Posted on 08/28/2008 9:52:52 AM PDT by Caleb1411
THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION exposed the central defect of Senator Barack Obama's candidacy: the absence of compelling evidence he is up to the job of president. The exposé comes courtesy of a bad habit of his running mate, Senator Joe Biden. When in doubt, Mr. Biden exaggerates. And in the past week, he did a lot.
Voters expect candidates to embellish, but only so much. Go beyond acceptable stretching and a candidate may squander his most precious political possession: credibility. Mr. Obama may be on this perilous path.
Last Saturday, America heard Mr. Obama's new running mate exclaim, "I watch with amazement as he came to the Senate. I watch with amazement!" Mr. Biden's hyperkinetic praise is what we expect a running mate to offer his benefactor at the top of the ticket.
But Saturday and again Wednesday night, Mr. Biden also praised Mr. Obama for three specific legislative accomplishments. One of them was an ethics bill, called by Mr. Biden in his acceptance speech "the most sweeping in a generation." However, many critics--including Hillary Clinton--criticized it as weak. For example, under Mr. Obama's bill, lobbyists may buy politicians meals if they are eating standing up but not if they're sitting down. Mr. Obama's bill didn't ban privately funded travel for congressmen or authorize an independent investigation office. But Mr. Obama did help draft, negotiate, and push the legislation that passed. The other two supposed accomplishments are more problematic.
Saturday, Mr. Biden asserted Mr. Obama "made his mark literally from day one, reaching across the aisle to pass legislation to secure the world's deadliest weapons," a claim similar to one Mr. Obama made earlier in the campaign. Wednesday night, Mr. Biden was more expansive, claiming Mr. Obama was a leader "to pass a law that helps keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists." This implied a big, important controversial measure, passed with difficulty after the intervention of an extraordinary leader.
In reality, the Lugar-Obama Bill was passed on a voice vote on December 11, 2006. It was so routine, there was no recorded vote. The media didn't consider it important or controversial. Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post reported its Senate passage, though the Post ran a 798-word op-ed by Senators Lugar and Obama the week before it was approved. It was not the subject of a story on the CBS, ABC or NBC evening news--not when it passed, not when it was signed, not ever. No story about it appeared in Roll Call or The Hill, the daily newspapers that cover the minutiae of Congress. It drew only one squib in Congressional Quarterly--and that story didn't mention Obama, just Lugar. The Bush administration supported it. The legislation required the administration to report to Congress within 180 days "on proliferation and interdiction assistance" to secure the mostly conventional weapons stocks littering the nations born from the collapsed Soviet empire. It created a new State Department office to support the Bush administration's "Proliferation Security Initiative" aimed at interdicting weapons of mass destruction and conventional weaponry. And the bill authorized $110 million in funding. But this legislation didn't require a profile in courage to co-sponsor or hard work and powerful persuasion to pass, as Mr. Biden implied.
Saturday, Biden proclaimed: "But I was proudest, I was proudest, when I watched him spontaneously focus the attention of the nation on the shameful neglect of America's wounded warriors at Walter Reed Army Hospital." The problem for Mr. Biden (and the object of his praise, Mr. Obama) is the problems at Walter Reed were revealed in articles in the Washington Post, starting February 18, 2007. Unless Mr. Obama writes for the Washington Post under the nom de media of Anne Hull or Dana Priest, he didn't "spontaneously focus the attention of the nation." The two reporters did. The legislation to correct the shortcomings emerged from a Senate committee Mr. Obama doesn't serve on and he played no significant role in drafting or pushing it through the legislative. Mr. Obama is not the real hero of the Walter Reed turn-around, despite Mr. Biden's extravagant claims.
Like Mr. Biden, Michelle Obama's speechwriter could not resist hyping her husband's work. Monday night, Mrs. Obama talked about "what he's done in the United States Senate, fighting to ensure that the men and women who serve this country are welcomed home not just with medals and parades, but with good jobs and benefits and health care--including mental health care." This is an apparent reference to the Dignity For Wounded Warriors Act, a bill Mr. Obama introduced that never made it out of the Senate Armed Services Committee, despite its Democratic majority. Americans missed the spectacle of Mr. Obama "fighting to ensure" because he was missing for that particular battle. And if he was fighting, he must have been ineffectual because fellow Democrats didn't think this bill was worth passing.
When candidates lack real accomplishments, they and those around them exaggerate what they have done, puff their performance, hype the difficulty of their activities and depict their work as far more substantial than it really is. But if you describe yourself as something you're not, or as having done things you haven't, a critical press corps may be aroused and the contrast with what people believe to be true may be jarring.
Mr. Obama should be way ahead in the race for the presidency but this week has seen five polls showing the essentially race dead even. Deep doubts remain about whether Mr. Obama is up to the job. His running mate and his handlers know this. So they are puffing his résumé, padding his accomplishments and claiming the work of others to reassure voters he is up to the duties of the Oval Office. It may work. But the American people are particular about who they elect as president. And voters do not tolerate candidates whose opinion of ordinary citizens is so low they think they can get away with misleading them.
