Joe Klein seems to be laying out the game plan for the right-wing noise machine in the general election:
I noticed it during Obama's response to a young man who remembered how the country had come together after Sept. 11 and lamented "the dangerously low levels of patriotism and pride in our country, the loss of faith in our elected officials." Obama used this, understandably, to go after George W. Bush. "Cynicism has become the hot stock," he said, "the growth industry during the Bush Administration." He talked about the Administration's mendacity, its incompetence during Hurricane Katrina, its lack of transparency. But he never returned to the question of patriotism. He never said, "But hey, look, we're Americans. This is the greatest country on earth. We'll rise to the occasion."
Klein, he talked about the administration's mendacity and cynicism because you and your colleagues refuse to. You're refused to for eight years, merely parrotting Dubyah's reassurances that everything's fine. It's not until he lost his majority that you opened your damned eyes and actually looked aroundand what's been going on. And you still can't get it right. The country's going to hell in a handbasket and you're complaining because Obama's not talking about what's right with America.
Will Bunch sticks it in Klein's face:
Am I missing something?...I guess talking about "this country that I love" must be a pretty deeply veiled reference to his patriotism. Sigh. It seems like "lack of patriotism" is going to be the No. 1 knock on Obama, but of all the attack lines (how about aloofness, for example), I think this one is the weakest, even as Obama couldn't wear enough flag lapel pins to make the likes of Klein find something wanting.
Perhaps the most appealing thing about Obama's candidacy -- even if you're not a supporter -- is his notion that thought-free token patriotism, in the form of lapel pins and the like, can be replaced with love not for symbols but for true American ideals -- like opportunity for all, and basic human and Constitutonal rights, the ideas that caused those supporters to chant "U-S-A, U-S-A."
Oh, add dishonesty to the mix, courtesy ABC. That's Jake Tapper's mantra. Frankly, from a reality-based point of view (i.e., outside the Beltway), this is almost comic relief:
Last August, I ran into Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, outside the Senate chamber in the Capitol.
This was before the Obama surge, before he had omnipresent Secret Service agents, back when you might see him strolling solo.
We chatted for a second, mainly about the Pakistan speech he'd recently given and about how the media had covered it. He was in good spirits.
As any close friend or family member can attest, I have an unusually keen sense of smell and immediately I smelled cigarette smoke on Obama. Frankly, he reeked of cigarettes.
Obama ran off before I could ask him if he'd just snuck a smoke, so I called his campaign.
They denied it. He'd quit months before, in February, they insisted. He chewed nicorette. . . .
Except….last night on MSNBC's Hardball, Obama admitted that his attempt to wean himself from the vile tobacco weed had not been entirely successful.
“I fell off the wagon a couple times during the course of it, and then was able to get back on," he said. "But it is a struggle like everything else.”
Now I wonder about last August.
It's not a big deal in the scheme of things -- the war on Iraq, a major economic crisis -- indeed, it's miniscule. Hardly worth mentioning.
Except that I don't like feeling that I wasn't being dealt with honestly. And as much as citizens who are suspect of the media might scoff at such a notion, many of us consider ourselves to be your representatives to help make sure our leaders are telling us the truth, and leading the country down a path we're confident is the right one. (Corny, I know.)
My hero. He's going to make sure our leaders are telling us the truth. Right.
John Cole puts this in what I think is the proper perspective:
We are still unpacking the memos written by Bush’s henchman that paved the way for torture, and a member of our media has his panties in a knot because a candidate may have been less than candid to him about smoking a legal substance. Where was this fucking spidey sense the past eight years?
Y'know, Tapper looks really cute in his bio pic, but I'd say he should spend all his spare time at the gym, because he's not going very far on his brains.
2 comments:
The neocon water carrier really pulls a good one there. Can't ask the man himself, so he asks someone at campaign headquarters -- who, of course, has been glued to Obama's side since Day One and knows every action the man's taken since he began the campaign -- and then damns the candidate for information gathered from someone else. Way to go. But that, of course, will not be what most water drinkers will see -- they'll see exactly what water boy wants them to see: a candidate who is less than forthcoming about small things and therefore not to be trusted on larger issues. I can hear Burl Ives now.
Looking at Tapper's comment again, I'm really struck by the smug condescension in his assumption that he and his colleagues should be vetting our leaders for us. As if, should they simply report on the issues -- and I'm sorry, but bowling scores and whether a candidate still smokes aren't issues -- in an intelligent, rational, and balanced way, we couldn't figure it out for ourselves.
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