Lacking Class & Judgment

No one expects Obama to cede the news cycle to McCain during the Republican Convention. But, just it would have been really lacking in class for McCain for to have stepped on Obama on the night of his speech to the Democratic Convention, it would be equally low class for Obama to do it to McCain. Yet indeed he is. He has scheduled an interview on Thursday night. His lack of class is equalled by the poor judgment of the on-air personality conducting the interview - Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. What a travesty.

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Hard Hitting New McCain Ad

More Democrats may want Obama to lead their party than anyone else, but several Democratic leaders do not believe he has the experience or judgment to lead. We know that list included Hillary and Biden, but now it includes Dodd . . . and Obama.

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Desperation & Backfire

Obama is getting hammered by McCain over his lack of substance and his lack of judgement. Obama has not been faring well in the public eye. The polls continue to drop. What to do?

The far left is clamoring for Obama to attack McCain. I have yet to find a single instance where actually listening to the far left seemed like a good idea. To the contrary, the stupidest thing that Obama and the left could do would be to attack McCain on anything other than policy differences. Obama is far too weak a candidate and McCain has far too much experience and far too much character for Obama and the left to start inviting comparisons.

Yet panic and desperation have set in. Obama and the left are now throwing the kitchen sink at McCain, highlighting some of McCain's greatest strengths and putting character and associations directly at issue. Big, big, huge, gigantic, enormous mistake.

Trying to paint McCain as dishonest on incredibly small matters wholly ancillary to McCain strengths is just insane. Yet that is precisely what Obama supporters are trying to do.

McCain spent six years getting tortured in a POW camp. There is nothing whatsoever that Obama or the left can do to spin the substance of what happened to him as a negative. Yet we have a series of folks on the left focusing attention on one incredibly small anecdote from McCain's time in the Hanoi Hilton to suggest that McCain was untruthful - i.e., the cross in the dirt story that some on the left claimed came from Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelego, written in 1973.

McCain did not lift it from Solzhenitsyn's writings since it never appears therein, and McCain's story is verified by other POW's, but that does not matter. If you are on the left, the last thing you want the public dwelling upon is the incredible price McCain paid in the service of our country to score what would be, at most, an incredibly small point.

Then on to another unassailable McCain strength. McCain and his wife adopted a child with birth defects from an orphanage in Bangladesh run by Mother Theresa seventeen years ago. They have raised that little girl to adulthood and nursed her to health. This shows charachter, compassion and a willingness to give and to sacrifice on a level beyond most of us. My God, if you are on the left, why would you want to highlight anything at all about this?

Yet we have Andy Sullivan and others calling attention to this matter, claiming that McCain embellished the story of their adoption of this child by falsely claiming that Cindy McCain actually met with Mother Theresa when she was in Bangladesh. McCain never has, though his wife may have given that impression during one of several interviews during which she was asked about the adoption. But wow, to say that Sullivan and his brethern, in an effort to attack McCain, are missing the forest through the trees on this is an understatement of titanic proportions.

The last thing that Obama himself should do is to start making attacks on McCain's character or associations in any possible form. McCain is not perfect, but he has been thoroughly tested and come out of it on the very positive end of the scale. Obama on the other hand has a history of associations so thoroughly suspect and his own character so untested that inviting comparisons would be insane. Moreover, because there is more than a whiff of corruption, sleaze and quid pro quo to a plethora of major events surrounding Obama's rise in politics, it just raises the downsides for Obama on the character issue exponentially.

Obama's two saving graces on the character issue have been McCain, who has himself largely silenced the right, and the MSM who have played deaf and dumb. Let's face facts. In any other election involving any candidate but Obama, a person with his history of associations would not stand a chance of being elected dog catcher in any locality outside of Berkley. So between the MSM and McCain, Obama has gotten the absolute minimum exposure he could possibly hope for on all of this. These are not just sleeping dogs Obama should let lie, they are viscious sleeping pit bulls with an advanced case of rabies.

Yet the Obama campaign unveiled an ad in Georgia that I blogged about yesterday in which Obama slimes McCain for his association to Robert Reid. The McCain campaign fired a back with a shot across the bow, warning Obama that he did not want to make character an issue, and mentioning Bill Ayers. Obviously the Obama camp did not get the message.

Not only is Obama continuing with the ad, but now they are seeking to paint McCain as an elitist out of touch with the "bitter folk" because he is rich and, in answer to an interview question about the number of houses he owns, McCain answered that he did not know, but his wife Cindy would. It turns out he owns none, Cindy owns seven. Regardless, here is the ad



This is a mistake of just huge proportion. In response, the McCain camp announced today that the "gloves are off." Here is the responsive ad from the McCain camp, highlighting Obama's own very questionable housing problem.



That is just a small taste of what lies behind the floodgates for Obama.

And with the gloves off, there is this from the Atlantic:

A group called the American Issues Project said it launched a 2.8 million television ad buy highlighting Obama's ties to Ayres. The group calls itself "an organization representing a coalition of activists committed to raising conservative issues both during and after the election." It includes longtime Republican activists like Ed Failor, Jr. of Iowa. Failor was a McCain adviser in the state. The ad will air in Ohio and Michigan. Here's the script:

Narrator:

"Beyond the speeches, how much do you know about Barack Obama?
What does he really believe?

Consider this:
United 93 never hit the Capitol on 9/11.
But the Capitol was bombed thirty years before -


By an American terrorist group called Weather Underground that declared 'war' on the U.S. -

Targeting the Capitol, the Pentagon, police stations and more.

One of the group's leaders, William Ayers, admits to the bombings, proudly saying later:

'We didn't do enough.'
Some members of the group Ayers founded even went on to kill police.

But Barack Obama is friends with Ayers, defending him as, quote,
'Respectable' and 'Mainstream.'
Obama's political career was launched in Ayers' home.
And the two served together on a left-wing board.

Why would Barack Obama be friends with someone who bombed the Capitol...and is proud of it?

Do you know enough to elect Barack Obama?

American Issues Project is responsible for the content of this ad."

Obama stands a real chance of winning this election if he concentrates solely on shoring up his weaknesses and engaging McCain on policy. But that isin't going to happen. Its panic time for the One. And the advice he is taking is clearly not of divine inspiration.

Update: The Battle of Elitisma. This is hilarious.

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O-bortions, Dishonesty & A Very Tangled Web

Obama is giving truth to the old saying, "what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to decive." At issue is how deceptive Obama is being in attempting to hide and neutralize his prior radical stance on abortion. Obama is being caught in lie after lie about his prior adoption of a position that crosses the line from abortion to infanticide. The evidence that he is being dishonest is so clear and the position he took so radical that this could and should turn out to be a major issue in the campaign.
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When a child is born alive from a botched abortion, should it be treated legally as a human entitled to care and life saving medical treatment? Or should it be be killed outside the womb, either by direct act of the physician or by the physician's inaction - i.e., simply abandoning the live child to perish with no care? That is infanticide and those who say yes to the latter occupy the very radical fringe of abortion rights activists.

The question is whether Obama supported that radical position. The answer is unarguably yes. Over the past days, we've been treated to an ever changing series of statements from Obama in an effort to disown his prior position or, at a minimimum, to neutralize it. But that just became impossible with the release of Obama's statements on tape and the publication of the minutes of the Illinois Senate in which Obama argued against a bill that would have required treating children born alive from botched abortions as human.

To appreciate both how radical Obama's position was on abortion and how unarguably deceptive and dishonest he has now become about his prior position, let me give a short history of what is occurring. On the eve of the Saddleback interview last week, Obama said that people who were claiming he had supported the radical position of infanticide were lying. Here is the interview:



The background to his started in about 2000 when Jill Stanek, a nurse at Christ Hospital in Chicago, discovered that some of the abortions being conducted there resulted in the birth of live infants. The doctors who performed the abortions were simply discarding the infants, allowing them to perish from neglect and exposure. She publicized her observations and turned this into a cause celebre.

Congress acted. With the full and bipartisan support of abortion opponents and staunch supporters of abortion alike, Congress passed a law directly aimed at this practice by providing that such children born alive from botched abortions were to be considered human. As such, these children were entitled to care and treatment. The law was crafted very narrowly to apply only to live children fully expelled from the mother's body and with "neutrality" language so as to not otherwise restrict abortions - even partial birth abortions where the live child is killed while partially outside the vagina.

States had to decide whether to also pass such a law to address infanticide in their states. The bill came before the Illinois Senate in all practical terms in the same form as the federal law. Doug Ross posts a copy of both the federal and state bill as well as the roll call for the vote on the bill in the Illinois Senate. Obama voted against the bill.

Subsequent to Obama's lie shown in the video above, when confronted with proof of his vote, the Obama campaign admitted that Obama had in fact voted against the bill. This came with a caveat. Initially that caveat was that he voted against the Illinois bill because it did not contain "neutrality" language that would otherwise leave the right to an abortion unaffected.

We learned the next day that Obama was lying again. Obama, as a state senator, was in charge of the committee that oversaw their state legislation on this issue and, in fact, voted to include the "neutrality" clause in the Illinois bill preserving all rights to an abortion other than in this narrow category of infanticide. It was after the neutrality clause was inserted that Obama had voted against the bill.

Obama's excuse then changed again. His newly articulated justification for his vote against this legislation was because the anti-infanticide bill was part of a package of legislation and that he did not agree with the entire package.

I do not know whether in fact this anti-infanticide legislation was part of a larger package. As the facts below show, it does not matter.

Obama's latest in a string of serial lies falls by the wayside today with transcripts and tapes of Obama arguing explicitly against this bill to halt infanticide. He does so on the merits, wholly without reference to any other legislation to which this bill was attached. Here is the audio, compliments of Gateway Pundit, of Obama arguing against the provisions of the bill on the grounds that it might effect a woman's decision (not her right) to have an abortion:



I was going to analyze this, but Hot Air does so with exceptional clarity, adding in the more detailed transcript of Obama's argument against this bill in the Illinois Senate:

. . . On pages 32-34 of the April 4, 2002 session, Obama debates the bill on the floor of the state Senate. He says essentially the exact same thing as he did in this audio passage above, but with a little more detail:

[T]he only plausible rationale, to my mind, for this legislation would be if you had a suspicion that a doctor, the attending physician, who has made the assessment that this is a nonviable fetus and that, let’s say for the purposes of the mother’s health, is being — that — that labor is being induced, that that physician (a) is going to make the wrong assessment and (b) if the physician discovered, after the labor had been induced, that, in fact, he made an error, and in fact this was not a nonviable fetus but, in fact, a live child, that the physician, of his own accord or her own accord, would not try to exercise the sort of medical procedures and practices that would be involved in saving that child.

Now, if — if you think that there are possibilities that doctors would not do that, then maybe this bill makes sense, but I — I suspect and my impression is, is that the Medical Society suspects that doctors feel that they would already be under that obligation, that they would already be making these determinations, and that essentially adding a — an additional doctor who the has to be called in an emergency situation to come in and make these assessments is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion.

Now, if that’s the case –and — and I know some of us feel very strongly one way or the other on that issue — that’s fine, but I think it’s important to understand that this issue ultimately is about abortion and not live births. Because if these children are being born alive, I, at least, have confidence that a doctor who is in that room is going to make sure they’re looked after.

This passage is really remarkable for the willfully obtuse nature of Obama’s arguments. By the time this debate took place, Jill Stanek had already revealed that doctors weren’t providing medical care to infants born alive during abortions, at Christ Hospital, and a subsequent investigation proved that other abortion providers also abandoned such infants to die. That was the entire reason for the debate. Obama acts as if this is some curious academic hypothesis.

Instead of addressing the actual issue of infanticide, Obama twists it into a protection for abortion. He frames his own hypothetical as an abortion “for the health of the mother”, but the circumstances of the mother’s health has no bearing at all on whether a live infant should receive medical care. How would treating a live infant threaten the health of the mother?

And finally, as the original audio notes, the remainder of Obama’s opposition rests on the “burden” of calling in a second physician to make an independent determination of the birth. The bill created that “burden”, a procedure which would take very little time at all, precisely because the doctors at Christ Hospital and elsewhere threw live infants away with no oversight at all.

Nowhere in this argument does Obama say, “I oppose this bill because of its companion bill,” the lame argument that has surfaced over the last 48 hours from Team Obama. He doesn’t talk about the bill’s supposed unconstitutionality. Moreover, during the presidential campaign, he said he would have supported the federal bill even though it had all of the same supposed flaws Obama argued against in this passage.

Obama protected infanticide in order to protect abortion on demand. There simply is no other explanation except abject stupidity, and this passage proves it.

This is one lie that has caught up with Obama. This is simply too well documented for him to disown. Whether this will be publicized and be reflected in voter's assessments of his character and judgment is an open question. That it should is, I believe, beyond doubt.

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Trying To Defend The Indefensible

The left, led by the Washington Post, is complaining that the attack on Obama for his decision not to visit wounded soldiers at the Landstuhl RMC is unjustified. They clearly do not understand that there is a bright line here, and however you try and spin it or justify it, Obama displayed extremely poor judgment and lack of concern by crossing it.
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Landstuhl RMC is where the U.S. military transfers its seriously wounded soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama was scheduled to visit the wounded soldiers there. The military contacted Obama's staff, letting them know that he was welcome, but that his "army" of reporters and staff were not, including one of his campaign advisors who was also a retired AF General. Obama then chose not to attend, putting the best possible spin on it - that he did so out of concern for the troops.

Lynne Sweet at the Chicago Sun Times asked Obama for a clarification which she believes makes Obama's decision justifiable.

Q. Can you clear up the controversy about visiting the troops in Germany, the Pentagon said you were more welcome to come but you cant bring the media and were not allowed to bring campaign staff other than that you are more than welcome anytime, inaudible, we have gotten a few conflicting claims...

OBAMA: The staff was working this so I don't know each and every detail but here is what I understand happened. We had scheduled to go, we had no problem at all in leaving, we always leave press and staff off that is why we left it off the schedule. We were treating it in the same way we treat a visit to Walter Reed which I was able to do a few weeks ago without any fanfare whatsoever. I was going to be accompanied by one of my advisors, former military officer. And we got notice that he would be treated as a campaign person and it would therefore be perceived as political because he had endorsed my candidacy but he wasn't on the senate staff.

That triggered then a concern that maybe our visit was going to be perceived as political and the last thing that I want to do is have injured soldiers and the staff at these wonderful institutions having to sort through whether this is political or not or get caught in the crossfire between campaigns. So rather than go forward and potentially get caught up in what might have been considered a political controversy of some sort what we decided was that we not make a visit and instead I would call some of the troops that were that. So that essentially would be the extent of the story.

Ms. Sweet, like the Washington Post and like Obama, simply does not get it.

Some things are apolitical. Visiting soldiers who are severely wounded is one of them. It is never inappropriate. It should never be weighed on the scales of political expediency.

Mr. Obama's ostensible concern for the staff having to sort through "whether this is political or not" is pure bull. His campaign was already told that he personally would be welcome, minus his entourage. His further reasoning that the troops "might get caught up in the crossfire between the campaigns" is equally baseless and even more inexplicable. Those troops at Landstuhl now know two things. Obama visited Germany to speak before 200,000 screaming Euro-lefties, but then did not make the visit over to the quieter section of Germany where they lie in beds convalescing from attacks by enemies of our country. As an aside, regardless of what anyone thinks of McCain, is it possible to envisage him criticizing Obama for visiting our wounded soldiers personally?

Obama made a decision. It was a wrong one. Apologists can spin this one any way they want to, but Obama's decision not to visit our troops crossed a bright line.

I wrote yesterday, in response to a different matter, "I could think of no man less qualified to be commander in chief than Obama. That belief is far from predicated on his lack of any military experience. It seems clear that his decision making will be guided by political expediency rather than principle. It seems clear that his decision making will always prioritize the political over military necessity or force protection. . . ." Obama's decision not to visit our wounded soldiers without press and staff falls completely in line with my assessment. No matter how anyone spins it, it showed his very poor judgement.

Let's give the former CSM of Landstuhl RMC, Craig Layton, the last word on this matter:

"Having spent two years as the Command Sergeant Major at Landstuhl Hospital, I am always grateful for the attention that facility receives from members of Congress. There is no more important work done by the United States Army than to care for those who have been wounded in the service our country. While Americans troops remain engaged in two hot wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is a steady stream of casualties to the hospital, and a steady stream of visitors who wish to meet with those troops and thank them for their service.

"Senator Obama has explained his decision to cancel a scheduled visit there by blaming the military, which would not allow one of his political advisers to join him in a tour of the facility. Why Senator Obama felt he needed an adviser with him to visit U.S. troops is unclear, but if Senator Obama isn't comfortable meeting wounded American troops without his entourage, perhaps he does not have the experience necessary to serve as commander in chief."

(H/T Gateway Pundit)

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Refocusing McCain's Message After The Maliki Embrace of Obama

PM Maliki undercut McCain's stance on Iraq by embracing Obama's call for short timelines. Obama, a man who narcissim and arrogance clearly outweighs his judgment, has given McCain an incredible gift by denigrating the surge and claiming, incredibly, that his own plan for withdraw might have had the same impact as the surge. In light of all this, McCain can still eviscerate Obama on the issue of judgement, he merely needs to make the focus of his arguments less about Iraq in particular and more about the larger challenges we face.
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I am not sure what game Iraq PM Maliki is playing by inserting himself into U.S. politics with his comments in Der Spiegel that, in essence, though unlcear, seem to be an embrace of a 16 month timetable for withdraw of all combat forces from Iraq. Whether or not this was a mistranslation is near meaningless as it has already had whatever impact it will in the U.S. Joshua Pundit speculates that this is an attempt by Maliki to play both ends against the middle in order to extract the maximum concessions from Pres. Bush in a high stakes game of chicken over the SOFA Agreement. It JP is correct, then Maliki has made a foolish move. He would do well to remember what happened to South Vietnman and how that country was treated by its neighbors and the the U.S. after the U.S. withdrew. If you don't recall the story, you can find it in the Arthur Hermann article here.

But Iraq is a sovereign and democratic country. If the elected government at any time asks for us to remove our troops, then out we should go, posthaste. That is not the central point of this post. The question is, how is McCain to regain his footing. The "time horizons for victory" versus "time tables for defeat" is still a valid argument. Even Obama admits that General Petraeus is strongly opposed to time lines as putting all of our gains in Iraq in danger. But because of Maliki, it no longer has the importance to make it alone the decisive issue.

We still have wars going on. There is still the war in Afghanistan. There is still the problem of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan which is only going worse by the day - and which at the moment we are watching from the sidelines. There is still the problem of Iran, which could very easily become a major shooting war. Even if we finish Iraq in uncontested victory and depart that nation, we are still a nation at war.

While Maliki may have undercut McCain, Obama has provided the gift of all gifts - Kerryesque nuance on the surge. Specifically, Obama said that knowing what he knows now, he still would not vote for the surge. He is defending the indefensible. He does so by denigrating the success of the surge, he credits the Anbar Awakening and Sadr's ceasefire as the unforseeable keys to the success in Iraq and he posits that these two acts where unrelated to the U.S. actions in Iraq. Finally, he just throws up his arms saying who knew what would have happened had his plan been followed. I've spelled out the utter gaping holes in Obama's positions here.

Obama could not have given McCain more ammunition. McCain's message needs to transcend Iraq. He needs to shift the focus from 16 months or time horizons in Iraq to a combination of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and the Global War on Terror generally. The arguments will be the same, he merely needs to make them more global - and mine Obama's "nuance" for all it is worth.

As an aside, Americans are hardly a stupid people. Even as the entirity of the MSM has gone in the tank for Obama, the rest of America seems not to be falling in behind the MSM like lemmings. Amazingly, even as the MSM holds a wall to wall Obamathon, the Washington Post is reporting that McCain is significantly closing the gap in major battleground states. If Obama can't improve his numbers under these absolutely most favorable of conditions, he is going to have a lot of problems when the debates come around and McCain is able to finally press him eye to eye for the nation to watch.

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Iraq Speech Part I: Obama Tosses Our Military Under The Bus To Defend His Poor Judgment (Updated)

Obama's latest ploy is to claim that his judgement in opposing the surge was not poor because:

1. No one could have foreseen the rise of the Anbar Awakening movements, and it was these movements that played a large role in the success we see today in Iraq.

2. No one could have foreseen the simultaneous "cease fire" by Sadr, an act taken apparently unilaterally and with no relationship to U.S. combat actions.

3. The two events above are what truly have led to security in Iraq, with the "surge" of U.S. forces being an ancillary factor.

[Update: The videos that were here are now replaced by quotes from the transcript. The videos became non-operational after RedLasso was forced to cease operations by a lawsuit - another MSM attack on bloggers and rights of fair use.]

This from the NYT Transcripts of the Obama's speech & Q&A session:

. . . With respect to the surge, you know, we don't know what would have happened if I -- if the plan that I put forward in January 2007 to put more pressure on the Iraqis to arrive at a political reconciliation, to begin a phased withdrawal, what would have happened had we pursued that strategy.

I am pleased that as a consequence of great effort by our troops, but also as a consequence of a shift in allegiances among the Sunni tribal leaders as well as the decision of the Sadr militias to stand down, that we've seen a quelling of the violence.

. . . Second question was how would I apportion the improvements in Iraq. I don't know how to put a numerical factor on that. There is no doubt that when we put in 30,000 American troops, here is no doubt that when we put in 30,000 American troops, who are dedicated, who are brave, and who bring extraordinary skill to their jobs, that they're going to make a difference.

I think the commanders on the ground themselves would -- would acknowledge that, had you continued to see Sunni leadership align itself with AQI, that we would be in a different situation right now. That if you continued to see ethnic cleansing in Baghdad or the Sadr militias continuing to engage in some of that activity and constant reprisals, that you'd still have some big problems there right now.

But I don't know how to put a numeric -- you know, a number to that.

Read the entire transcript. Just when one thinks that Obama has plumbed the depths of political cynicsm, he hits a new low. Obama's attempt to take away credit from U.S. forces and denigrate their achievement, their sacrifice and the brilliance of their command is the lowest he has gotten - so far. And to claim that no one could forsee what would have happened had we followed his plan to withdraw immediately in 2007 is just ridiculous.

As I wrote yesterday, on the day the surge was announced, al Qaeda controlled practically all of the Sunni provinces and Iran through its proxies had a stranglehold on the South. Just how hard is it to assess where Iraq would be today if we had not challenged those situations militarily? One need engage in no speculation to make such an assessment.

How does Obama think the Anbar Awakening started? This didn't come about magically. U.S. forces solicited it from its very inception. It actually coallesced in September, 2006 and was well known - even the NYT was writing about its success by April, 2007. Does Obama think that the creation, survival or spread was unrelated to the surge?

Why does Obama think that Sadr left Iraq for Iraq in January, 2007 and all of his Mahdi Army suddenly dropped below the radar screen? A large part of the justification for the surge was to stop the militia attacks. In 2004 and 2005, the U.S. had decimated the Mahdi Army. They damn well knew what was coming in the surge if they tried to continue their operations to Lebanize Iraq.

The only way Obama can defend his judgment is by falsely minimizing the success of U.S. forces. The fact that he has chosen to do so tells you even more about just how partisan and warped his judgment truly is.

Update: Joe Scarborough and Harold Ford Jr. respond not to Obama, but the argument he is in essence making that the Awakening Movements and their success was unrelated to the surge. It is brutal:

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Krauthammer On Questions of Obama's Character & Judgment

Charles Krauthammer is by far my favorite columnist and I always anticipate reading his latest column each Friday. I was surprised to find this week that Mr. Krauthammer's column was on the on the topic of whether questions of Obama's character and judgment are germane to Obama's bid for the presidency. I find myself in full agreement with Mr. Krauthammer's conclusions and, on this rare occasion, actually composed a post completely parallel in logic some days in advance of Mr. Krauthammer's article. You can find Mr. Krauthammer's article here and my post on the same topic here.

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The Central Issues Of Obama’s Candidacy

Obama is attempting to ride into the Presidency on an undefined promise of change and a claim to be able to magically heal the supposed divides of the nation, if not the world. He deflects reasonable concern about his lack of any substantive experience by proclaiming that he is possessed of "superior judgment." Thus, and as with all candidates, we need to take the measure of Obama’s judgment, his character, and his veracity in order to determine his fitness to lead us as President.

But as Obama and his supporters made clear today, they want all such topics off limits. Obama outrageously claims that these issues don’t matter:



It is the height of hypocrisy for Obama to call this "gotch’a politics" and unfair electoral tactics. Beyond the fact that these questions are central to assessing Obama’s fitness for the presidency, virtually Obama’s entire political career has been built on unfair electoral tactics and "gotch’a politics." His first foray into politics was won when he used his fellow lawyers to get his competition decertified and taken off the ballot. His subsequent elections have each been won only after huge "gotcha’" moments involving his competition. For Obama to claim the questions last night are either superfluous, unwarranted or unfair is hypocrisy and prevarication writ large.

(Update: Obama has now refused to take part in a CBS debate that had been scheduled before the North Carolina primary. It appears that he wants nothing to do with further debates.)

That said, let’s review what was raised last night and why it matters:
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Bittergate

Charles Gibson questioned Obama on Obama's recent comments made before a rich, liberal crowd gathered in an "off the record" venue in San Francisco:



Obama claimed that he misspoke, but then he immediately reaffirmed the substance of his "bittergate" comments. He tied people’s economic situation to whether they are overly concerned with their rights under the Second Amendment, as well as with moral, ethical and religious issues. He questions their judgment, stating in sum - albeit more tactfully than he did in San Francisco - that Americans concerned with these things are unable to distinguish what really matters. What does this say about how he will treat their concerns as President? What does his belittling of their values say of his judgment?

Are we to accept, just by way of example, gay marriage and severe regulation of our right to own weapons in return for socialized Obamacare and a few other middle class entitlement programs? Are our values and ethics for sale in Obama's view and, if so, what does that say about his own? When it comes to choosing Supreme Court judges, will Obama use his judgment to choose justices likely to uphold the traditions important to those small town people he calls bitter? Or will he choose judges with a socialist agenda who espouse the theory of a "living constitution?" - i.e., a theory that allows judges to act as a supra-legislature and create new rights - or gut old ones, such as the 5th Amendment limitation on government's ability to take private property - based on their personal beleifs. Obama's explanation of his "bittergate" remarks clarifies most, if not all of those questions.

Gun Rights, Obama’s Position On Handguns & The 1996 Survey –

As part of Obama’s claim to superior judgment, he asserted last night that he has "never" supported a ban on handguns - and that his "writing" never appeared on a 1996 survey indicating that he did support such a ban at the time. By making this claim in light of all the surrounding circumstances, Obama again asks us to make a blind leap of faith and accept, on his bald assertion, a counterintuitive conclusion. It raises questions of character and veracity that transcend the policy issue of restriction on gun ownership.

In 1996, when he was first running for elected office, an influential local political organization asked Obama to complete a survey on his positions as an integral part of their process to determine which candidate to endorse. The completed survey ascribed to Obama a series of very far left positions on a variety of hot button issues, one of which was support for a total ban on handguns. After the survey came to light, Obama’s aides said he "never saw or approved" the questionnaire. They asserted the responses were filled out by a campaign aide who "unintentionally mischaracterize[d] his position." That was plausible.

But then additional facts emerged. Obama, it turned out, had met with the organization and was interviewed directly upon the basis of his answers to the survey. Further, the day after the interview, Obama filed an amended survey with a hand-written comment in the margins. Once this came to light, according to the Politico, "[t]hrough an aide, Obama, . . . did not dispute that the handwriting was his. But he contended it doesn’t prove he completed, approved — or even read — the latter questionnaire." That is the type of legalistic defense that Bill Clinton could appreciate. As several members of that local political organization admit today, Obama’s claims in this regards are simply "unbelievable."

Now in the latest twist, Obama not only disclaims any knowledge of the answers on which he was quizzed, but even claims now that the handwriting isn’t his on the amended survey.

The important point here is not that 12 years ago Obama supported a total ban on handguns, though it is of some significance. The critical aspect of this whole situation is that Obama is prevaricating to keep his carefully created reputation for "superior judgment" from being called into question. And by taking this tack, he calls not only his judgment into question, but adds issues of veracity and character.



Rev. Jerimiah Wright

Once it came to light that Obama, the would-be great uniter, was heavily influenced by, spent twenty years with, and donated substantial sums of money to a virulenty racist, anti-American preacher, it created a cognitive dissonance of epic proportions. It was of a magnitude that, were it a white candidate in the same scenario, his candidacy would have been crushed within days of the matter becoming public – no questions asked by anyone of any race. It is a dissonance that so clearly goes to Obama’s character and judgment that it must be answered. And it is a measure of the hypocrisy of our left wing media that no one has yet vetted Obama’s frankly unbelievable claims of ignorance in regards to Rev. Wright.

Once a few of Rev. Wright's racist sermons were made public - what we saw on Fox was in fact a highlights reel sold by Rev. Wright's Church - Obama tried an ever changing litany of excuses to quell the issue. Only after these excuses failed and his poll numbers were tanking did Obama decide to give a speech on the "larger issue" of race in America. He started that speech by referring to slavery as "original sin" - thus tagging every white now alive in America and all yet to come with responsibility for slavery. That is not a particularly uniting theme. Indeed, it is the theme at the heart of race baiters and seperatists. The remainder of Obama's speech got little, if any, better.

Our left wing press proclaimed the speech historic and asserted that Obama had fully put to rest the issue of Rev. Wright. But for those of us with critical faculties not predisposed to the vacuity of identity politics, Obama's speech was in no way a reasonable explanation of why he adopted Wright as his mentor and supported him with church attendance and donations for twenty years. It did not explain how Obama was so moved by a blatantly racist sermon condemning "white greed" that he chose it for the central theme of his book, the Audacity of Hope, published in October, 2006. Nor was his speech in any way a larger dialogue on the issue of racism. It was a series of excuses buttressed with a completely unbelievable claim that he had no idea Wright was a racist during his 20 years he sat with his family in Wright's pews. Contradicting earlier assertions, Obama now admitted that he had heard a few "controversial" remarks from Rev. Wright over the many years. Obama caveated that by saying that he completely disagreed with the remarks and that the remarks were excusable becasue of Wright's background and public works.

Hillary Clinton hit the nail on the head in her response to Obama on this issue. And if Obama wants us to accept his incredibly unbelievable excuses, he needs to have Rev. Wright release his transcripts for 20 years of sermons - the whole sermons, not merely the sanitized versions.



William Ayers

Rick Moran at Right Wing Nuthouse fully explores the extent and the importance of Obama’s voluntary association with the unrepentant anti-American terrorist, William Ayers. As Rick presciently asks:

What would any other politician have done when he or she discovered that a terrorist was sitting on the same board as they? Wouldn’t just about anyone else have said “no thank you” to such an invitation?

Moreover, Obama displayed a very skewed sense of moral relativism, equating Ayers, a man who bombed government buildings and is proud of his past terrorist acts, with Senator Tom Colburn, a doctor who believes abortion is morally wrong and has sponsored a bill to treat doctors performing abortions as murderers.



Tony Rezko

Obama’s extensive relationship with a major fundraiser-cum-felon Tony Rezko didn’t even make it into the questioning last night, but it is yet another issue that goes to Obama’s judgment and veracity. Again, see Rick Moran for the full explanation.

Flag Pin and Patriotism

I would consider this a non-issue had Obama not made it one. In October, 2007, Obama told a reporter:

. . . right after 9/11 I had a pin. Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we're talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest, instead I'm gonna try to tell the American people what I believe what will make this country great and hopefully that will be a testimony to my patriotism."

That is not Obama's only act that seems to smack of a disdain for patriotism. Several months ago, Obama refused to put his hand over his heart while our national anthem was being played. Admittedly, these are mere symbolic acts. But symbolism is used to make a point. Taken together, it would be reasonable to infer that Obama sees some things very fundamentally wrong with our country and its 200 plus years of traditions. That is quite troubling in a man who wants to "change" this country in some undefined way. Under these circumstances, it is quite valid to raise these issues and test those inferences. In other words, if Obama is going to make symbolic acts, than we as a nation have every right to find out the meaning he is trying to convey by those symbolic acts.

Here is the anthem video:



And here is Obama last night:



Conclusion

One’s character is determined by how one habitually responds to things within one's environment. To put it in the words of P.B. Fitzwater, "character is the sum and total of a person's choices.” It is only by looking at character and veracity that we can judge how a man is likely to act in the future – whether in accordance with deeply held principles that define his character, or with prevarication and expediency that define a weak and self-serving character. And it is only by reviewing a person’s past acts as well as their current beliefs that we can get a feel for the soundness of their judgment. Character and judgment are the crucial considerations in choosing a leader who will face a myriad of challenges, many we cannot forecast today, over the period of the next four years as President.

The questions Obama was asked last night are central to assessing his character and judgment. It tells us volumes about his fitness to lead us as President that he does not want us to ask anymore questions on those issues.

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