I knew Landstuhl was going to hurt. The question now is, how much?
Look For Obama's Poll Numbers To Get Worse The Next 2 or 3 Days
PATTERICO
By WLS
That's the only reason I can think of why the Obama campaign would had surrogates out in force today still trying to push back against the non-visit to Landstuhl Hospital — and doing rather poorly in my view.
They have even gone so far as to have the retired Chief of Medical Operations at Landstuhl fire back at "Black Hawk Down" pilot Paul Durant's written statement today criticizing Obama.
Frankly, I don't think the response "Well, he visited with troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he visited a Med. Evac. hospital in Iraq" are answers to the question about why he didn't make a quiet trip with his security detachment to Landstuhl.
One of his surrogates was on Countdown earlier and his statement was, for all practical purposes, the following: "When the campaign was told by the Pentagon that if Gen. Gration accompanied Sen. Obama it would be viewed as a political trip, the decision was made to cancel the trip rather than have the troops used as props in a campaign event."
So, as they had it planned, the troops were to be props in a campaign event, until the Pentagon told them that was not allowed.
I'll put up the exact quote tomorrow.
The fact that Obama is continuing to sent out surrogates to try and knock down this story — and given the fact that the "Ad" put out by the McCain campaign has only run a handful of times in 5 media markets — the Obama campaign is clearly worried that the attention being paid to this issue by the media is potential trouble for them in the polls.
Update: Of all places, the NYT has a piece out on Tues going over this festering sore on Obama's campaign, and comments on the curious fact that Obama's surrogates were out on Monday still trying to knock it down. Here's the last two paragraphs:
* If the story behind the story of the canceled troop visit has run its course, one question remains: Why didn't Mr. Obama leave his aides behind, even the retired general, and make the visit by himself?
"Even him going alone would likely be characterized by some as a political event," Mr. Gibbs said in an interview on Monday, adding, "He decided not to put the troops in that position." *
Gibbs was the surrogate on Countdown that I referred to above. His langauge on Countdown was close to his quote here, but his final sentence was to the effect "He decided to not have the troops used as props in a political campaign."
If this story persists beyond tomorrow, its beginng to reach Swift Boat territory — the risk is that it will begin to leave a lasting impression that Obama doesn't rate wounded soldiers high enough on his priority list to make time for them. |
