President Barack Obama talks abut taxes, Friday, August 3, 2012, in Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)  

Author: ‘Obama would have trouble getting a security clearance for an entry-level government job’

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Jamie Weinstein

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They were close — so close that I confidently call it a mentor relationship. (And I’m not alone.) We don’t know how frequently they met. I avoid trying to affix a number in the book. I’ve had people tell me everywhere from a handful of times to weekly, which I can’t confirm at all. David Maraniss, in his new biography, says they met upwards of 15 times, which is a lot, especially given that they met one-on-one and often late into the evenings. In “Dreams from My Father” alone, Obama describes several meetings. He mentions “Frank” 22 times directly by name, and dozens more via pronouns and other forms of reference — but never discloses his full name once in the entire book. I’m sure that’s because of the political sensitivity of who Davis was. In fact, in the audio version of “Dreams,” released 10 years later in 2005, there are no references to the communist “Frank.” He was completely purged — blacklisted, if you will. That’s no easy task. “Frank” is mentioned in the original text in every section of the memoir, not just the Hawaii years.

I have no record of correspondence between the two after Obama left Hawaii. I wouldn’t know where to find it. Obama notes in “Dreams” that his parting advice before he left for college was from Davis — incidentally, a Davis diatribe blasting “the American way.” That diatribe is almost verbatim to Davis’s “American way” rants in the Chicago Star.

Davis died in 1987. Obama left for Occidental in 1979. Very interestingly, Obama wrote two poems about Davis when he got to Occidental. One of them is titled “Pop.” Even David Maraniss concedes that the subject of “Pop” is “Frank.” Read that poem carefully and then try to tell me that Frank Marshall Davis didn’t have a deep influence on Barack Obama.

I’d say it was the fact that Obama’s mentor was considered so radical, and such a potential pro-Soviet threat, that the federal government placed him on the Security Index. That meant that if a war broke out between the United States and the Soviet Union, Frank Marshall Davis could be placed under immediate arrest. Think about that. Obama had that sort of influence. And The Washington Post will focus on whether Mitt Romney was bullying in high school? With the kind of influence that Obama had, Obama would have trouble getting a security clearance for an entry-level government job.

Actually, I don’t say that they had political discussions. I can’t say for certain that they did, especially if you go by “Dreams” alone. For that matter, I can’t say that Ben Cleaver and Reagan or Hillary and Don Jones had political discussions — though no one questions they had an influence and were mentors.

Now, that said, I would be very surprised if Obama and Frank didn’t have political or even ideological (and certainly intellectual) discussions. They met a lot, and “Frank” was extremely political. All you need to do is read his writings. He was very emotional and expressive and angry about his politics. I think it would be naïve to imagine that he never raged against American “imperialism” or colonialism or excess capitalism when he was around young Obama, especially as the hours went on and as Frank drank more and more whiskey.

On matters like cocaine, he grew up in an era when that was going on. To do cocaine was certainly not the norm, but it wasn’t unheard of. In short, he rightly saw his adolescent association with Davis — a literal card-carrying communist — as a greater political liability than cocaine use.