Is Obama too skinny for the presidency?
As Eric Martin says,
So in addition to being too popular, too charismatic and too eloquent to be President, Barack Obama is apparently too physically fit as well. Those are some serious drawbacks.
If we can confirm that Obama is also exceedingly intelligent,
displays good judgment and is competent, this guy's gonna be downright
unelectable.
I'm frankly disappointed in the negative campaigning from the McCain side. It's nowhere near as bad as the ads that ran from both sides in 2004, but still . . . here in DC, McCain is now running anti-Obama ads with a voice over in the same tones that the ninth grade bully-princess used to inform everyone that her newest enemy had, like, totally slept with a tenth grader behind the bleachers. This does not make me more likely to vote for Senator from Arizona.
McCain is definitely very catty. Everyone has always known that. He pulled it off very well in the primaries by goading Romney into going negative against him and then getting catty about it through his campaign and from the stump.
Unfortunately, he's doing the reverse this time. He's the one being goaded into going negative and the result will probably be the same, only this time with McCain taking Romney's place as the loser.
Of course, he could just be really smart and realizes that he has no chance of winning regardless of the political issues thanks to the current "McCain-Bush" line that Obama keeps pinning on McCain. (Didn't McCain lose to Bush? Didn't Bush supports get really really angry at McCain about every other month during the last 8 years? How the two are tied together is beyond me, but they both have an R after their names)
So McCain realizes he's being unfairly lumped in with Bush, can't win on the issues because no one is listening anyway, and decides he has to try to trip up Obama, and distract him on a daily basis. Bring Obama down to the level of every other politician. It's not fair, but neither is Obama's veiled non-attack attacks against "Bush-McCain".
When you look at the issues, taxing Exxon a couple extra billion to put some money in your pocket tomorrow won't make gas prices cheaper. Exploring and developing new sources of Oil will.
Having the fed. gov. pay for medical care for everyone will not make health care cheaper. Adjusting federal regulations, requirements etc will.
McCain wins on a lot of the issues. It's too bad he's kind of a jerk so I probably won't be voting for him anyway.
If Obama has slept with a tenth-grader behind the bleachers, I think we have the right to know.
That said, negative ads never bothered me; I find them much more entertaining that fluffy-happy-politician-with-puppies ads. And Obama's ads here in Oregon were utterly, completely, totally devoid of substance; just time lapse images of people setting up for his events and him saying something about one voice changing a room. Even Billy Banks is better than that crap ("Obama gets the stain of corruption out of the laundry of government!")
Give me Slade Gordon's "Now Cantwell says Gordon wants to blow up mountains and poison little children: ridiculous!" any day.
Btw, too bad the republican part was split by the reasonable people vs. the religious fanatics. That's the only reason why McCain won. I can't believe another Bob Dole was nominated. How you can put an aging old man up against a younger, perceived as hip opponent is beyond me.
My prediction is, unless Obama makes some very very huge mistakes, McCain will win as many states as Dole did.
What's amusingly ironic is that after McCain runs the ridiculous ad which says Obama is responsible for high gas prices, Obama responds with and which castigates McCain for such a ridiculous claim, and then proceeds to inform the audience that Obama is going to address the issue of high gas prices by hammering venal speculators. You can't make this stuff up.
I keep looking, so far in vain, for a reason to not sit this election out.
McCain's campaign increasing looks like the bitchy recriminations of the second most popular girl running for high school class president.
How would one sleep behind the bleachers?
"This does not make me more likely to vote for Senator from Arizona."
Uh, what? I know you need a conclusion but still... is there anything that actually would make you more likely to vote for McCain?
You have said many times you prefer Obama. I don't know what substantive basis you form your political opinion. Obama has not done much in his political life. But there are a lot of excited Obamicans who chant change, messiah, yes we can. I question what do they want the change to be. Bad changes or good changes? No, it doesn't seem to matter, only change.
So if Obama is the preferred candidate due to his celebrity status than why is it bad to notice this?
