as related to me by mamma, with unpleasing comments, has naturally stirred the deeper fibers of my being. Your Christian name has an irresistible fascination. Whatever influence I ever had over mamma, I lost at the age of three. But although she may prevent us from becoming man and wife, and I may marry someone else, and marry often, nothing will alter my eternal devotion to you.''

The writer lives in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province. He can be reached at thomp_rich@ hotmail.com