On Barack Obama:

For someone who has devoted his adult life to public service (as he describes himself), he has had almost no impact on his world. The grants that he doled out on behalf of the Annenberg fund would still have been issued to the same people. The bills that he signed on to in the Illinois state Senate would have passed, or failed to pass, had he never been elected.

The people in the Woodlawn neighborhood of Chicago where he worked as a community organizer remain today as they were in my own South Side youth, relatively poorer and living less well than their neighbors (although much of the South Side outside Woodlawn has been transformed by private investment).

The United States Senate would have enacted or failed to enact the same laws had Senator Obama never been born. The South Side and the public education system of Chicago, the state of Illinois, the condition of the United States all testify to the nullity of Senator Obama’s life thus far.

Senator Obama’s personal charm has made many people listen to him, admire him, even love him – but he can’t produce anyone outside his family, except the stockholders of his book publishers, whose life has been transformed, or even slightly touched, by his presence or absence. He is a one-man refutation of the premise of Capra’s movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

[h/t the corner]