Obama seems more socialist than capitalist. More government control than private control. His rhetoric goes in that direction. McCain may not be exciting but his foreign policy judgment and experience is greater and better. He tends toward private market solutions than government control. He is more inclined to capitalism than socialism.
So his ads are aimed at those blue-collar democrats who actually do the work on cars, the mechanics, electricians, plumber, and construction workers who actually make things work rather than talk about it. The ads make sense to them and there are more of them than ivory tower liberal thinkers.
I recall in 2004 that Chris Matthews was absolutely flabbergasted that Bush won when he was sure because all his colleagues that Kerry was a shoe in. Beware of the echo chamber.
McCain's response was underwhelming, but Obama's Sharptonian cry about his "funny name" and different appearance was pathetic. If the Dems do not pull an energy policy together that addresses supply McCain can win.
Back to the fitness issue, anyone catch the Bild gym report? Got to call bullshit on that piece, 46yo, roughly 180 pounds, "slowing curling 70lb dumbells, 10 reps each arm." Amusing propaganda from the land of Goebbels.
McCain's response was underwhelming, but Obama's Sharptonian cry about his "funny name" and different appearance was pathetic. If the Dems do not pull an energy policy together that addresses supply McCain can win.
Back to the fitness issue, anyone catch the Bild gym report? Got to call bullshit on that piece, 46yo, roughly 180 pounds, "slowing curling 70lb dumbells, 10 reps each arm." Amusing propaganda from the land of Goebbels.
Perhaps not, but then again neither was free trade, the capital gains tax, ethanol subsidies, the overall level of government spending, “excess profits” taxes, overregulation, the federal takeover of health care versus letting consumers buy policies across State lines, means-testing Medicare, personal accounts for Social Security, or any one of about a dozen other issues you’ve blogged about.
George W. Bush is notoriously fit. This is a dastardly plot to make people think Obama is just a continuation of our present president.
Since Obama cannot pull away from a statistical dead heat with McCain, I doubt he has the problem of being "too popular". The problem is that, like so many recent celebrities, he has attracted the adulation of a fair number of fanatics despite having no substantive reason to inspire such devotion. The man is an empty suit who runs for higher office every three years like clockwork.
This does not make me more likely to vote for Senator from Arizona.
Didn't you completely rule out voting for McCain months ago?
This does not make me more likely to vote for Senator from Arizona.
Well, if that's not working try Obama's plan for $1000 rebates based on a
windfall profits tax.
This does not make me more likely to vote for Senator from Arizona.
Well, if that's not working try Obama's plan for $1000 rebates based on a
windfall profits tax.
Well, I am not keen on voting for McCain, no matter what he or Obama does from now until November.
But I will. First, I want split government. Complete control of Congress and the Presidency by the same party will get us more fiscal control like the last eight years. Second, at least McCain has done some substantive in his life other than get elected. Third, I actually think you can be too smart to be President. Nixon and Clinton are good examples. Obama may be in the same boat.
And finally, the Dems just scare me. I don't want to live in a bad clone of the UK.
Didn't Obama work out THREE TIMES in one day while in Germany, opting to go to the gym rather than visit U.S. soliders in the hospital?
It's not his fitness that is a concern. It's that he is very, very thin and he seems obsessed with it. Yet another thing he has in common with Paris Hilton ...
It's nowhere near as bad as the ads that ran from both sides in 2004,
Which were the really bad ones from Kerry's side in 2004? How did they compare with the worst from Bush's? Really Megan, even you can do better than warmed over Kathleen Parker. Or can you?
McCain's campaign is utterly devoid of humanity, respect and appears very depraved. He is a politician who plays a dirty game, the kind of politics we have grown sick and tired of. Why do we need to watch such utter crap? Do we want a president who has such a negative outlook and is better at creating rumors than focusing on what needs to be done for progress? I'm supporting Obama. At least he's positive and a better human being. He is also inspirational and a leader who can truly set things right. Vote for Obama! Visit WHYOBAMA08.ORG!!!
The funny thing is that I can't tell if Aiken is an Obama supporter, or *spoofing* Obama supporters.
