PrintMcCain's POW Status Slimed by Democrats High and Low
I wondered how the Democrats were going to cut McCain down to size when it came to national security because it is obviously Obama's biggest and most glaring weakness. It isn't that Obama only has a little experience in foreign and defense affairs - he has none. Zero. Nada. Zilch.
The American people thought a president could get away with being ignorant about foreign affairs with Clinton and later a Texas governor with zero foreign policy credentials because the cold war was over and it appeared that we would have little need for a president who could handle a military crisis.
But then 9/11 occurred and things changed. Now the need to have at least some credentials on foreign and defense policy would seem to be a large factor in winning the election.
So Obama and his campaign were in a quandry. How to overcome the foreign and defense experience deficit with the voter? Easy. Slime your opponent's military experience as John McCormick of the Weekly Standard Blog details:
On CBS's Face the Nation this morning, Obama surrogate Gen. Wesley Clark said of John McCain: "I don't think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president."The McCain campaign responded with a statement from Admiral Leighton "Snuffy" Smith:If Barack Obama wants to question John McCain's service to his country, he should have the guts to do it himself and not hide behind his campaign surrogates. If he expects the American people to believe his pledges about a new kind of politics, Barack Obama has a responsibility to condemn these attacks.Clark's attack is a bit like saying that JFK's boat getting sunk wasn't a qualification to become president in 1960. Can you imagine the outrage if someone said that Clark's getting shot four times in Vietnam didn't count as a qualification for the presidency?When choosing a commander-in-chief, most voters do take into account the courage and heroism that candidates displayed while serving their country.
As the McCain camp points out, Obama lacks the courage to attack McCain's record himself, leaving it to political generals to do the damage for him. Clark is also being disingenuous. He knows full well McCain is not basing his qualifications for CIC solely on his military record. The Arizona senator has nearly a quarter century of experience being at the center of every single major debate on foreign and defense policy. Obama can't hold a candle to that kind of deep, nuanced knowledge of the issues so he sends his surrogates out to slime McCain.
And that's not all, liberal blogger John Aravosis went Clark several steps lower in the gutter and pronounced McCain "disloyal" for making a propaganda statement when he was being held prisoner and routinely tortured - as all American POW's were.
You can't get much lower than this:
Yes, we all know that John McCain was captured and tortured in Vietnam (McCain won't let you forget). A lot of people don't know, however, that McCain made a propaganda video for the enemy while he was in captivity. Putting that bit of disloyalty aside, what exactly is McCain's military experience that prepares him for being commander in chief? It's not like McCain rose to the level of general or something. He's a vet. We get it. But simply being a vet, as laudable as it is, doesn't really tell you much about someone's qualifications for being commander in chief. If McCain is going to play the "I was tortured" card every five minutes as a justification for electing him president, then he shouldn't throw a hissy fit any time any one asks to know more about his military experience. Getting shot down, tortured, and then doing propaganda for the enemy is not command experience. Again, it's not nice to say say, but we're not running for class president here. We deserve real answers, not emotional outbursts designed to quell the questions.
Again, throwing up the strawman of McCain's military experience - in this case smearing him in the process - only serves to obscure the Obama campaign's real and serious problems with the fact that the candidate is an amateur compared to McCain when it comes to experience in dealing with the complex and nuanced world of foreign affairs.
The idea that Aravosis, one of the biggest slime merchants in Washington whose real claim to fame is "outing" gay Republicans without their consent simply because they disagree with his far left homosexual agenda, is the most outrageous notion I've seen in a while.
I respond in detail to Mr. Aravosis here.
Hat Tip: Ed Lasky
