Michael Barone: Outrageous Vulnerabilities - Obama may not Weather this storm.

National Review Online ^ | August 30, 2008 | Michael Barone

[neverdem]

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August 30, 2008, 9:00 a.m.

Outrageous Vulnerabilities
Obama may not Weather this storm.

By Michael Barone

As this is written, with a deadline looming, I have not heard Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at Invesco Field and have not learned who is John McCain’s choice for vice president.

You know more about these things than I do. So I will write about something I may know more about, and which has been the subject of some concern at the Democratic National Convention: the Democrats’ charge that Republicans make illegitimate attacks on their candidates, attacks that imply that they are far out of the American mainstream. The two examples they cite are the “Willie Horton” ads against Michael Dukakis in 1988 and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads against John Kerry in 2004.

But both attacks were well within the bounds of fair political comment. Dukakis supported for 11 years a policy of granting weekend furloughs for prisoners sentenced to life without parole. Willie Horton, one of those furloughed, fled and committed another violent crime.

There’s a reasonable argument for granting weekend furloughs to prisoners scheduled to be released in six months or so. Voters may not agree, but few will consider the policy outrageous. But there is no rational argument for letting loose a prisoner who is supposed to stay behind bars the rest of his life. Democrats now criticize Dukakis for not fighting back. But what argument could he have made?

As for Kerry, I listened respectfully to the majority of his boatmates who said that he acted heroically and to the majority of the larger squadron who said that he did not. They were talking about events that happened long ago, in sudden violence, and I found myself unable to say those on either side were lying.

But I also saw Kerry’s campaign abandon his claim — that he said on the Senate floor in 1986 was “seared, seared” in his memory — that he was in Cambodia at Christmastime 1968. And I never heard him repudiate his 1971 Senate Foreign Relations testimony — featured in the ads — that our soldiers committed “crimes ... on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.”

I used to be a Democratic campaign consultant. In that capacity, I would have advised the Dukakis campaign to admit early on that the furlough policy was a mistake. I would have advised the Kerry campaign to go before a veterans’ group early on and apologize for the Foreign Relations testimony. Voters understand that candidates sometimes make mistakes and that young men say outrageous things that in time they come to regret.

Which brings us to Barack Obama. He has three major vulnerabilities here as I see it. One is his 20-year relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Polls suggest he has sustained some damage on this, and it’s not clear whether video clips of Wright saying “God damn America” will inflict more in the fall despite the candidate’s repudiation of those comments.

Another problem is Obama’s relationship with the unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist bomber William Ayers. In an April debate, Obama portrayed Ayers as a casual acquaintance. But Ayers was co-founder of the $49 million Chicago Annenberg Challenge education program and Obama its chairman of the board. The Obama campaign has sued to take off the air ads highlighting the Ayers relationship and tried to intimidate a radio station for hosting a conservative who is examining the Annenberg documents in the Richard J. Daley Library.

Finally, there is Obama’s 2003 vote against a bill, “virtually identical” as the Obama campaign admits, to one that passed the U.S. Senate 98-0, banning the killing of fetuses who have survived abortions.

Liberals like Obama tend to go over the line between positions and associations that most voters find reasonable (though they may not agree) and those they find outrageous. They assume, usually correctly, that mainstream media will be reluctant to report on the latter, as has been the case in all those mentioned above. Conservatives take more care to separate themselves from the outrageous because they know mainstream media will pounce on them if they don’t.

On Ayers, the Obama campaign has tried to suppress discussion. But it will likely fail. The emergence of new media and the First Amendment mean that is like stopping the Mississippi River from flowing to the sea. If I were advising Obama, I would tell him to confess error, as he arguably has on Wright, on both Ayers and the Born Alive Protection Act, lest they cause his campaign as much damage as the furlough ads caused Michael Dukakis and the Swift Boat ads caused John Kerry.

© 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

[FlingWingFlyer]

I can already hear Olbermann and Matthews humming that old Loretta Lynn tune, “After the Tingle Is Gone.”

[rawcatslyentist]

>" Finally, there is Obama’s 2003 vote against a bill, “virtually identical” as the Obama campaign admits, to one that passed the U.S. Senate 98-0, banning the killing of fetuses who have survived abortions."

[volunbeer]

One of the better pieces I have read recently although I would lump Ayers/Wright and add in Rezco (sp?) and simply call it associations. Might even add his mentor as a young man, Frank, the communist party member.

This is a man who has repeatedly shown questionable judgment. The only thing I can find that he ever took a principled stand on was this abortion bill where he cast the lone vote.

The rest of the time he specialized in voting “present” which does not indicate leadership to most Americans.

[CASchack]

Obama’s ego will not allow him to admit error. “I can no more disown my position on a woman’s right to choose than I can disown my white grandmother....”

[BlessedBeGod]

Oh my God, that cartoon is spot on.

[uncbob]

If I were advising Obama, I would tell him to confess error, as he arguably has on Wright, on both Ayers and the Born Alive Protection Act, lest they cause his campaign as much damage as the furlough ads caused Michael Dukakis and the Swift Boat ads caused John Kerry.

Yeah right confess to errors as if that makes everything right---Cut me a break

[353FMG]

That cartoon is valid as long as the babies are non-Muslim.

[jwalsh07]

BArone has zeroed the RNC weapons for them. Obama is vulnerable here bigtime and McCain’s media op has been absolutely stellar. We will be seeing a lot of Reverend Wright, Bill Ayers and a small baby left to die in a filthy closet in the next two months methinks.

[Bahbah]

But Obama does not believe he is in error. He believes our country is irretrievably flawed with its ideas of individuality and rising or falling on your own efforts. He absorbed the teaching of Frank Davis. He’s a red diaper baby who, unlike David Horowitz, was unable to discern what crap he was being fed.

And most horrible of all, he believes that those babies should be left to die because, after all, someone was trying to kill them in the first place.

I cannot believe this man is the candidate that the democrat party put forth as its candidate for president.

[PghBaldy]

The baby killing and Ayers can doom his campaign. Even pro-choice people will find t hard to fathom his objections to helping a suffering baby, if for no other reason than it won’t play in Peoria. Same with Ayers. Same with Wright. Same with invading nuclear Pakistan. Hammer him on these issues, day after day, and he loses.

[gridlock]

If I were advising Obama, I would tell him to confess error, as he arguably has on Wright, on both Ayers and the Born Alive Protection Act, lest they cause his campaign as much damage as the furlough ads caused Michael Dukakis and the Swift Boat ads caused John Kerry.

What Michael Barone fails to realize is that Barack Obama never admits he made a mistake until he is absolutely backed into a corner. By then the damage is catastrophic.

Obama starts from the assumption that he is always right, and goes on from there. Even when he mis-speaks, the mis-spoken statement becomes the new and operative truth. If he said it was sunny on a day it was raining cats and dogs, he would walk around all day without an umbrella rather than admit he was wrong.

Take a look at what happened with his throwaway line that he would meet with hostile foreign heads of state "without preconditions". Rather than temporizing his statement, which would have cause absolutely no controversy, since his statement was idiotic, he has married himself to the position and enshrined it as the lynch-pin of his prospective foreign policy. He is willing to commit the United States to disasterous negotiations so he doesn't have to admit that he made one small error in a Democratic debate a year-and-a-half before the election.

Similarly with Rev. Wright. Instead of just admitting that he listened to some of the more bizzare rants and discounted them as matters of style, he embraced Wright and all his statements, to the point of throwing his own grandmother under the bus. It was only when Rev. Wright pressed the issue by going on national TV that Obama was finally forced to put some small distance between himself and his Pastor of 20 years.

Obama is never wrong. Get it through your head. This one realization makes all of his behavior make sense.

[gridlock]

It would be interesting to do an analysis to see if any Senator in recent history has had a worse record over his Senate career of attending votes that Barack Obama. I would wager not.

OK... maybe the guy in a coma has been worse of late, but not when you factor in the previous years of his career, I bet...

[grey_whiskers]

Cheers!

[Devilinbaggypants]

Wave bye bye Joe! This a close as we're going to get!

[ntnychik]

Fantastic graphic! Are there bumper stickers yet?

[grey_whiskers]

No -- I'm having a conversation on FReepmail with another FReeper about it; I'd like the graphic to be a bit more professional before going ahead...

Do you *really* think people would go for it?

Cheers!

[Ragnar54]

We should be concerned with the ongoing relationship between Obama and Ayers the bomber. As demonstrated by Democrats openly salivating over another New Orleans flood, Obama (and Democrats in general) are always in a position to profit from disaster. A well-timed bomb in a levee could reenact the Katrina tragedy. Even if Jindal saves lives by forcing the evacuation of the city, the property damage would be again blamed on Republicans. Jindal and the Feds should take steps to prevent any “participation” in the campaign on the part of Ayers and friends. Bush no doubt wants to keep his hands off the campaign, but the special “political activism” for which Ayers is known can only be handled by a Governor or President.

[Fred]

An ideal Obama cabinet member

[ntnychik]

I think people who understand the Christian fish symbol would go for it, and there are lots of them. I love it!