Thursday, August 28, 2008

Embed This Ad

While the Obama campaign's busy trying to prosecute political non-profits for saying things they don't like, the McCain campaign has put out a pretty powerful one of their own. Again, this ad focuses on Obama's friends and colleagues, but this time its his friends and colleagues in the Democratic party who take center stage, with all their reservations and concerns about whether Obama could be an effective president in our dangerous and unstable world. Of course, all these clips are from before he became the presumptive nominee, and they've all had radical changes of heart as to his competence and readiness (particularly Joe Biden!). Too bad the videotapes couldn't disappear as easily as their concerns did:

1 comment:

Shane said...

What a terrible week to have not had television or internet access. Entire Dem convention and McCain's VP announcement, and I sit down to all this stuff to sift through.

I never bought the experience argument, but then I've also been an Obama supporter since before he (officially) announced his campaign. So, grain of salt, etc.

Experience is, in itself, irrelevant to one's job qualifications (regardless of whether the job is a bartender or POTUS). It's just that one's previous employment is a really good proxy for decisionmakers with limited information for things like proficiency, judgment, and character. In this case, we have far more than enough biographical information about the candidates to make solid judgments about their abilities.

Now that Palin is McCain's VP pick, I expect the "experience" attack to fade away, since IF you accept the premise that experience on the national stage is important THEN you would conclude that Sarah Palin is not experienced enough to assume the presidency.

But then I've made the mistake before of thinking that intellectual honesty/consistency has any role in political campaign strategy, so I could be wrong.