Or maybe Hillary.
My neighbor, an increasingly cranky but generous and left-leaning woman who regularly complains about how the "little guys" get screwed and the big corporations and the rich are getting richer--and yes, she wanted Hillary too, is outraged at the current floundering of the Obama campaign.
I don't know if it really is floundering or if the "liberal media" are just spreading that story around. What seems clear to me is that once again, we are shying away from attacking the opposition. And it reminds me of Gore in 2000, when asked if he questioned Bush's qualifications to be President, and Kerry/Edwards in 2004, where they failed to challenge Bush and Cheney on their opposition to the 9-11 Commssion and their failure to respond to the U.S.S. Cole and to guard against further terrorism leading to the 9-11-01 attacks.
I'd like to see Obama's surrogates out there saying what is obvious and ironic--that the same people who trashed John McCain in South Carolina in 2000 are now working for him. These are the same "re-elect Bush" people who trashed John Kerry in 2004 and are spreading the same kind of distortions about Obama that they did with McCain in 2000 and Kerry in 2004.
So why aren't we hearing about that?
For that matter, why are we seemingly conceding what the public hears almost constantly, the mantra that John McCain's "strong suit" is foreign policy? I wrote about that before here.
Maybe for the same reason that Kerry and Edwards did not take on Bush and Cheney for their failures to take terrorism seriously in early 2001, their opposition to the 9-11 Commission, and their failures to take seriously the advice of military experts like Colin Powell. I never heard Kerry or Edwards mention the Powell doctrine, just as I never heard Gore mention that as Governor of Texas, Bush hardly exhibited signs of being a "compassionate conservative".
Wes Clark had it right. Right as Rove, you might say. Challenge your opponent on what is perceived to be his strength. Ironically, once again, we have the trump cards and are not using them.
Bush was a liar in 2000; he had opposed the Patients' Bill of Rights in Texas, opposed SCHIPS, approved more executions than in any other state, etc. Yet the Democratic campaign failed to challenge the mantra of "compassionate conservative". Meanwhile, the GOP succeeded in portraying Gore as a liar for a few trivial factual mistakes like which FEMA official he met with when surveying flood damage.
In 2004, the GOP challenged Kerry's war record, basically claiming that he exaggerated his experience. So why the hell did we not hear something about Bush's draft-dodging? We only heard it through the Dan Rather business, but the fact remains that both Bush and Cheney dodged the draft while supporting a war that made no sense just as the current war never made any sense.
I watched Kerry and Edwards speak at the 2004 convention from a Chicago hotel room. If it had been my own tv, I maybe would have kicked it. What I was waiting to hear was something like this:
"The President and Vice-President deceived Colin Powell into presenting a case for war in front of the international community that was full of falsehoods and jettisoned the 'Powell doctrine'--go to war only as a last resort, go in with overwhelming force, and with a clear exit strategy".
"They were unwilling to listen to the one guy they had who had military experience and the President did not even talk to his father about it, or to any of his father's staff who had experience with the situation. And we know that Powell will not be part of a second Bush term if the American people are fooled into voting to re-elect this crowd."
So what are our trump cards? McCain is incoherent on foreign policy. He talks about losing a war. Who are we fighting? Nobody from Iraq attacked us. We are an occupying force, trying to establish a pro-U.S. government, and just when has that ever worked? So it was a mistake to begin with, but the solution has to be political, not military.
These are some of the reasons we need Clark as VP. And if the rumored endorsement by Powell comes in, I think we win in a landslide.