Posted by
Always To The Right on Friday, August 29, 2008 9:25:59 AM
Barack Obama certainly had the nation’s attention last night, having
moved his speech from the Pepsi Center to an elaborate setting at
Invesco Field. He had history on his side in two separate ways, both
with his own nomination as the first African-American candidate on a
major-party ticket and the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I
Have a Dream” speech. Obama had the chance to reach beyond his
previous efforts and close the deal with middle America.
Instead, Obama essentially mailed in his usual stump speech. While
people waited to hear specifics, Obama only offered slogans.
Meanwhile, he threw in the same attacks that his campaign has made for
the last four weeks against John McCain and offered more bluster about
having a debate on foreign policy, national security, and patriotism
without agreeing to actually meet McCain to do it.
Obama made the same mistake that plagued the entire Democratic
convention; he ran against George Bush. He railed about the previous
eight years, which certainly is de rigeur for the party out
of the White House, but failed to present any clear idea of what
different policies he would apply. He did almost nothing to present
any specific, positive plan for the American people beyond the
sloganeering to which Obama has bitterly clung while his polling has
dropped by double digits this summer
Worse than that, Obama misrepresented McCain’s record on several
points. He ridiculed McCain for not following Osama bin Laden “to his
cave”, when even his own running mate stated on the record that
invading Pakistan in force would be rather foolish. (McCain also
doesn’t have the authority to order that, and Obama put it in the past
tense.) Obama repeated the accusation that McCain is just another Bush
on energy policy, but it was Obama who voted for the Bush energy bill
in 2005, and McCain who voted against it. In fact, while McCain has
voted with his party 88% of the time, Obama has voted with his party
97% of the time over the last three years — and has almost no record of
taking risks in pursuit of bipartisan solutions at any level of
legislating.