"McCain is now running anti-Obama ads with a voice over in the same tones that the ninth grade bully-princess used to inform everyone that her newest enemy had, like, totally slept with a tenth grader behind the bleachers."
In the same tones??!!
Like, wow, man. Good thing they don't show the voice-over speaker. If she (or he) wore the same clothes as the ninth grade princess, that would be, like, totally the kiss of death for McCain.
Seriously: you're kidding, right? Real criticism would refer to the content of what is said, wouldn't it? This is a parody of serious criticism, isn't it?
Isn't it?
"Didn't Obama work out THREE TIMES in one day while in Germany, opting to go to the gym rather than visit U.S. soliders in the hospital?"
No, actually.
opting to go to the gym rather than visit U.S. soldiers in the hospital?
IIRC, both Obama's campaign and the Army said he would have had to forgo making the stop a campaign stop (no press or pics), so Mr. Obama called off the visit. Seems simple enough.
You should see him swim the Yangtze River. You could water ski behind him!
You should see him swim the Yangtze River. You could water ski behind him!
Given that McCain's record of accomplishments as a senator is a joke, given that his domestic policy proposals are a joke, given that his knowledge of economics is a joke, given that his response to the threat posed by terrorism is a joke, given that his last trip to the Middle East was a joke, given that his reputation as a straight-talker is a joke, given that his victory in the Republican primaries was a joke, given that his knowledge of modern technology is a joke, given that his last major public speech was a joke, given that the president whose heir he wants to be is an enormous joke, given that his entire party has become a very good joke...
it seems to me entirely appropriate that McCain's new campaign strategy should be a joke too.
I don't know what ... but SOMETHING sure the heck is wrong with Obama.
Latest Gallup tracking poll:
"Gallup Daily: Race Tied at 44%
Registered voters evenly split in their support for Obama versus McCain
August 1, 2008 -- John McCain and Barack Obama are now absolutely tied in the race for president, each favored by 44% of national registered voters...
Here's a link to that and a couple other polls.
With everything Obama has going for him he should be ahead by 25 points by now.
You know, in sports when the big favorite shows he can't put away the underdog, sometimes the dog finds a life and the fans in the stands change sides and start pulling for him.
Republicans until now have been basically, "Aw f***, we can't win this year, who cares?" But if they wake up one day and collectively go...
"Damn, we haven't tried at all and we're still within 3 points. Hey, you know what ...???"
... things might get really interesting.
The McCain ads focus on the best reason to vote for McCain. Obama is an empty suit surrounded by lots of crazy people seduced by his glamor. The comparisons with Spears and Hilton are spot on. The cult of personality developing around Obama frightens me, and I think it will freak out a lot of voters. His true believers should be kept away from the levers of power....and sharp instruments.
Obama is an empty suit surrounded by lots of crazy people seduced by his glamor.
Shorter Bob_R: Why yes, I voted twice for Bush, Jr., why do you ask?
George W. Bush is notoriously fit. This is a dastardly plot to make people think Obama is just a continuation of our present president.
Indeed. They're clearly just trying to get Jonathan Chait's head to explode (did he really need to write an entire op-ed about how obsessed Bush was with working out?). Ditto with Jim VanderHei.
Sigh. Dave, I'm older than Obama, weigh about 160 pounds, and I regularly do that with 60 lbs. I also run three to four times a week, seven miles at a pop, and my usual times are a little over seven minutes. And so on and so forth - sixty 'extender' push-ups, several sets, 120 sit-ups, side-to-side stuff, etc. Note that this is on average about an hour a day, seven days a week. I am by no means the fittest person I know, not even in the top five of my age group.
I'd say that you were projecting your own lack of fitness on others (you sound rather young, more the Halo type than cross-country and wrestling.) It isn't hard at all to be this fit, particularly if you were doing anything athletic in high school and you kept the habit. The fact that you would rather believe that someone is lying than that yes, maybe Democrats can be fit too (George Bush and his work-out sessions? Those much-touted sub-seven-minute miles? That's perfectly legitimate of course.) is particularly telling as to how much you will let partisanship determine what you believe - even about non-political matters.
