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McCain: Who Is the Real Barack Obama?

In a speech today, John McCain “repeatedly tried to paint Mr. Obama as a largely unknown, risky choice.”  It seems hard to argue that, at the end of a nearly two-year-long presidential campaign that Barack Obama is “unknown.”  Does McCain really think that it takes 26 years before you know someone?  By that standard, I barely know my parents and John McCain doesn’t yet know four of his seven kids.

I find the argument that “I’ve been around a long time” less and less persuasive as time goes on.  John McCain’s track record is one of contradictions.  What part of his record are we supposed to believe?  Or should we instead believe what he tells us on the campaign trail?  In the end, a president faces challenges that are very different from a US Rep or Senator serving a relatively small portion of the country.  How you act when your constituents are the people of the state of Arizona will — one hopes — be different from how you act when you represent all of the citizens of the US.  (What’s good for America presumably isn’t always good for Arizona, and vice versa.)  So in the end, we must take all these candidates at their word — we must trust them to do what they promise us they’ll do or at least trust them that they are putting our best interests at heart when they deviate from what they’ve promised us.  As McCain’s campaign goes more and more negative, it becomes harder and harder for people to take him at his word. 

And that’s why he will lose this election.

Posted by on 6 October 2008 at 3:36 PM