Sun Yat-sen versus Barack Obama: The Breakdown

Posted on February 6, 2011 by Jeremiah

	Sun Yat-sen	Barack Obama
Childhood	Born in Guangdong, raised in Hawaii.	Born in Kenya, raised in Hawaii. (Kidding.)
Professional Training	Medicine	Law
Chosen Profession?	Community Organizer/Aspiring Revolutionary	Community Organizer/Aspiring Revolutionary
Early Setbacks?	1895 Failed Uprising and Exile	2000 Illinois Congressional Race
Bounced Back?	Turned 1896 botched kidnapping attempt into propaganda coup	Turned 2004 Democratic Convention Keynote Address into “Showtime at the Apollo”
Problems with the Establishment?	Considered dangerously radical by better-known political moderates such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao.	Considered dangerously radical by better-known political moderates such as Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Politically sketchy militants they praised just a wee bit too much in public?	The Boxers	Jeremiah Wright
Manifesto?	The Three People’s Principles	The Audacity of Hope
Presidential Firsts?	First Han Chinese President of China. (Well, the first President of China so…)	First African-American President of the United States.
Problems with the brass?	Early days of presidency engaged in fierce negotiations with blowhard former general who will go down in history as one of the most self-serving and craven military men to ever serve an army.	Had to fire Stanley McChrystal.
Political Victory	His KMT party won a majority of seats in the first (and so far only) democratic elections for a National Assembly in Mainland China in 1912-1913 (though Song Jiaoren did most of the work)	Democrats won back the White House in 2008 and increased their majority in both congressional houses (though Joe Biden thinks he did most of the work.)
Greatest Political Foe?	Yuan Shikai, who disbanded parliament, declared the KMT illegal, and eventually tried to make himself Emperor of China (which failed spectacularly).	Sarah Palin, who discredited the McCain Campaign, tried to get Health Care Reform declared unconstitutional, and started her own reality TV show (which failed spectacularly).
The Opposition?	Loosely-affiliated regional groups led by ambitious yet horrifically uneducated and ignorant powermongers whose love for guns was matched only by an equally powerful distrust of learning, reason, central government, and foreigners.	The Tea Party Movement.
Dubious Alliance formed when in desperate need of a comeback?	Mikhail Borodin and the Comintern	John Boehner and the Republican Party
Historical Legacy?	More a Benjamin Franklin than a George Washington, definitely one of the top-10 all time pantheon bullshit artists in human history.	Too soon to tell. Early drafts of campaign slogans for 2012 (“Brother, can you spare some change?”) not promising. Ask me again in a year.

I’ve noticed this post is making the rounds of some of the Chinese BBSs which in the past has tended to attract a rather literal-minded readership to the site so…full disclosure: This was meant as a bit of a laugh and not as a formal declaration of political thought or historical theory.