A Speech for Barack Obama
It's pretty presumptuous to propose language to Barack Obama, but here goes anyway, in accord with Josh's suggestion that Obama's complaint about McCain casting aspersions on his patriotism rings tinny.
John McCain has the gall to question my judgment about how our country should act in the world? Why would he do that? He has two reasons: He wants to distract you from his own bad judgment. And he wants to distract you from the bad judgment of the Bush administration that he has supported and that he now wishes to prolong. Sen. McCain is quick to temper and quick to war. For many years he has supported "rogue-state rollback"--his chief foreign policy adviser coined that expression. Sen. McCain wanted to attack Iraq when there was no evidence Saddam Hussein had anything to do with the Al-Qaeda attacks on us, no evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and even when the U. N. had not finished its inspections to find out.
"Iraq is the first country," he declared on CNN not long after Sept. 11. In January 2002, according to the New York Times, he was "yelling to a crowd of sailors and airmen: 'Next up, Baghdad!'" He called Bush's disastrous leadership "magnificent" and his national security team--Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the rest--the strongest "that has ever been assembled." He never abandoned his belief that the U. S. was justified in years of warfare that left 58,000 Americans dead and several million Vietnamese. He thinks America can stay in Iraq for a hundred years without casualties. He's a dreamer. Which battlefield will be next next for John McCain's pipe dream of American power with few allies and less wisdom? Iran? Russia? America's reputation has taken one hit after another because of the belligerence of the last 7-1/2 years and now Sen. McCain proposes to prolong the agony four more years. This is not an American dream but a nightmare and one we cannot afford and must avoid. I will avoid it.
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not bad!
August 20, 2008 5:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_American_President
The American President is a 1995 romantic comedy film directed by Rob Reiner and written by Aaron Sorkin. It stars Michael Douglas, Richard Dreyfuss .
In the film, President Andrew Shepherd (Douglas) popularity is in decline, The decline is spurred by relentless attacks by presidential hopeful, a U.S. Senate Minority Leader, Bob Rumson (Dreyfuss). The attacks focus on Wade's activist past, an attack on Shepherd's family values, and the President's refusal to respond to Republican attacks
· We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only : Making you afraid of it, and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle age, middle class, middle income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family and American values and character and you wave an old photo of the president's girlfriend and you scream about patriotism. You tell them she's to blame for their lot in life. And you go on television and you call her a whore.
August 20, 2008 5:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent.
August 20, 2008 5:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I like it.
I'd give a simple definition of "rogue state rollback" before offering examples of where McCain has supported it.
Also, although I agree with you, I'd leave out the Vietnam reference.
August 20, 2008 5:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Frank talk like this is just what the doctor ordered.
August 20, 2008 6:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
While I don't disagree with one word of your post, isn't it a little early for us to be Monday morning quarterbacking this campaign? I have to admit, I too keep yelling at my TV that he should slap the hell out of this guy. But then I think about how well this campaign has been run and how the average politician would have been knocked out a long time ago after enduring the Rev Wright episode and going up against the Clinton machine. These guys do seem to know what they are doing and I suspect they will be rolling out a lot more in the near future. It's certainly not too late!
August 20, 2008 6:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Todd says:
"Which battlefield will be next next for (INSERT THE WORD "REPUBLICAN" HERE) John McCain's pipe dream of American power with few allies and less wisdom? Iran? Russia?
"America's reputation has taken one hit after another because of the belligerence of the last 7-1/2 years and now (INSERT THE WORD "REPUBLICAN" HERE) Sen. McCain proposes to prolong the agony four more years."
I think the word "Republican" conjurs up a very negative image to many people today.
it today.
August 20, 2008 6:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
absolutely agree with johnw1141's point here
August 20, 2008 9:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
It would be a very good start Todd...I like it.
August 20, 2008 7:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
All Obama needs to do, and just about all he (and his surrogates) should be doing, is saying "Bush" every time he says "McCain." This will connect the two in people's minds
August 20, 2008 8:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let's simplify:
John McCain thinks the war in Iraq is great and now he's trying to get us into two more wars in Iran and Georgia. America, do you want four more years of endless wars in obscure countries? Do you want to increase your tax bill for these wars from $200 billion a year to $400 billion or $600 billion? Do you want to see young American men and women coming home in body bags or being crippled for life to fight for people half way around the world when Americans right here at home can't even meet their mortgage bills?
No, it's time to focus on what we need right here in the US. Health care. Social Security. Good Jobs. Tax relief for the Middle Class. And a healthy economy where Americans don't have to worry about losing their homes, losing their benefits, and having their jobs shipped overseas.
America you have a choice: four more long years of war dragging our economy down and destroying the lives of so many brave young men and women, or a new day where we once again focus on the things that make America the envy of the world. Good jobs. A strong economy. Secure benefits. Affordable health care. The opportunity to own a home. And the freedom to achieve your dreams.
America you can vote for McCain, for war, and for four more years of what you've had under George Bush and Dick Cheney. Or you can vote for Obama. Vote for change. Vote for a hopeful future that means peace and prosperity for you and for your children.
August 20, 2008 8:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
This would be my recommendation(s) to improve upon current polling numbers:
1) Obambi needs to stop intellectualizing the debate with McCain because 30% of the Democratic Party that voted solidly behind Clinton during the primaries have less than a college education, with some barely finishing high school.
2) Obambi needs his political advertisement on television (and less so on the internet) to be on a visceral level - what makes most voters (up to 70 percent feeling the country is headed in the wrong direction) ANGRY about the Bush Administration, the Republicans and McCain needs to be the focal point.
3) Obama should have read from the bible last Saturday instead of falling for Rev Warren's alleged fairness: (from Romans 12:2) "Do not be conformed to this world, but continually be transformed by the revewing of your minds so that you may be able to determine what God's will is - what is proper, pleasing, and perfect"....
4) Obama should also read from Mark Twain: "Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions (the camera then pans over to McCain hugging Bush). Small people (another camera angle of Bush hugging McCain) always do that, but the really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great (The Democratic Party previews its Convention 2008).
5) Grow more spine and talk in sound bites - short and to the point since most people fail to "listen" anyway....
August 20, 2008 8:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know, Todd, this would merely make Obama vulnerable to questions like: Don't you want to expand the Afghanistan War to Pakistan? Haven't you advocated war with Iran if they don't end their nuclear program? Didn't you recently, through Tom Daschle, state that NATO should have been involved in the recent Georgia war? Don't you advocate continuing the US military occupation of Iraq? Why do you want to expand the army and Marines, if not to fight more wars? Are we to believe that these additional troops that you want will just sit in their barracks swapping war stories about the good old days before the Prince of Peace became president?
August 20, 2008 8:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes indeed, "It's pretty presumptuous".
August 20, 2008 9:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Say what even some of McCain's Republican supporters were saying not long ago and then add some more zingers and put them in ads:
-- McCain is crazy. (The Republicans really say/said that.)There is a do-able way to say that.
-- McCain is mean. Show his temper. It's on video.
-- McCain will say or do anything to be president, and he wears desperation like sweat. He read from a music stand like it was a teleprompter when he recently tried to enter his wife in a stripping-cucumber-sucking contest, for crying out loud.
-- McCain was crushed by Bush/Rovian slander, learned his lesson and adopted the tactics. Tell that story: He's more of the same old bad stuff.
-- Every time McCain slanders Obama is another time McCain deliberately avoids defining himself. So let's define him: etc.
-- Have an ad showing that clip of Bush doing a humor video for the White House Correspondents Dinner, playfully looking under his Oval Office desk for WMD, and go to video of 19-year-olds seriously maimed in Iraq and crawling in physical therapy. Hang it around McCain's war-supporting neck.
-- Reprise that "Daisy Girl" ad from Lyndon Johnson's 1964 campaign, an ad that doomed Barry Goldwater......and use it to highlight McCain's warmongering for warmongering's sake.
-- Hit the Republican party over the head, repeatedly, about the economy. Use the subprime mortgage mess in particular, and bring in McCain's credentials from the Keating Five scandal in holding off regulators, for money of course, so that a lot of bad loans could be made and a lot of people would lose their homes.
For now, I just see Obama handing over his lunch money daily and still getting mugged. And when they asked to "borrow" his watch he turned it over.
August 20, 2008 10:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with Todd Gitlin here about the need for Barack Obama and the Democratic Party to get over that silly political Stockholm Syndrome about "national security" and just fling the truthful shit right in the faces of the reactionary republicans. Tag Panama-John McBomb with Cheney and Bush and the rest of that lying crowd of corrupt neocon cretins. For my part I would recite, just for starters:
"Deputy Dubya's Droopy Diaper Rap"
You fell asleep on watch and let some bad guys blow us up,
And when you woke you swore to pay them back.
You then attacked a country that had never done us harm
Which seems to indicate it's brains you lack.
You needed made-up reasons that you thought the rubes would buy.
You swore Saddam Hussein had done the crime.
You had Ms. Rice warn darkly of some sprouting mushroom clouds
In little less than forty minutes' time.
Dick Cheney spoke of spies who may have met one night in Prague
Discussing who-knows-what? or when? or how?
He claimed that all this nothing added up to something big
That justified attacking Iraq now.
Don Rumsfeld claimed to know just where to find those awful bombs.
He said he knew exactly where they were.
That none had ever come to light disturbed him not at all;
For dreams, not facts, made better sales allure.
And Colin Powell played along and told the world untruths
In service to a man who oft betrays;
And now no thinking person who resides on Planet Earth
Believes a single word that this man says.
Your CIA did what it does, whatever that might be;
And spent more billions finding zilch to fear;
But undeterred you pressed ahead until the spooks agreed
To tell you everything you longed to hear.
The Pet Press pundit sycophants fell quickly into line;
For "access" they had sold their souls for free.
You gave each one a nickname in return for which they swore
To overlook your rank stupidity.
The Congress went along and did precisely not one thing
To cure us of our doubts about their worth.
They swarmed aboard the lemming liner, "Gulf of Tonkin II,"
And led us once again to rue their birth.
So came the night of green-hued TV pictures from "The Front"
With breathless claims of "Shock and Awe" profound
That really only lulled and bored the viewers back at home
Impressing no Iraqis on the ground.
You and your team, of course, converged to watch the main event;
To stomp and cheer each way-cool boom and bang.
You had photographers snap pictures of you gettin' down
And doin' that studly Texas hamster thang.
With manhood issues unresolved, you pranced and leaped about
With every adolescent urge fulfilled,
You launched three dozen missiles at a Baghdad neighborhood
Yet never cared to wonder whom you'd killed.
And don't you think that forty missiles seem a little much
To cut the heads off three Iraqi men
Who, anyway, were somewhere else when all the bombs arrived
And not where you supposed them to have been?
That word "decapitation" sounded swell not long ago
But now only reminds us of your lies.
Some folks have lost their heads, all right, just not the ones you planned;
Just those who drive your trucks and cook your fries.
So things have gone from only-bad to worse-than-that and more
As GI coffins come home late at night;
And billions run into the hundred-billions off the books
Which makes those foreign lenders quake with fright.
You started spouting Jesus jive because you think it sells
Among religious folks who live in dread
Of terrorist hijackers crashing into Red State barns
And working people organized and led.
To you, the Middle Ages sound like just the place to reign
With hopeless people waiting for their doom
Who every thousand years or so take off their clothes and climb
Up on their roofs to wait for what? and whom?
You learned to watch the NBA and do that high-five dance.
You've learned your three-word mantras through and through.
George Tenet taught you how to 'slam-and-dunk' and jockstrap-sniff
But still you've never grown to more than you.
Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2005
August 20, 2008 10:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
And for the long-overdue debunking of Panama-John McBomb, personally, I suggest:
"A Disowned Heir Transparent"
You pose some interrogatives
About the waste of life
That our vain cretin leaders spend
Fomenting needless strife
To further their own prospects for
Advancement in this life
In answer to your questions, I
Have only this to add:
That we must send more youth to die
In service to a cad
Because if we do not he will
Get really, really mad
You see, it matters very much
That this vain man should feel
Empowered by position and
Entitlement to steal
Since all his life George never had
One clear thought to reveal
And now his erstwhile heir assumes
That he can do the same:
Just pose and make up flimsy lies
In search of cheesy fame
Ignoring what the people want
And sloughing off the blame
No matter, John McCain exhorts:
He's just himself to hear
This two-bit twerp Napoleon
Has nothing much to fear,
He says, from voters poised to toss
Him out upon his ear
He's conjured up an image stern
That he thinks kings project
While undeceived, the public sees
The drug that drunks inject
Into their naked scrawny butts
That they strive to protect
The generals can't save them now
Nor can the troops that bleed
For George and John ignored advice,
Refusing to pay heed,
In their lust to "command" a war
Two countries do not need
So, yes, more young and old must die
If just to buy some time
For George and John to double down
And drop another dime
On those who see no miracle
In store to mask the crime
If they knew what to do, they would
Have done it long ago;
But since they didn't, thus they can't,
As most of us well know
Yet still they bluster blizzards of
Their bogus fog and snow
A one-trick dog-and-pony team,
The misfit and his heir
Have made a trademark of deceit
Invoking empty air
To witness their new martyr shirts
Made chiefly out of hair
So, by all means, let war go on
Lest if it should expire,
What would the mercenaries do?
Whom would Dick Cheney hire
To take the blame for George and John,
Two boys who play with fire?
This may not answer all you've asked
About the tragic dead
I only know that more seem doomed
Because all thought has fled
From George and John and Dick and those
With neither heart nor head
But now succession looms and John
Perceives his hour has come
To sit upon a worthless throne
That he sees as a plum
Reserved for him alone but which
Is hardly worth a crumb
Since endless, pointless war accrues
No kudos for the king
Now John McCain will get to reap
The wages of a fling:
A disowned heir transparent to
Not much, if any thing
Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2007
August 20, 2008 10:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, and by the way:
If Barack Obama's patriotism needs no defending -- and I don't think that it does -- then why does he seem compelled to go on defending it? Doesn't he realize that continually repeating his enemy's negative message about himself only reinforces it?
And if Panama-John McBomb has nothing to sell but a sordid record of war-agitating and shoot-from-the-lip domestic and international recklessness, then why does Barack Obama continue praising this discredited man's "patriotism" and "service"? Why does Barack Obama not simply let Grandpa Simpson McBomb toot his own (as Joe Biden might put it) "noun, verb, and POW" horn himself? No one likes a braggart trying endlessly to elicit sympathy for himself.
Yes, fellow Crimestoppers, if the Democratic Party "leadership" and its claque of overpaid loser consultants ever read a single book on General Semantics, it certainly doesn't show. I agree totally with those who advise Barack Obama to stop eulogizing his scurrilous opponent and come up with a simple message identifying Bush/Cheney/McCain/"Republican" with endless needless war and merciless economic crime against the middle-class and working poor. In other words: "Democrats for Peace and Jobs. Republicans for War, Unemployment, and Our Kids Forever in Debt. No Bush/Cheney/McCain! Vote Democratic Party! Vote Barack Obama! Vote for America!" Nothing "egghead" or "elitist" in simple language like that.
August 20, 2008 11:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
That pretty much says it all Todd.
Now you have to put down some words that explains in the simplest of terms why the Bush and McCain policies are bad for Americans. You see, we have at least half of this country that thinks like Bush and McCain. They keep doing the same thing and getting the same result. The 'other 50%' definitely needs help figuring out that what they are doing isn't such a hot idea.
One of the silliest things in all of this is the U.S., Russia, U.K., France, Germany and Israel are the perennial global leaders in manufacturing and sales of weapons of all types. For quite a few years the hot market has been Middle East nations. It strikes me as not so brilliant that these nations sell weapons into the global market like crazy which resolves to a heightened risk to themselves which then requires more weapons... You get the picture. What a scam. And oh yeah. China makes everything else.
Plus you have to recognize that Russia is upset with how things are going because of weapons sales to nations that not coincidentally are on their doorstep. Wouldn't you be concerned if your neighbor was buying piles of guns? And what if you possessed oodles of oil and natural gas that your neighbor needed? I bet that would get your attention.
Anyway, you see what I mean. The U.S. has orchestrated a global scheme that I suspect will inevitably lead to a not good place. We can't continue to speak in ways or do things that make our global neighbors feel threatned. But that is all we get from Bush, Cheney, neocons and PNAC types. We know the product of their methods. McCain believes in the same methods. McCain, like the others, just doesn't comprehend the inevitability of the result it will produce. If by word or deed you make me fear you, I am going to avoid association with you. Fear is not an effective tool for developing relationships. Bush is the failure he is for this very fundamental reason.
August 21, 2008 3:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
How about this?
August 21, 2008 9:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's a good speech. It's all true. It's pungent. It'll make a lot of us feel better when we hear it. It's the kind of thing Sen. Obama needs to do. And it's probably futile.
August 21, 2008 9:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
@ Gitlin
The Arabs and Obama
August 21, 2008 4:57 PM | Reply | Permalink