Letters to the Editor
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McCain Takes on the Political Muhammad Ali (Obama)
So McCain's people think the best way to attack Obama is through an ad hominem attack based on the fact that he doesn't possess a long, vulnerable resume of previous noteworthy deeds.
And therefore is unqualified to be the President of the United States.
That essentially is the strategy Hillary tried. And we've seen the results.
Obama has succeeded in convincing voters that he sort of comes from the future, not the past. Candidates with long, complex and controversial public backgrounds--like McCain and Hillary--are forced by that fact to talk primarily about the past. A candidate without a long past, as cynical as this may sound, has the liberty to talk almost exclusively about the future.
No Obama opponent is going to be able to paint him as being a dummy, a pessimist, uneducated, unsophisticated or inelegant in his use of the "bloody pulpit." Even with his paucity of a political resume, Obama cannot be portrayed as an under achiever. My lord, he's defeated Dodd, Biden (a formidable intellect), and even the inevitable nominee, the superstar, Hillary Clinton.
McCain, on the other hand, can easily be put on the defensive. Not so much because his own record is terribly vulnerable. Because he can be pinned in a corner and forced to defend, not himself, but the record of the Bush Administration. And now that record includes the most complicated are perhaps disastrous economic issues facing the country since the Great Depression.
I know John McCain is a sports fan. I wonder how he feels about taking on Muhammad Ali in his prime, namely, a 46-year-old Barack?
Obama's guys should go after the Bush record, not attack John McCain as-a-man. McCain's a good man, and the voters know that.
So McCain's people think the best way to attack Obama is through an ad hominem attack based on the fact that he doesn't possess a long, vulnerable resume of previous noteworthy deeds.
And therefore is unqualified to be the President of the United States.
That essentially is the strategy Hillary tried. And we've seen the results.
Obama has succeeded in convincing voters that he sort of comes from the future, not the past. Candidates with long, complex and controversial public backgrounds--like McCain and Hillary--are forced by that fact to talk primarily about the past. A candidate without a long past, as cynical as this may sound, has the liberty to talk almost exclusively about the future.
No Obama opponent is going to be able to paint him as being a dummy, a pessimist, uneducated, unsophisticated or inelegant in his use of the "bloody pulpit." Even with his paucity of a political resume, Obama cannot be portrayed as an under achiever. My lord, he's defeated Dodd, Biden (a formidable intellect), and even the inevitable nominee, the superstar, Hillary Clinton.
McCain, on the other hand, can easily be put on the defensive. Not so much because his own record is terribly vulnerable. Because he can be pinned in a corner and forced to defend, not himself, but the record of the Bush Administration. And now that record includes the most complicated are perhaps disastrous economic issues facing the country since the Great Depression.
I know John McCain is a sports fan. I wonder how he feels about taking on Muhammad Ali in his prime, namely, a 46-year-old Barack?
Obama's guys should go after the Bush record, not attack John McCain as-a-man. McCain's a good man, and the voters know that.
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