I can’t find the linkto the comments part of this, (its 0645 here, I’m just waking up and I haven’t had my coffee yet) but apparently some folks believe that the crowd at Obama’s speech in Missouri are photoshopped. After all, how could he possibly have 100,000 show up> :rolleyes:
I don’t understand why anyone would think Obama or his campaign, supporters and the Secret Service would lie about the crowd estimate. It’d be far too easy to debunk and I think if it was a fake picture McCain/ Palin would be ***All ******Over ******It ***calling Obama a liar.
The cognitive dissonance of this post is pretty staggering. There’s just too much to cover here - so I’m limiting myself to your weak defence of Bush.
Notwithstanding that I can agree GWB’s intellect has frequently been unfairly caricatured in media, it’s a huge strawman argument you’re engaging in here. You’re selectively mocking the unfair bits, whilst ignoring all contrary evidence of meaningful shortcomings.
Fact is, Bush is a classic example of someone who drifted through entire episodes of his life on the coattails of inherited privileges he lucked into on the basis of his family’s wealth, connections and prestige. It is a matter of record that he is the black sheep of the family, compared to Jeb, who lived a frat-boy lifestyle until he found Christianity and political opportunity conveniently at around the same time, after several failed business ventures mind.
Yes, he attended an ivy league education. But what do you honestly think that means for a person of Bush’s lineage? Are you simply not prepared to think about the reality of dynastic elites and wealthy benefactors in America, and how that works with admissions? And what about his grades? Looking at his “c” average, are you suggesting his graduation on that basis is really signifying much, when you take into consideration the enormity of the support he can draw upon, and the comparative intellectual depth of his father?
Look, I fully concede that Bush is a more complicated figure than he has been painted at times. At least once in office, he has been ostensibly reading a respectable amount of American history - which doesn’t quite neatly align with the stereotype. On that score, he’s certainly more engaged with history and ideas than the blank slate Palin, though it’s arguable that he was much closer to that state prior to entering office.
I do I take him at his word that he has actually read these works. But what does that say, I’m not sure. I think the disaster he has wrought certainly provides ample incentives for him to run to history as a way of trying to reconcile his lot in life with the history of the office’s challenges, and to discover shoehorned parallels, like with Truman, which might bear the weight of rehabilitating his self esteem and stature in historical terms.
But are we supposed to simply ignore the way he has governed in office as a measure of his basic depth and curiosity as a person in all this? I mean, what about the chronic insularity he has displayed? It is a matter of record that one of the worst problems with his administration, was that he deployed no effective cabinet management, and simply let underlings fight it out to determine the core policies of his administration, frequently in defiance of his own explicit directives. What does that say about him? Even Reagan, who wasn’t exactly a intellectual paragon, actually deployed a minimum level of competence in having a cabinet strategy and listening to advice and putting egos in place. Bush, by contrast, let Cheney-Addington almost run a shadow government, fatally undermining the objective of having unambiguous and clear national policies, as they engaged in turf wars with the State Department, and he had Rice come in and bring him up to speed with basic knowledge with crib-notes versions of geopolitics and history.
Also, what about his approach to disagreement? Any claim to intellect I think has to go hand in hand with a openness to dissent. But Bush, from the start of his campaigning all the way to the end of his term, has been happy hide behind hand-picked audience, pre-vetting questions, and press management – which used access black lists to isolate journalists who offer hard questions. Now maybe this is acceptable to US conservatives these days to have vacuous paper symbols as leaders- but in my country, which has a rich Parliamentary tradition, we expect our leaders to be able to face questions and answer them coherently as a sign of their basic fitness for office. At this point, I’m basically embarrassed for you that you appear to have such low standards for what is basic competence.
And this is to say nothing of the continuous bad judgement he has shown in office, time and time again, on issue after issue. That he sought preferment for high positions in the executive and judiciary, on a criteria of familial or personal loyalty, rather than qualification. I could go on and on.
Oh, and to dismiss the linguistic torture Bush has engaged in over the years, the mixed metaphors, the made-up words, the misapplied terminology, and the basic butchery of English is just such weak sauce.
The comparison with Biden is completely off. Biden shows nothing like the frequency of fuzzy-mindedness of Bush. Biden has some gaffes, sure, but they sit alongside a clearly thoughtful policy brain, which engaged with the issues, and he is entirely capable of unscripted sophisticated conversation about any issue of the day. This is nothing like Bush, who exhibits a probability approaching 1, for linguistic abortion whenever he is allowed an unscripted moment, and even when he is reading a teleprompter, problems are frequent. Now, we can debate about whether that really means he can’t be a sophisticated thinker or not, but there is no equivalency there if you’re being intellectually honest about it.
