After watching John McCain in the first presidential debate pander about how much he cared about veterans, I found his statements so disingenuous I decided to put together this video highlighting the hypocrisy of his words.
The references cited in the video are detailed below:
Obama responded that now is the time the country needs to hear from our leaders, and in so many words, prove that they can talk and chew gum at the same time.
John… really?
Why suspend the campaign when your second can step in and fill the gap, just like she would if something happened to you in office. Don’t you have confidence in her abilities, John?
Here’s my advice for Obama. Don’t fall for it. Go to Mississippi. Set up another podium or leave an empty chair for McCain. Scrap the debate format and do a town hall instead. Take questions from the crowd. Both friendly and hostile. Hold the town hall meeting McCain always wanted, but with him MIA.
Then cut back to McCain napping or getting his face made over by a $5000 makeup artist from American Idol. Or if McCain is nowhere to be found, perhaps shots of Palin at a local church leveling charges of witchcraft at those who would question her foreign policy experience.
ABC released an excerpt from Charles Gibson’s interview with Sarah Palin that will air nationally tonight. Apparently Alaska’s proximity to Russia provides her with special insight.
When asked by Gibson if under the NATO treaty, the U.S. would have to go to war if Russia again invaded Georgia, Palin responded: “Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help.
Palin advocated the accession of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, meaning that if attacked again in the future, the United States would be bound to go to war….
“I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help,” she said.
Palin, who obtained her first passport this year and who has served just two years as Alaska’s governor, told Gibson that she was up to the challenge of being Sen. John McCain’s vice president.
The following analysis by Charles Babington came across the AP wire while Obama’s speech (more from me on that tomorrow) was still in progress. Is this guy really watching the same speech? Or is this a partisan hack job courtesy of AP Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier, friend of Karl Rove and John McCain?
Barack Obama, whose campaign theme is “change we can believe in,” promised Thursday to “spell out exactly what that change would mean.”
But instead of dwelling on specifics, he laced the crowning speech of his long campaign with the type of rhetorical flourishes that Republicans mock and the attacks on John McCain that Democrats cheer. The country saw a candidate confident in his existing campaign formula: tie McCain tightly to President Bush, and remind voters why they are unhappy with the incumbent.
Of course, no candidate can outline every initiative in a 35-minute speech – especially one that also must inspire voters, acknowledge key friends, and toss in some autobiography for the newly-interested. And Obama did touch on nitty-gritty subjects, such as the capital gains tax and biofuel investments.
He said he would “find ways to safely harness nuclear power,” a somewhat more receptive phrase than he typically uses for that subject.
But most of his address echoed and amplified the theme that dominated the four-day Democratic nominating convention here: George Bush.
You’d have to hiding out in Osama Bin Laden’s cave to miss the truly Shakespearean theatre that played across the political landscape today.