Obama Gets Tough
Barack Obama is getting tough. The Washington Times reports that Obama is warning voters about John McCain’s campaign tactics:
MANCHESTER, N.H. | Sen. Barack Obama told voters not to fall for Republican attempts to “distort my record,” keeping up his attacks on Sen. John McCain, whose campaign criticized the Democrat for talking politics during a hurricane.
During a rally that was scaled back as Hurricane Ike swamped Texas, the Democratic presidential nominee said Republicans “will try to undermine your trust in what the Democrats are trying to do,” but warned voters in the blue-leaning swing state that “the times are too serious for those strategies to work.”
“If we don’t [start] the changes that we need starting right now, then our children may not have the same kind of America that we want them to have,” Mr. Obama said.
It’s nice to know that Barack Obama understands the real threats to our country. Iran is a tiny threat. The real threat is John McCain and those distorting campaign ads.
To show how tough they are, the Obama camp has put out a new ad slamming John McCain for not knowing how to use a computer:
There are a few problems with this ad:
1) John McCain certainly isn’t the only senior citizen who isn’t computer-savvy. Although the Obama campaign claims that the ad is intended to mock McCain’s computer illiteracy, not his age, the images of the 80’s memorabilia could be used to mock anyone old enough to be politically active in that era. Insulting senior citizens is not a good strategy, because unlike the youth, the seniors are the ones who are far more likely to cast a vote.
2) There’s a very good reason why McCain can’t use the computer – his war injuries. According to a March 4, 2000 Boston Globe article, McCain’s war injuries make it impossible for him to perform a number of everyday tasks (bold added by me):
McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain’s severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes. Friends marvel at McCain’s encyclopedic knowledge of sports. He’s an avid fan – Ted Williams is his hero – but he can’t raise his arm above his shoulder to throw a baseball.
Who criticizes a veteran for having lost the use of his motor skills after being tortured as a POW? Is Obama camp is saying here is that physical disability makes one unfit for office, or did they simply not do their research? Obama spokesperson defends the ad saying that the internet is a vital part of our society:
“Our economy wouldn’t survive without the Internet, and cyber-security continues to represent one our most serious national security threats,” Pfeiffer said. “It’s extraordinary that someone who wants to be our president and our commander in chief doesn’t know how to send an e-mail.”
Yeah, but to blast McCain for lacking the motor skills to use a keyboard? That’s like saying that Governor David Patterson (D-NY), who is blind and can’t drive or read, can’t understand the concerns that New Yorkers have over transportation or education and is thus unfit to be governor.
This ad fits in with the Obama camp pattern of complete insensitivity towards physical disability. Democratic VP nominee Joe Biden asked wheelchaired-bound Missouri State Senator Chuck Graham (D-19) to stand up during a campaign appearance, and South Carolina Democratic Chairwoman Carol Fowler blasted GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin for not aborting Trig Palin, who has Downs Syndrome. Really, can you get anymore insensitive?
3) Finally, the ability to use a computer is not a pre-requisite for the job of President. The President has hundreds of employees to do things like write emails and answer fan mail. Even Senators have employees to do these things. The odds of McCain actually needing to write an email himself are incredibly low, and the McCain camp has proven to be internet-savvy enough to rapidly put together clever ads on YouTube; in fact, even Barack Obama himself is concerned about McCain camp’s ability to upload YouTube ads (see above).
The most important pre-requisite for the job of President isn’t tech-savviness, but judgment. The President has to make executive decisions. Other duties, like sending emails or writing speeches, can easily be delegated to someone else. The one thing that can’t is the executive power, the decision making.
It’s nice that Obama is so hip that he can send out SMS text messages with his VP nominee pick (although I’m sure some other underling on his staff sent out the text messages). But the fact that Obama’s VP pick was the man who wanted to break up Iraq, a plan that was univerally opposed by Iraqi leaders, leaves me with serious questions about his (Obama’s, but also Biden’s) judgment.
This entry was posted on September 14, 2008 at 8:50 am and is filed under Election 2008. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.
Tags: Barack Obama, Computers, Iran, Joe Biden, John McCain, Sarah Palin
You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.
September 14, 2008 at 9:33 am
McCain didn’t say he can’t physically use a computer due to his handicaps. He said he doesn’t know how to use a computer. It was some feeble attempt to show that he is folksy and not a victim of a cyberage. it’s different, wouldn’t you agree? Simarly I’m sure he knows as much about the economy as he feels he needs to know. He’ll have Gramm or some other smart guy to do the math while he sticks to what he thinks he does best: Protecting us from threats near and far with blustering, saber-rattling, threats and anti-diplomatic posturing. I agree that knowing how to work a blackberry is probably not important to a person in the Top Job but which is more desirable: someone in the top slot with a well documented temper problem and an unwillingness to keep abreast of technological changes that impact our culture (the “in-touch” factor) or someone who not only understands the Economy but is also-techno-literate thus engaged enough to understand that while terrorism from abroad is still a very serious consideration, a cyber attack is probably more likely and can potentially do considerably more damage to our infrastructure?
