Last night's Democratic "debate" in Pennsylvania confirmed what most observers have known since the campaign's earliest days: Barack Obama is lights out reading prepared remarks about hope and futures off the teleprompter, but at sea in answering questions not revealed to him in advance. The media questioners were unusually hard on him in the first half of the debate, leaving him stammering around, with long-winded, vague, obtuse answers--frequently for questions that weren't even asked.
Instead of the confident, calm, in control, presidential looking Obama, what viewers saw was a sweating, stressed, nervous and inarticulate pretender to the throne. The rookie Senator really showed through, instead of the boy wonder. Obama has not introduced, much less gotton passed, any significant legislation in his four-year Senate term. He has not been a tough questioner in committee hearings or used his subcommittee chairmanship to any obvious advantage.
In short, his Senate career has been that of a show horse, not a work horse. His footprint on the Senate is very faint.
This lack of background and institutional knowledge showed through strongly last night, which should have set Hillary Clinton up for the kill. She probably won the debate, such as it was, but bogged down in her own right, defending her lies about her trip to Bosnia and defending Bubba. Either candidate looked like a fat, juicy target for McCain in the fall.
The weakening economy and unpopularity of the war in Iraq should make this a banner year for Democrats, but instead McCain is running strong in the polls in many normally Democratic states.
With leaders like this pair on the top of the ticket, its easy to see why.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment