Supporters of Senator Obama have to be deeply disturbed by Obama's
decision to duck Senator McCain's invitation to change American
political debate via a series of one-on-one townhall meetings across
the U.S.
Here was a chance to genuinely reinvent how presidential elections are
conducted --to raise the conversation and empower voters, and Obama ran
away. So much for the Obama rhetoric of change and a new era:
Obama's a machine pol afraid to get too far from Axelrod's script.
The big duck is an admission by Obama that the scars from his late
primary season debate battles with Hillary still smart. She
creamed him in the late rounds, again and again, and since then the
Obama gaffe machine has been in high gear, culminating this past week
with "inflate your tires to energy freedom" prat fall.
Off-prompter, Obama is revealed as a pretender --a lightweight who
can't make coherent arguments or sustain even short exchanges with
hostile questioners.
Senator McCain has gone Popeye, which is just fine. "I yam what I
yam" makes a lot of sense to Americans, and the doggedness and patience
of the old warrior shine brighter every day as it contrasts with the
smoke machine around Obama. Pushing back hard on the bogus charge
of racism by Obama and his surrogates at the New York Times was exactly
what the voters needed to see --the old fight and yes, the old
temper. McCain's great strength has always been his reliability
on national security issues, and in an age of punks with nukes and oil
--Ahmadinejad and Chavez-- a tough old guy looks pretty good,
especially measured against a lightweight fighting way above his weight
class.
Obama's big rallies and celebrity turn have had their effect, but now
they are at least a wash as Americans on Main Street begin to wonder
what Obama thinks he is running for, and what exactly he is bringing to
the table. Stanley Kurtz's examination of Obama's hard left
voting record in the Illinois state senate answers the second question,
and the refusal to stand by his commitment to "anytime, anywhere"
debates with McCain underscores the impression that Obama thinks he is
owed the presidency.
Obama may have peaked in Berlin, and the sudden recognition by millions
that "there is no there there" will be solidified by Obama's big debate
duck.
