Aug.03.2008
4:42 pm
by Stephen Kruiser (R-Los Angeles)
Scaredy Saint
His Holiness the Obama may be able to induce fits of swooning in the stoned European multitudes but he’s still afraid of meeting John McCain in front of normal Americans.
The Obama campaign is blessed with good fortune the likes of which I have never seen. He could send staffers out to buy lottery tickets in each state they visit and they’d probably hit the jackpot nine out of ten times. The press corps has found a way to type and keep their lips affixed to his ass at the same time. It’s all good in Obamaworld.
Yet the man who promises sweeping changes by using nothing more than the power of his words turns into Mr. Chickenpants when it comes to a town hall chat with the old guy.
Camp Obama says they’re content to stick with the three scheduled post-convention debates. Of course they are. Those aren’t really debates, they’re Democrat frat parties. A bunch of former Democratic operatives now in control of various news organizations throw a bunch of union members into a “representative audience”, carefully craft questions with a built-in hint of condemnation for the Republican’s position then let the stacked deck finish the work. Even if the Republican manages to hold his own the Kool-Aid drunk MSM can polish any turd the Democrat may have left out there. Remember the Cheney/Edwards debate from 2004? Cheney had Fluffy doing everything but chasing his own tail and playing fetch at the end but pundit after lefty pundit reported that the debate seemed to be a “tie”.
The problem, as all of us who aren’t blinded by the Obamaness of it all know, is that Obama doesn’t have much to say to an audience that isn’t already nodding in unison before he even begins to speak. It doesn’t perfectly apply but I’m often reminded of the Getrude Stein quote “There is no there there,” whenever I hear Obama speak. He’s the end of the rainbow, all dazzling and promising but nonexistent.
So his campaign has become a carefully controlled tent-revival. He’ll preach to the faithful, which includes the press, and avoid any situations that may present the possibility of the presence of nonbelievers. (There were a lot of “p”s in that last sentence. Just sayin’…)
This is, in essence, the Obama camp admitting that he doesn’t have much to say if challenged. And that they know the odds are stacked in their favor in the regular debates. One of the things Obama supporters have been saying is that they can’t wait to see him trounce McCain in those debates. It is quite a mismatch in the oratory department. So why not turn the Saint loose in a pre-convention town hall setting and let the trouncing begin early?
Simply put: they can’t control the “no message” message in a town hall format like they can in the scheduled debates. As I said in a post last November, Obama sometimes has problems with the saying of actual stuff. He’s a stunner in the arena rock settings but, at the risk of blaspheming, becomes a mere mortal when teleprompters go away and specifics show up begging to be addressed.
Specifics are the bane of the Obama campaign. They pull the focus away from the lofty rhetorical heights and bring it back to earth which, by the way, is where the next POTUS is going to have to work. Naturally, the Obama campaign is relentlessly focused on avoiding specifics for as long as they possibly can.
Like the next eight years or so.
Filed in Election 2008 |
