Sources: Politico.com
Bloomberg.com
In Minnesota on Friday, Senator John McCain finally addressed the often untrue and dangerous remarks about Senator Barack Obama that have become more and more common at his rallies. After a woman claimed that Obama was "an Arab" McCain took the microphone away from her and replied, "No, ma'am. He's a decent family man [and] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign's all about. He's not [an Arab]."
He was met with boos from the Republican crowd.
It is unclear whether McCain truly meant what he said about his Democratic rival or if he is simply trying to tone down the angry remarks that could possibly hurt his chances with undecided voters. Whatever the case may be, the McCain campaign is only cleaning up its own mess after a week of playing heavily on the fears of voters by highlighting Senator Obama's relationship to former 1960's radical Bill Ayers and allowing Sarah Palin to claim that Obama "pals around with terrorists." It is no wonder that die-hard McCain supporters would be afraid when his own campaign send out these kinds of messages.
Obama is not entirely free from guilt either. Instead of staying focused on a little something called the global economic crisis last week, the Obama campaign was kind enough to respond to the Bill Ayers discussion with a 13 minute documentary called "Keating Economics: John McCain and the Making of a Financial Crisis". This of course refers to the Keating Five scandal of the 1980's, of which John McCain was a part of. Although it has some relevance to the economic crisis, it is clearly retaliatory in nature.
With two days before the final debate and only 22 days until Election Day, it's a little bit worrisome when all you see from either campaign are negative ads and heated attacks instead of solutions to serious problems. It appears that John McCain might have made the first step in turning back the sour tone of the Presidential Race on Friday. Let's hope that the campaigns can somehow manage to focus on the issues instead of each other for these last three weeks.
1 comment:
It is interesting how the Keating Five documentary received almost no play in the mainstream press. I wonder if McCain had put that out about Obama if it would have been such a small deal. That is a major strike against the "liberal elite media" Nice Job.
Mr. L
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