Beauty is Imperfection

(Originally posted Sunday, August 03, 2008 )

John McCain has recently helped close the gap in Barack Obama’s poll numbers by running a series of attacks on his rival. What are some of the key issues that McCain is raising?

–*McCain says Obama has made no attempt to hide the fact that he is black.

–*McCain has likened Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, mocking the Illinois senator’s pop culture appeal. “Elections are not some kind of popularity contest,” says McCain.

–*McCain accuses Obama of supporting the surge in Iraq but still being against the war. In other words, Obama selectively supports things that are helpful and opposes things that are bad. And that’s just too complicated for average Americans.

–*Obama says he does not look like any of the people on U.S. paper money. But he’d be happy to lend his name to the U.S. dollar if he thought he could bring it up from its current value of 45 cents.

–*McCain says Obama’s campaign has messianic and religious overtones. This greatly angers Republicans, who vehemently declare that exploiting crazy religious crusader zealotry is a crass, patented trick that has always rightly belonged to the GOP alone.

–*McCain accuses Obama of being willing to lose the war in Iraq just 16 months after acceding to office, while stalwart war hawk McCain is willing to go on losing the war for another 8 years.

–*McCain has accused Obama of being willing to lose the war in Iraq just to get elected. … However, just a minute later, he just saw through this error in logic, because that would mean the blame of losing the war would actually fall on the people who are electing Obama–in other words, the American people.

–*McCain accuses Obama of being like the rest of the American people.

–*McCain says that Obama is riding around with the presumptive arrogance of someone who has already achieved the throne, a right reserved for white Republicans.

–*McCain accuses Obama of being somehow above attack. Which is pretty much true, at least if McCain’s own attacks are any indication.