Posted by
Roxanna M. on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 4:44:06 PM
The forum last Saturday between John McCain and Barack Obama showed all but the most die-hard liberals that the democrats are poised to send a boy to do a man's job. Throughout his hour of questioning, Obama did not appear comfortable. He was neither decisive nor impressive, always seeming to be reaching for an answer that was somehow beyond him. Here's how I saw it.
1. I don't think anyone was all that impressed with his answer that his wife was one of the wisest people he knew, who he would rely on heavily in his administration. Who was the last democrat president who was an Ivy League lawyer who had a wife who was also an Ivy League lawyer? Remember how well that turned out?
2. He thought that America's greatest failure was not taking care of the least among us. Apparently, he is unaware of the trillions we have spent on the "war on poverty" here in America. Welfare? Earned income tax credit? Medicaid? Any of these sound familiar, Mr. Obama? Is he unaware of the billions and billions we have sent overseas to help people out? How much did it cost us to rebuild Germany and Japan? Who bears the load of the U.N. budget? Who bears the price for defending the world? Perhaps if Obama had actually paid attention to his day job instead of running for President for the majority of his first tenure in the U.S. Senate, he would be aware of these things.
3. When asked for an example of when he went against party loyalty for the good of America, he answered by saying that he worked with McCain on campaign ethics reform and finance reform. He neglected to mention, however, that he sided with his party in voting against the final bill. Apparently, he didn't think much of his efforts.
4. One of his weakest moments came in response to the question about the most gut-wrenching decision he's ever made. He said it was his opposition to the war in Iraq. Unfortunately, he was quite serious. Obama was not in the Senate when the vote was taken. So, while his decision could have affected his political career, it had no consequence whatsoever in the overall scheme of things. It's easy to say you support or oppose something when you don't have to actually make the call.
5. His weakest moment of the evening came when he said that the point at which a baby gets human rights was above his pay grade. That's not a question Obama can answer in front of evangelicals. So, as he so often did in the Illinois Legislature, he merely said "present". In 2007, in a speech before the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, he said that the first piece of legislation he would sign as President was the Freedom of Choice Act, which would codify Roe v. Wade and eliminate all current federal, state, and local restrictions on abortions, including the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding of abortion, and including parental notification. He voted against the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which means he is against rendering medical treatment to babies who are born alive after a botched abortion. He once said that he didn't want his daughters "punished" with a baby. Obama is perfectly fine with killing babies at any time, even after birth. How he squares that with Christianity is beyond me. By the way, women do make these decisions casually and, contrary to what he said, abortions under President Bush are at their lowest levels in 30 years. His position on this issue puts a lie to his later comments about the "sacredness of human life".
6. He thinks that marriage is between a man and a woman but would not support a Constitutional Amendment saying that. Why? Because marriage is not defined in the Constitution? NEWSFLASH, neither is abortion.
7. He thinks that evil should be confronted, not defeated. He thinks there is evil in the events of Darfur, evil in the abuse of children, and evil on our streets. He doesn't think, however, that terrorism is evil. He didn't mention it once. He stated that we won't "be able to erase evil from the world. That is God's task . . .". Wrong. We can and should destroy the evil we can, not merely confront it.
8. He claims that if you make $150,000 or less, then you will get a tax cut under his proposals. Yea, right.
9. He believes that "it is irresponsible intergenerationally for us to invest or for us to spend $10 billion a month on a war and not have a way of paying for it". He finds that unacceptable. He is, however, perfectly willing to spend $58.3 billion a month on foreign oil, despite the fact that we have our own resources to harvest. He doesn't seem to think that that is irresponsible or unacceptable.
10. He thinks that going to war to prevent genocide is okay, as long as we work "in concert with the international community". If the international community is indifferent, should we be, too? Wasn't there genocide in Iraq? Didn't Saddam use WMD on Kurds? Haven't our troops found mass graves? He also thinks that, under the right circumstances, going in without UN approval is okay. Maybe he should have said that going to war is okay to prevent genocide EXCEPT in Iraq, for which we had UN approval, by the way.
11. He wants to be President because he feels like the "American dream is slipping away". He thinks that he has the "ability to build bridges across partisan lines, racial, regional lines . . .". Since he hasn't done so so far in his pitifully short career, where did he get an idea like this?
12. He thinks "that things will work out and we will get the president that we need." It was less than 24 hours later that he proclaimed at a fundraiser, "I will win. Don't worry about that". He thinks that his election "should just happen", without having to raise money or run TV ads.
In his own words, he's the President we need, and he shouldn't have had to work at it. We should just give it to him.