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Wednesday, September 10, 2008
‘Barack the bomb-thrower’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Barack, the guy running for president,” became Barack the (stink) bomb thrower Tuesday, suggesting that John McCain can put lipstick on a pig — a reference to Gov. Sarah Palin’s joke about the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is lipstick — and it’s still the policies of George Bush.
Obama’s reeling and reaching. Democrats are searching for dirt or something beyond a few photos of kids with booze or a very attractive mom in a bikini to use Palin’s selection to sink McCain. And who can blame them? A CNN-Opinion Research poll taken Sept. 5-7 puts her up 53-44 in a head-to-head with Joe Biden.
Obama followed the lipstick-on-the-pig ploy with the she’s-needed-at-home approach. Palin’s an interesting story, he said. “Look, she’s new, she hasn’t been on the scene, she’s got five kids. And my hat goes off to anybody who’s looking after five. I’ve got two and they tire Michelle and me out.”
Obama and Biden will overplay it with Palin. Watch them.
More interesting to me, though, than the lipstick line was Obama’s view of his country, as expressed in remarks playing off his first name.
Speaking in Detroit Tuesday night, Obama responded to a questioner asking about civil liberties by saying that he is accused of being “less interested in protecting you from terrorists than reading them their rights.” He criticized the administration’s suspension of habeas corpus rights for suspected terrorists.
Habeas corpus, he said, ” is the foundation of Anglo-American law, which says very simply, if the government grabs you, then you have the right to at least ask, Why was I grabbed?' and say,Maybe, you’ve got the wrong person.’” The continued:
“The reason we have that safeguard is we don’t always have the right person. We don’t always catch the right person.
“We may think this is Muhammad the terrorist. It might be Muhammad the cab driver. You may think it’s Barack the bomb-thrower. But it might be Barack, the guy running for president.”
In other words, the U.S. war on terrorism is based on stereotypes. Any old Muhammad. And old Barack. They look alike and have funny names.
Barack, the guy running for president, constantly reminds us, however unintentionally, why he stumbles through simple questions from seven-year-olds, as he did in telling one why he wants to be president:
“America is, is no longer, uh, what it could be, what it, it once was…and I say to myself, I don’t want that future for my children.”
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