Friday, June 20, 2008

De-mystifying Obama

I admit that to some, this man is the second coming of JFK/RFK/MLK and will ascend to Dalai Lama status sometime before Nov. 3.


However, there are those out there who don't find him particularly appealing or truthful. A reader emailed me a vid on youtube that attempts to paint Obama as dishonest, a poor leader, etc. See for yourself.



My opinion? This is quite tame compared to the McCain video I posted earlier.

Here's my favorite passage (at 2:15 in)
[Frame] Obama claims to have foreign policy credentials.
[Frame] Does this qualify as foreign policy credentials? "Probably the strongest experience I have in foreign relations is the fact that I spent four years overseas when I was a child in Southeast Asia." -- Sen. Barack Obama
For one thing, Obama didn't claim to have "foreign policy credentials." For another, I'd say that his overseas residency gave Obama four years' more experience in foreign relations than Bush had when he took office.

The video tries to hit Obama on healthcare, lobbyists, his position on the Iraq War, and his voting record. The implication is that McCain is more of a leader (or Hillary Clinton, since I don't know anything about the maker of the video or its timing, other than it was posted six months ago). I would not argue that McCain might be a leader, perhaps even a better leader, than Obama. But that's not the point here.

Along with the qualities of leadership, I want our next president to lead us away from where we are now as quickly as possible, not to lead us through four more years of what we've had for the past eight. McCain, through all of his flip-flopping and "curved talk," promises more war, more budget deficits and debt, more environmental degradation, more eroding of our international goodwill, and more alienation of the American working class (and, at 72 years old, probably more mid-day naps as well).

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