Rove remains a “magnificent b@stard.” He’s such an asset to our country! Thanks Mr. Rove!
I think this is worthy to ping a few folks! Thanks for posting it.
OBAMA BRINGS NOTHING TO THE TABLE EXCEPT A SPEECH HE MADE 2 YEARS AGO.
He rides on the coat tail of people who have established themselves, he is a rookie with no substance.
He uses Kerry for what I dont know
Kennedy for his experience
Biden is only on the ticket because Obama has nothing to deliver in the way of Defense and Imformation on other countries
NOW HE IS USING MLK, AND USING MLK’S anniversary to puff up his own agenda.. How dare he use the ANNIVERSARY OF A WARRIOR TO PROMOTE HIS OWN SELF!!! He cant live up to MLK, he has to ride on MLK’s coat tail. Alone Obama has nothing, he should be ashamed. LET HIM MAKE HIS OWN LEGACY AND STOP RIDING ON THE WORKS OF OTHER HEROES.
SHAME ON OBAMA...USING MLK’s ANNIVERSARY FOR HIS OWN!!!
McCain picks a REAL pro-life VP and we are home free...
:)
Tonight should be the night we honor MLK. Our children should know the works and the efforts MLK, put forward to bring together blacks and whites.
FOR OBAMA TO GRANDSTAND AND ACT LIKE HE HAS DONE ANYTHING COMPARED TO MLK, AND TO OVERSHADOW MLK’S anniversary is
diplorable!!!!
He built a monument unto himself, a monument that should be raised for MLK, GET THIS ROOKIE OFF STAGE.....
Shame on Barak! People in my office are saying the same thing...this is a big turn off!
How dare he use the ANNIVERSARY OF A WARRIOR TO PROMOTE HIS OWN SELF!!!
__________________________________________
I know...it’s sickening...
And the King family allow it to go on...
It’s unfortunate that the Kings were only little children when MLK was assasinated...
None of them got to talk with their father and really got to know the man and what he stood for...
All they have are corrupted recollections of people with adjendas of their own...
Even so...this is not good for Barak
He is Grandstanding on the backs of leaders before him.
Let him serve his time, and in due time he would be great? Right now, take a seat Junior.....pay some respect. sheesh.
There are Dems in my office, I am listening, they are giggling to see the Rock Star tonight. they are actually saying “it is a big turn off” speaking of this big spectacle he is about to do!!
I heard this particular piece of puff and thought, WTH is he talking about? Could he be any more vague? The entire phrase just sounds so disingenuous and fake. Thanks to Karl Rove for clearing it up.
The more I learn about this guy, the more frightened I become. He is our version of Putin.
From a Jack to a King....
Rush just mentioned this in the first hour of his show today. Obama’s experience is very limited. His resume is thin and not filled with substantive results. At least not the kind of results that would qualify him to be President. Obama is 35 years old and a US citizen. That’s it. That is the extent of his qualifications.
You can’t take a liberal lawyer and community organizer and say he’s ready to be President based on a policy agenda of change and the fact that he can give a good speech. The POTUS and the leader of the free world should offer more.
Did you happen to hear Rush read the dedication Alinsky made for his book ‘Rules For Radicals’ which Obama has taken to heart and incorporated into his methodology?
“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins -- or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom -- Lucifer.”
As Rush said, Alinsky is Hillary's mentor and a hero to liberal socialists like Obama. This nod to the Devil is quite telling.
Blacks--and school children in general--today are not taught that because the Alinsky punkishness methodology has so thoroughly inveigled black community 'activism' as shouted by cursing men like Rev Wright and cloying haters like Min. Farrakhan.
When/if men, MEN like Michael Steele and Walter Williams are embraced by the black community as the goal for becoming a man in full, THEN the black community will take up the leadership mantle which is colored by advocacy for life of the unborn and personal responsibility.
Until then, the black community will remain fools for sham artists like David Axelrod and his vagueness veil that is Barack Obama, false messiah. And more's the shame of an empty vessel, Obama, which denigrates MEN like Justice Clarence Thomas and women like Condi Rice. And if the media was worth having, the sickness of the denigrations of such commendable fellow Americans would be exposed for the vomitous spittle it represents.
“the absence of compelling evidence he is up to the job of president...”
hey, no compelling evidence is needed for a democrat to get the presidency.
all that’s needed is compelling evidence that chanelling with vladimir lenin is taking place.
IMHO
Yes I did—if he’s (Obama) the Beast, maybe Saul Alinsky and Anton Levay were the false prophets!
Biden was hired to exaggerate Obama’s record because Biden can exaggerate and embellisher faster and longer than anyone in Washington
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