Anita Dunn, the White House communications director, calls Mao Zedong a “favorite political philosopher.” Dunn also said this in June to an audience of high school students:
Mao Tse Tung and Mother Teresa. Not often coupled with each other, but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is: You're going to make choices. ... But here's the deal: These are your choices; they are no one else's. In 1947, when Mao Tse Tung was being challenged within his own party on his own plan to basically take China over, Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army. … They had everything on their side. And people said “How can you win? How can you do this against all of the odds against you?” And Mao Tse Tung says, “You fight your war, and I'll fight mine.” … You fight your war, you let them fight theirs. Everybody has their own path.
Mao had a small red book full of pithy sayings. He also twice tore his country apart after liberating it from Chiang Kai-shek (and by the way, Mao in 1947 led a peasant-backed party unified in its struggle against Chiang's U.S.-supplied army; better to have the countryside than the cities, contrary to what Dunn suggests). After liberation, Mao killed more people than Stalin or Hitler, #1 in the 20th century. China is still working to live past the damage Mao wrought.
Why would Anita Dunn—the person who from the White House launched the Obama administration’s initial attack on FOX News—turn to Mao for political advice? Why? Why?
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