Notes from Blood Week in American Politics
1. Blooding Barack Obama. It's probably too late for Hillary to come back on delegates, but this is the first week in a long time that Barack Obama has really been bloodied by bad news.
The first two things that nicked Obama were his and his wife's doing. Obama plagiarized Duval Patrick for a passage in one of his speeches.
Borrowing three or four sentences of a distinct kind of formulation was morally wrong even if Patrick is a great friend of Obama's. But even if one accepts the excuses and justifications from the Obama camp, the idea that Obama has been lifting material for his speeches just doesn't sit right. Politicians might steal from each other all the time, but Obama is supposed to be smarter, slicker, and generally better than other politicians. It shouldn't have happened.
But the plagiarism wasn't a big deal by itself. In fact, Obama would have escaped damage altogether but for the fact that his wife Michelle foolishly made a reference to not being "proud" of America in one of her speeches. Part of the magic of the Obama candidacy is that he might end up moving political opinion to the left in the same way Reagan moved it to the right. But this kind of gaffe makes Obama look like the kind of elite, critical leftist that the right's been complaining about for years. I imagine Republican ad people were running various attack ads through their minds as soon as they heard about Michelle Obama's comments. After all, she was pretty much writing the ads for them.
Finally, Barack Obama stated last night that an army captain had told him that his unit had been forced to use captured Taliban weapons because they couldn't get replacements for their own weapons. After Obama was portrayed as very much mistaken about this, Jake Tapper of ABC called the army captain and got a confirmation on the lack of replacements and spare parts. But I don't think that ends the problem for Obama. The fact that Obama was the subject of "controversy" could end up damaging him the same way that Whitewater damaged Hillary Clinton even though there never was any evidence that he had done nothing well. As HRC has learned to her chagrin, just the fact that you're being attacked makes you look guilty.
Obama did the right thing with the information from Iraq. But it still might hurt him anyway.
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4 comments:
"Morally wrong?" It's not like he lied to justify an illegal invasion. Have a little perspective, Caric.
Sorry Caric. Your candidate is going to lose.
How are those sour grapes tasting?
I'm afraid morally wrong is over the top. I do think that we would be better served with President Hillary Rodham Clinton than President Barak Obama but that's not even the point. Everything about this campaign season is over the top. In a normal campaign season, both parties would have a solid presumptive nominee. The republicans seem to have achieved that. My party has not. There are many reasons why Senator Obama should stick around in the Senate for 8 more years and allow Senator Clinton the presidency she has earned. But a flap about someone else's word. Ludicrous. Irrelevant. He wasn't working on a dissertation for God's sake, he was giving a speech. To Dr. Caric, I am relatively new to this forum and it is not a bad site. But where DO you stand? I can't determine. Furthermore, and this goes to everyone who posts here, could someone tell me why horseshit like this gets so much attention? I may only have a masters degree but I know a thing or two and good as the site is, it would be so much better if you Dr. Caric and your commentators would stick to issues more substantial than "did Obama use the words of another." Come on everyone!! Get your heads out of your asses, man up and stop talking about fluff. This blog has potential but you don't just beat dead horses, you all grind them up and send them to the glue factory. BEHAVE!!
Where do I stand? I'm a Hillary supporter and view her as a better potential president than Obama. I also like Obama though and have devoted a lot of posts to sifting through the many strengths and relatively few weaknesses of his campaign.
I've focused on the Democratic primaries lately, but this blog has been devoted mostly to criticizing and caricaturing the Republicans and the right. I do a lot on right-wing masculinity, smear tactics, views on race, gender, and sexual orientation, etc.
Everything in this blog is very newsworthy. Plagiarism is a serious charge and it was a gaff on Obama's part. I am supporting Hillary, but I too like Obama a lot. Also, Michelle's statement was ill-considered, even though I sympathize with her sentiments.
Perhaps you believe stealing other's words is acceptable? Maybe we could borrow a Ted Kennedy speech and pass it off as our own...
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