Anyway, just my thoughts? How’s Jersey? I’m a New Yorker (-:
September 14, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Who are the retards who really believe that’s what Obama meant?
We can plainly see McCain is more than willing to pander to the mentally unstable with his vice presidential pick. That seems to be his base.
September 14, 2008 at 12:28 pm
McCain does not use a computer because his war injuries and torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese 38 years ago have left him without the fine motor skills needed to operate a keyboard. However, he is far too much of a class act to play the victim and cite this as an excuse, which is why he simply says that he can’t use one. In fact, McCain is extremely tech savvy — he chaired the Senate telecommunications subcommittee for many years and is up on the technology. Furthermore, I would worry a great deal if the President were sending e-mails regularly both because the e-mails constitute a searchable database and because they can always be intercepted, both of which have very undesirable national security consequences. Even FDR knew the downside of writing, which is why he almost always issued his instructions verbally.
Two final points in response to expatforobama — 1) Obama’s tax policies do not add up at all because there are not enough “rich people” to pay for his incremental spending; 2) Obama’s trade policies and in particular his antipathy toward free trade, taken together with his plans to tax capital formation punitively, raise a very troubling parallel to the beginning of the 1930s: then-President Hoover’s response to a weakening economy was to raise taxes in order to balance the budget and get Congress to pass the Smoot-Hawley tariff that devastated international trade. These two measures turned the 1929-30 recession into the Great Depression. For these reasons, Obama’s economic understanding is woefully deficient.
September 14, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Some fallacies in your argument:
No, McCain is not the only senior citizen who is computer-illiterate and Obama isn’t making that statement. He is, however, the only one that has a strong possibility of becoming President next year.
Additionally, I think it takes a real leap in logical deduction to see that the ad is the mocking McCain’s war injuries. It is not the fact that McCain may or may not be physically able to check his email, it’s that technology isn’t even on his horizon. Wired.com directly quotes McCain saying:
“I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself,” McCain told the New York Times in an interview that appeared Sunday. “I don’t expect to be a great communicator, I don’t expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need.”
Even so, McCain bluntly admits, “I don’t e-mail. I’ve never felt the particular need to e-mail.”
The point is that when it comes to your own personal lifestyle choice, you can choose to use the internet or not, and, ultimately, the decision only affects you. But as a political candidate (and one that wants to be President, at that) in today’s world, where everyone is using this technology, where it is used extensively by the companies that we seek to regulate or subsidize, where new media is considered by some to be part of the complicated answer to our failing public education system, where it is considered an integral part of the training that would help millions to get off of welfare, and it plays a huge part in the war on terror and the intelligence communicty, you need to have a working knowledge of the technology. You need to consider the technology an important part of modern life or else you’re not acknowledging the existence of all the tools in the proverbial toolbox that could help to fix our issues.
If you’re saying that he could appoint people who do know about the internet, I’m not entirely comfortable with him deferring to people on real, important issues merely because he’s doesn’t personally find it necessary to incorporate the internet into his everyday activities. Yes, I agree that the president doesn’t send the emails on behalf of his office, but he does send some, and I think you’re looking at this far too microscopically in order to prove a point that is, at best, very difficult to get reach.
September 15, 2008 at 3:41 am
To be fair, Sen. Biden didn’t realize that Sen. Graham was in a wheelchair. And when he did, he did the gracious thing by asking the others stand up for Graham. But to make fun of Sen. McCain for not knowing how to use the internet is ridiculous.
September 16, 2008 at 4:01 pm
I think Penner has done a brilliant job of expressing my exact arguments with this criticism of Obama’s ad. I would also like to point out that older generations tend to be more concerned about McCain’s age than young people, so I wouldn’t count on 100% of the senior vote.
September 17, 2008 at 5:34 pm
[...] Clinton, like Obama, thinks John McCain is a greater threat than Iran. After all, Iran is a tiny threat… Explore posts in the same categories: [...]
September 23, 2008 at 10:35 am
[...] the meantime, even Joe Biden admitted that the Obama-Biden TV ad which mocks John McCain’s inability to use a computer due to his war injuries was terrible. From ABC News’ jake Tapper’s Political Punch blog (bold added by me): [...]