Obama Chickens Out of Town Hall Meetings
In May, Sen. Obama said that he’d debate John McCain about foreign policy “anytime, any place”. Now he’s decided that he won’t debate John McCain regardless of time or place. When Sen. Obama was shooting his mouth off, here’s what he said:
Today, Obama responded with anger and forcefulness, while criticizing Bush’s “failed” policies abroad and hammering McCain for supporting them. “They’re trying to fool you. They’re trying to scare you. And they’re not telling the truth. And the reason is they can’t win a foreign policy debate on the merits, but it’s not gonna work. It’s not gonna work this time and it’s not gonna work this year,” Obama told voters in Watertown, South Dakota. “If George Bush and John McCain want a debate about protecting the United States of America, that’s a debate I’m happy to have, anytime, any place, and that is a debate that I will win, because George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for,” he said.
Sen. Obama’s tone in that quote is that of supreme confidence. Notice the difference in tone in this campaign statement:
In a letter to the commission, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said the short period between the last political convention and the first proposed debate made it likely that the commission-sponsored debates would be the only ones in the fall.
“We’ve committed to the three debates on the table,” campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in an interview. “It’s likely they will be the three appearances by the candidates this fall.”
There’s a reason why he won’t participate in those town hall meetings. We’ve seen a pattern of Sen. Obama saying things off the cuff that make no sense. His line about inflating your tires and getting your car tuned up on a regular basis is a perfect example of this. His advisers must cross their fingers anytime he’s away from a teleprompter because he’s a disaster waiting to happen.
Before anyone says that he did fine in the Democratic debates, I’d suggest that he didn’t. It’s just that he didn’t do worse than the others sharing the stage with him. During most of the debates, Hillary didn’t know how to attack him.In the early debates, he didn’t have to worry about Joe Biden or Christopher Dodd or John Edwards. They were intellectual lightweights.
If you’ll recall, he had several awful performances once the field was pared to just he and Hillary. I recall the ABC debate when he gave one atrocious answer after another when Charlie Gibson asked him about capital gains tax policy. He started by trying to tell how doubling the capital gains tax was sound fiscal policy. When that failed, he said doubling it was a matter of fairness.
I can’t blame Obama’s handlers for this decision. I wouldn’t want to risk him saying something that would expose him.
Technorati Tags: Debates, Obama, Hillary, John Edwards, Charlie Gibson, Capital Gains Tax, John McCain, Election 2008
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog