Toots, I’ve definitely shared your frustrations with Obama’s responses (or lack thereof) to the flood of political duplicity, but like many of his reactions to past insanities I saw the video you posted as bitter- sweet as well. Though I recognize the smallness of this point and I swallow my disdain for the minutiae of political strategizing when I say it, I don’t think it helps him to laugh the absurdity away as he did in the beginning of the clip. I sympathize with it. It’s what I did. The silliness of such contrived, theatrical outrage to an age-old colloquialism (one that John McCain himself has used a number of times) warrants an appropriately silly response. But, as Obama has noted before, we are in “silly season” which is the same climate of irrationality, hyper-sensitivity, hypocrisy and amnesia that has effectively provided us with a long history of ineptitude and catastrophic office holders. In this climate Barack Obama is smug, cocky, and disdainful or as Karl Rove put it “he’s the guy at the country club, with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by.”  So in this climate if you were to ignore the irrational lunacy of McCain’s sexist charge (like many undoubtedly have) you’re left with this arrogant caricature and his cadre of cosmopolitan elites having a good laugh at being called a chauvinist. Ok, ok so my cynicism is showing a little, but I dont think I’m that far off base. In a news cycle that operates twenty-four seven but can never seem to find the time to show the full context of that which they’re commenting on, a lot of people only see that part, I didn’t even hear the statement in full until you posted it. 

I also share in your elation to the latter part of his statement (the majority) which I thought was really good and began to show promise in cutting through all the diversions.. It seemed to unveil what Obama campaign manager David Plouffe announced to be “the first day of the rest of the campaign” and was punctuated by that effective “Enough!!!” proclamation. What I thought made it most effective was that it redirected the conversation away from him, instead of trying to defend his character and explain all the ways that he is not sexist and perhaps point to the myriad sexist examples from McCain’s own past (as I probably would be tempted to do), he took the step back….

Enough! I don’t care what they say about me. But I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and swift-boat politics. Enough is enough!”  

Employing reason to defend yourself against such unreasonable charges only legitimizes it and gets you caught up in the game, dismissing it with a laugh does the same. In that latter part of his statement Obama begins to transcend it all by calling McCain out on his Rovian tactics, saying they “would much rather have the story about phony and foolish diversions than about the future.” Sexism is a serious charge, reckless and unjust accusations cheapen all the authentic cases that pervade our society. There are countless problems in this country and in the world that demand sober reflections and a diversity of ideas, anything that detracts us from that bottom line is much more of an outrage. So as long as this new confrontational Obama keeps it above the petty fray… 

Besides I think we’re beginning to see the unraveling of the McCain/Palin ticket. Did you see McCain on The View (here  and here )?  Or Sarah Palin’s interview  with Charles Gibson (here, here, and here)

L.Arnell

It seemed that after Obama’s poignant “Enough!” at the DNC, things were going to change.  I thought, wow, maybe now he will become just a bit more confrontational and call the McCain campaign out on the lies propagated and dirty political games played. 

But after Obama’s interview with O’Reilly, and his admitting that the troop surge in Iraq was successful without talking about the relativity of “success” and “victory,” I became scared.  I desperately tried to rationalize this away by saying, well it is perfectly normal to come toward the center to gain more votes.  I thought maybe he’s trying not to antagonize those Republican voters. 

But in the end, I knew.  John Kerry made the mistake of not repudiating the Swift Boat ads.  And what happened?  The American people believed what they saw and that to some extent influenced their decisions.  The last thing I want is for Obama to lose votes because his campaign did not reject MacCain’s lies strongly enough.  Because we all know that the “American people know the truth,” “meaningful dialogue will overcome empty attacks,” and “positive politics is better in the end than negative politics” – is unfortunately not enough and can mean defeat at the polls. 

BUT, I was absolutely elated to hear that Obama (possibly having taken Keith Olbermann’s advice on using the Enough! tactic a bit more) confidently shook his head at McCain for taking yet another comment out of context.  (Watch the video)  This is swift boat politics indeed and I’m glad Obama called McCain out on it.

Toots McGee