Tough Truths About Obama's Character
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, September 12, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Election '08: Barack Obama's campaign is crying foul over John McCain's new hard-hitting ads. But the Democratic nominee has no one but himself to blame for his statements and his behavior.
One new spot slams Sen. Obama for riling up a crowd with his "lipstick on a pig" jibe on Tuesday, just days after GOP running mate Gov. Sarah Palin brought the house down at the Republican convention in St. Paul with her line about lipstick being the only difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull.
Another ad hits the former community organizer for voting when a state senator for sex education for kindergarteners. A third commercial compares dozens of Democratic Party operatives sent to Alaska looking for dirt on Gov. Palin to ferocious wolves on the hunt in the Alaskan wilderness.
Obama has accused the McCain camp of "lies." But a careful look at the video of the full Obama lipstick statement to a rally in rural southwestern Virginia indicates that it was not innocent, but exactly what Sen. McCain is accusing it of being.
After rattling off a list of policy areas in which he charged that McCain was identical to President Bush, Obama accused his opponent of calling "the same thing something different."
He added, "you can put lipstick on a pig . . . ," and he paused. It was at that point that the crowd went wild, grinning and hooting — clearly recognizing it as a reference to Palin, whose lipstick one-liner was seen and heard by millions the week before. The roars were going full blast by the time Obama finished by adding, "it's still a pig."
The riff Obama was running through leading up to the lipstick crescendo is one he has used at a number of rallies, and matches nearly word-for-word a long bubble quote in a recent cartoon by Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles. The Joe Biden School of Speechmaking is apparently still in business, but this also suggests the lipstick quote was the new punch line in a planned verbal vignette.
Still, if for argument's sake we were to make the hard-to-swallow assumption that Obama was not referring to Palin, shouldn't he still have realized how foolish it was to use such an expression? With a woman on the opposing ticket, shouldn't he have been extra careful not to say something easily construed as a crass insult?
What does this say of his judgment? And what does it say of his character if, as is far more likely, the pig imagery was aimed at Palin?
Some media reports have alleged that McCain's charges in another ad regarding Obama's vote for kindergarten sex ed are false. "Learning about sex before learning to read?" the ad asks incredulously.
But a before-and-after examination by National Review's Jim Geraghty of what Obama supported as a member of the health and human services committee of the Illinois state senate reveals that the language "comprehensive sex education offered in any of grades 6 through 12" would indeed have changed to "comprehensive sex education offered in any of grades K through 12" had the measure become law.
Finally, a third commercial cites a Wall Street Journal report of "30 lawyers, investigators and opposition researchers" sent to Alaska to dig for dirt on Gov. Palin. "As Obama drops in the polls, he'll try to destroy her," the ad says.
Democrats deny sending operatives to the state, but consider that a July 30 posting on Obama's campaign Web site features a photo of a beaming Democratic State Sen. Hollis French, who leads the investigation into Palin's firing of the state's public safety commissioner, standing amidst numerous Obama for President placards.
Also in the photo is fellow Democratic State Sen. Kim Elton, head of the Alaska Legislative Council, who is refusing to replace French in spite of accusations that French is using his probe for optimum negative effect on Election Day.
Sen. Obama touts himself as a new kind of politician, who refuses to take the low road. In reality, he is a product of the leftish cadres of South Side Chicago, where cutthroat political tactics are just as ugly as the left's radical vision of the government replacing parents.
Sen. McCain is wise to shift from his frivolous Britney Spears "fame" ads to real reality TV with these new messages that expose Obama and his party.
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