Obama Debate Coach Named Mao as Favorite Political Philosopher

Obama Debate Coach Named Mao as Favorite Political Philosopher

Everybody realizes at this point that one of President Barack Obama’s debate coaches is 2004 losing presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-MA). But it’s been largely overlooked that another one of his debate coaches is Anita Dunn.

You may remember Anita Dunn. She’s the former White House staffer who said this to a group of high schoolers in June 2009:

The third lesson and tip actually come from two of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Zedong and Mother Teresa — not often coupled with each together, but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is, you’re going to make choices. You’re going to challenge. You’re going to say, “Why not?” You’re going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before. But here’s the deal: These are your choices. They are no one else’s.

In 1947, when Mao Zedong was being challenged within his own party on his plan to basically take China over, Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army, they had the air force, they had everything on their side. And people said, “How can you win? How can you do this? How can you do this against all of the odds against you?” And Mao Zedong said, you know, “You fight your war, and I’ll fight mine.” And think about that for a second.

You know, you don’t have to accept the definition of how to do things, and you don’t have to follow other people’s choices and paths, OK? It is about your choices and your path. You fight your own war. You lay out your own path. You figure out what’s right for you. You don’t let external definition define how good you are internally. You fight your war. You let them fight theirs. Everybody has their own path.

And then Mother Teresa, who, upon receiving a letter from a fairly affluent young person who asked her whether she could come over and help with that orphanage in Calcutta, responded very simply: “Go find your own Calcutta.” OK? Go find your own Calcutta. Fight your own path. Go find the thing that is unique to you, the challenge that is actually yours, not somebody else’s challenge.

Yes, she said that Mao Zedong – Chinese communist dictator, murderer of 45 million of his own people during the Great Leap Forward and at least 65 million people overall, the man behind the creation of the giant gulag that is North Korea, the evil monster behind the wipeout of his nation’s intelligentsia, the disgusting creature who passed 50 million Chinese through Soviet-style gulags – is one of her two “favorite political philosophers.” Not Aristotle. Not Plato. Not John Locke. Not Thomas Jefferson. Not even Bill Clinton or Karl Marx.

Mao Zedong.

Will.i.am is ten times the political philosopher Mao was. His music is godawful. But at least it hasn’t murdered tens of millions.

And this is the person Obama chose to train him for his foreign policy debate next Monday. Apparently Baghdad Bob wasn’t available.

When Dunn’s Mao speech was reported back in 2009, the Obama administration claimed Dunn was joking. Or that she was being ironic. The video clearly shows otherwise.

Dunn, the White House communications director at the beginning of Obama’s term, was one of Obama’s most controversial advisors. She attacked Fox News as “opinion journalism masquerading as news” while appearing on CNN. She dismissed both Bill Ayers and ACORN as non-stories. After Glenn Beck ran the video of Dunn talking about Mao in an October 2009 broadcast, she left the White House in November 2009.

Now she’s back. Just in time to walk Obama through his answers on foreign policy. How fitting for a woman who says that one of her two favorite political philosophers is Mao Zedung to be advising a president who has made our economy and foreign policy largely subject to the whims of communist China.

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