 | ||
 | McCain scores a bump from Saddleback | |
| McCain weighs a Lieberman surprise | |
| McCain winning in new poll, follows trend | |
| Voice-over woman in 'Celeb' ad a secret | |
| Nader predicts Obama to pick Clinton | |
| The Morning Report | |
| Reuters/Zogby: McCain +5 | |
| Ohio: McCain +5 | |
| The Chicago Way - Part II | |
| LA Times/Bloomberg: Obama +2 |
| Canada's 'Human Rights' Revolution | |
| The Risk of McCain's Zingers | |
| The Real China Threat | |
| Helping Boys Without Hurting Girls | |
| The Idiocy of Energy Independence |
| The Idiocy of Energy Independence | |
| The Religious-Secular Divide | |
| Is Obama the Ladies' Choice? | |
| Panel on if Obama Has a Glass Jaw | |
| Mark Warner on "Money and Politics" |
|
August 19, 2008
A Bad Week for Obama
By Jack KellySen. Barack Obama had a bad week, which he and his staff contrived to make worse.
Sen. Obama and Sen. John McCain appeared serially at a California mega-church Saturday night. The contrast illustrates why Sen. Obama is leery of joint appearances.
Mr. Obama was long-winded and often evasive in his responses to questions posed by Pastor Rick Warren, while Sen. McCain was crisp and direct in his responses to the same questions.
"The Obama people must feel that he didn't do quite as well as they might have wanted in that context, because what they are putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama," NBC's Andrea Mitchell said on the "Meet the Press" program Sunday. "He seemed so well prepared."
The subtext is The One could not be bested unless the old white guy cheated. But by making a charge they can't possibly prove, Obama aides look like bad sports, said Megan McArdle of the Atlantic.
"This was a serious misstep by the Obama campaign, and his supporters could best help him by never mentioning it again," she said.
Whining is one way to make a poor peformance seem worse. Another is to get caught in a lie.
In 2003, Sen. Obama voted against a bill in the Illinois legislature that would have protected the lives of infants born alive after botched abortions. The language of the bill was identical to the federal Born Alive Infants Protection Act, which had passed the U.S. Senate unanimously the year before.
The National Right to Life Committee issued a press release on Sen. Obama's vote. When a reporter asked Sen. Obama about it, he responded:
"Here's a situation where folks are lying. I have said repeatedly that I would have been completely in, fully in support of the federal bill that everybody supported -- which was to say --that you should provide assistance to any infant that was born -- even if it was the consequence of an induced abortion."
On Sunday, after the NRTLC released documents proving the language in the state bill was identical to that in the federal bill, an Obama spokesman acknowledged his boss had "misstated" his position.
There was much consternation among Democrats and journalists last week when a book savagely critical of Barack Obama -- Jerome Corsi's "The Obama Nation" -- debuted at number one on the New York Times best seller list.
Sen. Obama's campaign issued a 40-page rebuttal. "Jerome Corsi is a discredited liar who is peddling another piece of garbage to continue the Bush-Cheney policies he helped perpetuate four years ago," said Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for Sen. Obama.
Mr. Vietor was referring to the 2004 book "Unfit for Command," which Mr. Corsi co-wrote with John O'Neill of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Many Democrats blame Sen. Kerry's defeat on his sluggish response to the charges made in that book. They've vowed never to let that happen again, which accounts for their effort to nuke the Corsi book.
This is a mistake. What gave "Unfit for Command" its power was that of 23 officers who served in John Kerry's squadron, 15 considered him unfit. By contrast, when Democrats were trying to manufacture a scandal about President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard, they were unable to find a single squadron mate who had anything critical to say. By linking the new Corsi book to the Swift Boat veterans, Democrats give it a credibility it doesn't deserve.
And the Obama campaign's response to the Corsi book was replete with factual errors of its own.
"Much of what (Corsi) writes is troubling and fictional," wrote ABC's Jake Tapper. "But that doesn't mean that the Obama campaign shouldn't hew closer to the truth."
I hope you won't buy the book. Mr. Corsi is a nutcase, and his book is filled with poorly sourced innuendo. But the over the top response to it pretty much guarantees Mr. Corsi will sell more copies than he deserves to.
At least the Obama campaign had the good sense not to draw attention to David Freddoso's "The Case Against Barack Obama," which debuted at number five on the New York Times list. It's long on fact, short on innuendo, and absolutely devastating to Sen. Obama's reputation.