I fear mightily for Obama’s safety and for the safety of his family.
I fear that the personal attacks by McCain-Palin has served to wake up the racial hatred that has been laying dormant in some folks for quite sometime now. Many feel freer now to let it loose at Obama - the terrorist, the Arab, the Fascist, the Socialist, the Communist, the Muslim, the illegal Alien, the one who is “not like us” or " not one of us."
I fear that what we have seen in this election is a microcosm of what things could be like if Obama wins this election.
I fear that there will be an even deeper distrust and cynicism that will permeate deeply into the American populace and perhaps rip a wider hole in the fabric of our future as a country.
I fear that the disastrous standing of our economy will give rise to scapegoating, finger-pointing and outright hostility for anyone who is not of “mainstream” America.
Nothing in this election cycle is worse than “if you knew John McCain fathered an illegitimate black child, would you be less likely to vote for him?” from 2000. Nothing in this election cycle is worse than the Swiftboating that happened in 2004, either.
Clu-Me-In, what I gather from your post is that you expect the election of a half black president to increase racial tension in the US. Try as I might, I can’t wrap my head around this argument. The fact that a part black president is on the verge of being elected shows that Americans are much more tolerant of minority races than you’re trying to argue.
Or Andrew Sullivan, who voted for McCain in the primaries. and cannot stand Sarah Palin, so he’ll be voting for Obama on November 4th.
Yeah, when the vice presidential candidate incites her crowds to yell out “kill him”, “traitor”, and “terrorist,” and then doesn’t immediately rebuke them and have them dragged out on their asses, it doesn’t get any uglier than that. It’s repulsive.
Has any other candidate for President ever been accused of being a terrorist? Is it unfair to claim Obama is a lying traitor that wants nothing more than to kill Americans after being sworn in?
In 1968 they shot Bobby Kennedy through the heart and killed him. This was after shooting his brother through the head in 1963. (It is awfully suspicious to me that GHWB can’t remember where he was when he heard the news. Every other American alive can remember where they were. Oh, and he was suing Gov. Connolly at the time too.) It is awfully suspicious to me that Lee Harvey Oswald (who I do think was a shooter) managed to be the first and only major assassin of a major politician to do it from cover and not brag about the whole act.
Every campaign is dirty. This one is no dirtier than most. The campaign where Chambliss smeared Cleland is the most disgusting for things said. Killing Bobby Kennedy was the dirtiest campaign in American history.
He/she is obviously saying that the people who ARE still racist will go absolutely berserk if Obama gets in. Especially with the Republicans whipping them up.
That’s an absurd assumption re young people remembering exactly where they were when some political got killed. I was born in 1958 and I have no precise memory of exactly where I was when I heard MLK got shot or Reagan got shot or the Pope got shot. Your assumption that these events are going to imprint everyone, young or old, emotionally is ridiculous.
I’m sorry, but are you actually accusing George H. Bush of being involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy? And you’re basing that on the allegation he can’t remember where he was when it happened? He wasn’t even in politics then.
I suppose this is an insane request, but I was kind of hoping this thread would be as non-partisan as possible. I’m wondering about the tone of the campaign in general, including primaries, not your personal hatred of the Republicans or Democrats.
Der Trihs; That’s a very interesting claim. I can see how this sort of thing can be changed by time; memory’s very malleable. Do you have any links?
Oh, I don’t know about that. I’d say that the election of 1800, in which one of the candidates (either Adams or Jefferson, can’t remember which) accused the other of having fathered a black child out of wedlock, which was a lot worse back then, might be more despicable. Of course, it also doesn’t meet the qualifications of the OP, so…
They might think that because [McCain did just that.](McCain did just that.) McCain’s campaign often accuses Obama of doing what McCain’s campaign would do in their place.
I think 2004 was worse. Maybe I’m tempting fate but in most ways, I think the primaries were worse than the general election: McCain has brought up William Ayers a lot but has left the Rev. Wright stuff, which stirs up a lot more racial anxieties than Ayers does.
It seems to me that the press likes to portray every campaign as THE WORST, because that’s an interesting story and allows for rampant cynicism, but I don’t think that’s so. Liberals were tied to terrorists and America-haters in 2002 and in 2004. If anything I think it was worse then, because today much of the public sees that tactic for what it is and it’s no longer working as well.