To those who watched John McCain spend tonight’s debate repeating, over and over again, some variation of the phrase “Senator Obama doesn’t understand,” it might seem like nothing more than a debate tactic — a way of convincing viewers that Barack Obama is too inexperienced to understand complicated foreign policy and national security issues.
At some level, it probably was a debate tactic. (Or a strategy — McCain said Obama didn’t understand the difference.) But it’s also consistent with McCain’s personality as a senator. As much as he was known for his independent streak, McCain also gained a reputation for being condescending and self-righteous with his colleagues at times, a trait that made some Hill Republicans reluctant to support him until it was clear he has won the nomination.
Take this floor speech from 1998, as a tobacco regulation bill McCain had championed was about to go down in defear: “Maybe we ought to remember the obligations that we incur when we govern America. Maybe we might remember the principles of the founder of our party when we are defining the Republican Party and how we vote on this legislation. We might understand that our obligation, first of all, is to those who cannot care for themselves in our society, and that includes our children.”
McCain also took on a scolding tone in September 2005 to Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, then the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, as he berated Abizaid and other commanders for not sending enough troops to Iraq. “There’s no expert that I know that doesn’t attest that we needed more troops at the time a lot of us said we needed them,” McCain said.
Lately, the “what you don’t understand” tone has gotten McCain into trouble. In July, when he came under fire for mistakenly suggesting that the surge led to the “Anbar awakening” — in which Sunni tribal leaders turned against al Qaeda in Iraq — McCain, rather than admitting an error, insisted a surge can be “a number of components” and suggested many people don’t understand that.
If so, one of them was Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, who testified in April that the awakening “started before the surge.”
The “Obama doesn’t understand” tactic may still work, if McCain can plant enough legitimate seeds of doubt about Obama’s experience. But it’s also likely to make fact-checkers that much more likely to look for errors McCain himself might have made in his statements.
It’s also likely to make people pay that much more attention to what Sarah Palin does and doesn’t understand. Her debate is coming up on Thursday.
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Comments
I also thought that John McCain acted like a condescending old man from the past. I also noticed he wore the Bush smirk a lot. I do not want another president who demands that all people do and say what he thinks. We already had eight years of this and it did not work. Sorry McCain -YOU do not understand!!
Posted by: pacogs
| September 27, 2008 12:54 AM
John McCain was cool also till Barack started telling out right lies . ie one example the Kissinger remark. The truth is, this country does not want truth. They want money in their pockets w/o having to work for it or take responsibility for mismanagement. The media thinks Obama won the debate because he actually educated himself beforehand and spoke intelligently without a teleprompter and w/o so many "ughs" as usual. McCain has lived it, so he did not have to have prepare and he could go to Washington and do his JOB. Obama has the worst attendance record in the Senate so why would he go now? Two years ago gas was at $2.46 and unemployment was not bad. Two years ago the Democrats took over running this country in both houses. Wake up, people. You may get just what you ask for. Look up the recorded logs of congressional hearings!! In 2001 Bush is recorded as warning about Fannie & Freddie. He was ignored because everyone was swimming in wealth from the FALSE Clinton economy. Again, in 2003 at a congressional hearing (look it up, I think it was May) Bush again elevated his concern to critical! Again he was ignored. But does Bush stand up and scream blame to them. NO! What does that get you? Listen to all the carreer politicians just blaming each other and doing NOTHING! Guess who was greatest recepient of Fannie donations? Look it up, Bill Clinton and second largest recepient was a young new comer, YES, PEOPLE, Barack Obama!!! See any connections??? Educate yourself America. Dont believe what you hear.
Posted by: Grace/TN
| September 27, 2008 11:56 AM
America is educated. Do you remember when we had the last Banking (S & L) crisis back in the late 80s and early 90s? Do you remember the name of the President? Was it BUSH? (Okay, when it started it was Reagan, but Bush was VP, and it was at it's worst under Bush). Oh, and one of the biggest individual bank failures in that last banking crisis was a bank in Colorado, named Silverado Savings & Loan, which just happened to have a bank executive and board of directors member named what? Was it Neil Bush? So, here we are again, and we have a much more severe Banking and financial crisis, and what is the name of the President? Might it be Bush? Hmmmm, I wonder why that is? Clinton ran, AND WON on "IT'S THE ECONOMY STUPID!" under Bush 41. And Obama is going to win because of how bad the economy has been under Bush 43. Do you see a pattern here, do ya, huh, huh?
All of this and McSame thinks and said publicly, over and over again that the economy is fundamentally strong. Now, whether he believed that at the time, before he was corrected by his staff, or whether he just said it by mistake, either way that disqualifies him to be president. His choice of Palin disqualifies him to be president. Palin, oh yeah, the one who says that she is experienced because in foreign relations because Putin looks up and rears his head to enter US airspace over Alaska, and that is important. This is someone who we want to trust with the US nuclear codes?
Posted by: CharacterDriven
| September 29, 2008 4:25 AM
In response to Grace/TN who said: "John McCain was cool also till Barack started telling out right lies . ie one example the Kissinger remark."
Nice job trying to rewrite history. Where do you get your FACTS from? Here's from http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/factchecking_debate_no_1.html:
"Obama said McCain adviser Henry Kissinger backs talks with Iran “without preconditions,” but McCain disputed that. In fact, Kissinger did recently call for “high level” talks with Iran starting at the secretary of state level and said, “I do not believe that we can make conditions.” After the debate the McCain campaign issued a statement quoting Kissinger as saying he didn’t favor presidential talks with Iran."
WOW!! Kissinger DID call for HIGH LEVEL talks without preconditions. Imagine that!
Also... you're off base when you say that Obama has missed the most votes. Here are the comparisons for Obama and McCain from Q1 of 2005 through Q3 of 2008:
Obama Missed Votes: 306
McCain Missed Votes: 470
The facts come from govtrack.us. Check it out yourself. You'll have to do the addition because they don't break out the periods that match for each senator. I'm sure you can do that much. Can't you?
Here's the page for McCain: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/person.xpd?id=300071
Republicans can't handle the facts -- otherwise they would SOURCE their lies. I'm not going to bother picking through the rest of Grace's post. It was easy to disprove her first two claims and it would be just as easy to disprove the rest of this dreck. Please note, Grace, I didn't use PARTISAN sources to debunk your post. I'm sure you probably got your facts from Faux News. It shows.
Posted by: MavericksHMB
| September 29, 2008 8:46 PM
In response to Grace/TN who said: "John McCain was cool also till Barack started telling out right lies . ie one example the Kissinger remark."
Nice job trying to rewrite history. Where do you get your FACTS from? Here's from http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/factchecking_debate_no_1.html:
"Obama said McCain adviser Henry Kissinger backs talks with Iran “without preconditions,” but McCain disputed that. In fact, Kissinger did recently call for “high level” talks with Iran starting at the secretary of state level and said, “I do not believe that we can make conditions.” After the debate the McCain campaign issued a statement quoting Kissinger as saying he didn’t favor presidential talks with Iran."
WOW!! Kissinger DID call for HIGH LEVEL talks without preconditions. Imagine that!
Also... you're off base when you say that Obama has missed the most votes. Here are the comparisons for Obama and McCain from Q1 of 2005 through Q3 of 2008:
Obama Missed Votes: 306
McCain Missed Votes: 470
The facts come from govtrack.us. Check it out yourself. You'll have to do the addition because they don't break out the periods that match for each senator. I'm sure you can do that much. Can't you?
Here's the page for McCain: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/person.xpd?id=300071
Republicans can't handle the facts -- otherwise they would SOURCE their lies. I'm not going to bother picking through the rest of Grace's post. It was easy to disprove her first two claims and it would be just as easy to disprove the rest of this dreck. Please note, Grace, I didn't use PARTISAN sources to debunk your post. I'm sure you probably got your facts from Faux News. It shows.
Posted by: MavericksHMB
| September 29, 2008 8:48 PM
Maybe Grace would like to educate the voters on the Keating 5. Crash McCain knows all about bank/S&L failures and bailouts as he was in the middle of that ugly mess.
But what did McCain learn from that? To deregulate even more.
Oh, and you can look it up. Phil Gramm wrote the 2000 banking deregulation bill that is one of the main causes of this economic disaster. And Crash McCain supported that law just like he did for every corporate deregulation law until a couple years ago.
Posted by: AmericanInsurgent
| September 29, 2008 10:18 PM
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