All in the (Political) Family

Obama's Marxist Mentor and Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod.

A new book by Richard Miniter contends that it was Valerie Jarrett, Obama's top adviser, who repeatedly urged President Obama not to take out Osama bin Laden, prompting Obama to cancel the mission three times.

Kudos to Miniter for this revelation. A year ago, I had written a feature article for American Spectator on Valerie Jarrett. One piece of information I had, but couldn't confirm, was precisely this. Good work by Richard Miniter.

Even then, there's much more to the rich background on Jarrett and Obama -- not to mention the third leg of the current troika that gave us "hope and change," David Axelrod.

As readers of this site are aware, I've just published a book on Barack Obama's mentor, Frank Marshall Davis. No president in the long history of this republic has had a mentor like Obama's. Frank Marshall Davis was a literal -- and I mean literal -- card-carrying member of Communist Party USA. I publish Davis's Communist Party number (47544) on the cover of the book, and fill an appendix with declassified FBI documents and Soviet archival material. Those documents reveal a Davis so suspicious that he was placed on the federal government's Security Index, which meant he could be immediately arrested if war broke out between the United States and USSR. With that sort of pro-Soviet influence throughout his adolescence (1970-79), Barack Obama would have trouble getting a security clearance for an entry-level government job, let alone sit in the Oval Office.

Nonetheless, Obama sits in that Oval Office today thanks to four factors: the American voter, a scandalously biased media, a skillful election strategy charted by David Axelrod, and the careful nurturing of Valerie Jarrett.

And most remarkable, Axelrod's and Jarrett's backgrounds and mentors connect to Obama's background and mentor in a most intriguing way. It's a stunning story, hard to believe. Follow closely:

Frank Marshall Davis, like Obama, found himself, his career, and his political calling in Chicago. It was there in the 1940s that he first began working for communist front-groups, joined the Communist Party, and wrote for and became the founding editor-in-chief of the Chicago Star, the city's Communist Party newspaper -- where Davis kicked off the newspaper with a column (July 6, 1946) pledging to advance "fundamental change." In these capacities, Davis, Obama's mentor, would work with the political ancestors of David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett.

I lay that out at length in the book, with all the documentation. Here, I will try to be brief and to the point.

In 1940, Frank Marshall Davis got involved in one of the worst communist fronts: the American Peace Mobilization. Congress called the group "one of the most notorious and blatantly communist fronts ever organized in this country" and "one of the most seditious organizations which ever operated in the United States." The group's objective (in 1940) was to stop the United States from entering the war against Hitler. Why? Because Hitler had signed a non-aggression pact with Stalin, and American communists, being loyal Soviet patriots who literally swore allegiance to the USSR, saluted Stalin.

One of the first examples I found of Frank Marshall Davis getting noticed by Congress was a 1944 Congressional report listing his involvement in the American Peace Mobilization. That same report also cited the involvement of a fellow Chicagoan named Robert Taylor. Taylor was the grandfather of Valerie Jarrett.

Taylor also served with Davis on another communist front, the Chicago Civil Liberties Committee, whose members masqueraded as civil-rights crusading "progressives." The two served on the board together.

Both Taylor and Davis would have frequently encountered another politically active Chicagoan, Vernon Jarrett. Vernon Jarrett and Frank Marshall Davis worked together on the small publicity team of the communist-controlled Packinghouse Workers Union, which Frank Marshall Davis publicly called for nationalizing. Vernon Jarrett would one day become Valerie Jarrett's father-in-law.

So, here we have Obama's mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, working with the literal relatives of Valerie Jarrett -- all serving together in Chicago's Communist Party circles in the 1940s.

And what about David Axelrod?

Axelrod is a native New Yorker who, in the 1970s, found himself and his political calling in Chicago, where he went to college and worked for newspapers as a political journalist. (See my March 2012 Spectator profile of David Axelrod.) There, Axelrod was mentored by the Canter family, namely David Canter. The Canter family's Soviet/communist roots were deep. David and his family had lived in Moscow just before Chicago. His father, Harry Canter, worked there as an official translator of Lenin's writings. Harry, who had been secretary of the Boston Communist Party and ran for governor of Massachusetts on the Communist Party ticket, did this as a literal employee of Stalin's government.

After that service to the Soviets, the Canter crew headed to Chicago, a hot-bed for American communists. They worked with Frank Marshall Davis in writing communist propaganda for the Packinghouse Workers Union, in teaching at the communist Abraham Lincoln School, in marching in Chicago's May Day parades, and in the pages of the Chicago Star. In fact, when Davis and his comrades sold the Chicago Star to something called the Progressive Publishing Company in September 1948, Harry Canter was one of the small group of board members doing the purchase.

There are several key names here. Let me sum up:

Frank Marshall Davis mentored Barack Obama. The Canter family mentored David Axelrod, who got Obama elected president. Vernon Jarrett's daughter-in-law is Valerie Jarrett, and Robert Taylor was Valerie Jarrett's grandfather. Jarrett is Obama's top presidential adviser. In other words, Obama's political ancestor worked with the political ancestors of Axelrod and Jarrett.

Oh, and they all called themselves progressives.

Amazing, but true. You can't make this up. The ghosts of Chicago's political past are alive and well in Washington today. Today's political family at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue can be traced back to the political family of Chicago in the 1940s. It's all in the (political) family.

This is the fundamental change an uninformed electorate -- thanks especially to a woefully biased media -- elected in November 2008.

Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College and author of the new book, The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor.