Obama landed some sharp attacks in a Colorado speech today on the economy. Best of all, they were made without the use of disempowering, complimentary, qualifying homages to McCain.
Obama didn’t preface this bit by saying how much he honors John McCain’s service to America:
This is what happens when you see seven years of incomes falling for the average worker while Wall Street is booming, and declare – as Senator McCain did earlier this year – that we’ve made great progress economically under George Bush. That is how you can reach the conclusion – as late as yesterday – that the fundamentals of the economy are strong.
Obama didn’t start qualify this graph with a paean to McCain’s time as a POW:
Make no mistake: my opponent is running for four more years of policies that will throw the economy further out of balance. His outrage at Wall Street would be more convincing if he wasn’t offering them more tax cuts. His call for fiscal responsibility would be believable if he wasn’t for more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and more of a trillion dollar war in Iraq paid for with deficit spending and borrowing from foreign creditors like China.
When Obama attacked McCain on leadership, thereby hitting right at the heart of McCain’s argument to be President, he didn’t preface the attack with an homage to McCain’s military record:
Just today, Senator McCain offered up the oldest Washington stunt in the book – you pass the buck to a commission to study the problem. But here’s the thing – this isn’t 9/11. We know how we got into this mess. What we need now is leadership that gets us out. I’ll provide it, John McCain won’t, and that’s the choice for the American people in this election.
None of these attacks would have been improved by telling people about McCain’s time as a POW before landing the attacks. The absence of such compliments to McCain is refreshing, and conveys a real confidence from Obama. Back when Obama was prefacing all of his attacks on Obama with a statement on how much he deeply respects John McCain’s service to America, frankly it made what he said afterward sound like he was walking on eggshells. Honestly, apart from repeating McCain’s message, and apart from irritating many of his own supporters, paying tribute to John McCain before attacking him just made the criticisms that followed sound weak and wimpy. These attacks, by contrast, sound confident, on message, and sharp.
This might actually be a general tendency among Democrats. While most national Democrats seem to act like they are walking on eggshells whenever they talk about foreign policy or social values, they have historically always seemed more confident when discussing the economy. It really seems to me that most leading Democrats are convinced they are only the majority party when it comes to economic policy, but not when it comes to social values or foreign policy. Even if they are centrists, they all just seem so much more confident–even brash–when the focus in on economic issues.
I like Democrats when they talk like this. Makes me proud. Wish I would see this side of them more often. |