Oh - I didn't vote for Obama, and didn't much like him in the primaries. I won't be voting for him come November either, though I will be voting against McCain. So you can put any thoughts of saying the same to you doubled back where they came from.
Bam is a fad celebrity, unless he can prove that his fadishness has any greater staying power. His policy talk is mostly leftist academic pie-in-the-sky nonsense: Useless unless you want to drive nations into abject ruin.
Most BamaBots (and many of them are in the media) forget in their current emotional exuberance the subsequent sensation of buyer's remorse.
Right MarkG. That's why you can identify so many of those policies that will 'drive the nation into abject ruin.' Just like you identify the alternatives which, presumably, will not.
Oh, there's his support for "Card Check" to enhance the power of organized crime, er, organized labor.
There's the plan to get everyone onto Medicare. Congressional Dems were even recently caught hiding the costs so as to prepare the groundwork.
There's his support for renegotiating free trade deals, which will result in a retaliatory, populist, race-to-the-bottom reciprocation by our trade partners.
There's that recent populist suggestion that domestic oil producers have their profits expropriated to pay 500- and 1000-dollar out per household. The oil companies will naturally pass on the costs to the same consumers who get their handy gummint checks. If not that, they'll cut exploration and dividends, thereby harming the same consumers inasmuch as they have oil co's in their retirement portfolios.
The latter plan should sufficiently drive investors out of our stock markets, accelerating the dollar's decline. Maybe we can simply sell off our own oil companies to Gazprom at fire sale prices.
Put in place, Bam's proposals should bring us another round of stagflation.
That should have been this link above.
I have *absolutely* no intention to vote for Barack Obama... but the more I learn about McCain the more he solidifies my half-hearted support for Bob Barr. I don't really care any more who wins.
I keep thinking: Maybe they'll both get caught in MAJOR gaffes in the next couple of weeks and the conventions will nominate entirely different people. Hillary Clinton v. Newt Gingrich would make for a fun election, for old times' sake, especially with Barr in the mix...
Disappointment in the inevitable is either silly or crazy.
The voice overs have little meaning in these ads. The meat is in the images. Filled with extremely sophisticated propaganda techniques meant to appeal to the basest instincts of the base.
The Rove team is in charge now. The ones who suggested McCain was the Manchurian Candidate whose wife was a drug addict and who had an illegitimate black daughter.
Soon you will be hearing about Obama's illegitimate children, by white women. I guarantee it. Don't be disappointed Megan. At least we still have elections. For a little while longer.
Don't feed the trolls.
Oh wow, I didn't realize just how many McArdle readers got their information from those crazy church lady email forwards. My personal favorite is combining the "Once, Obama went to the gym 3 times in one day!" with "Obama didn't visit a troop hospital in Germany" into a single act.
And boy, did that Paris Hilton meme sure catch on quick! That's some serious political analysis right there. One's gotta feel bad for the Hilton's though. They donate the maximum possible to McCain, and he trashes their daughter.
I also here all this "Obama's plans are unrealistic" but which ones? Compare them to McCain's "I will balance the budget by the end of my first term while also extending massive tax cuts".
Well, we SHOULD keep in mind that none of the accusations that Ms. McArdle links to has actually been made against Obama by McCain himself -- the latter is content to merely keep saying that Obama's a borderline traitor when he says he favors pulling mostly out of Iraq, that he's a "flip-flopper" when he says he might leave some troops in under some circumstances, and that (apparently much worse) he's a "celebrity". (I suppose things could be worse; one of Rush Limbaugh's earliest lines of attack against Obama was that his ears stuck out too far.)
Well, we SHOULD keep in mind that none of the accusations that Ms. McArdle links to has actually been made against Obama by McCain himself -- the latter is content to merely keep saying that Obama's a borderline traitor when he says he favors pulling mostly out of Iraq, that he's a "flip-flopper" when he says he might leave some troops in under some circumstances, and that (apparently much worse) he's a "celebrity". (I suppose things could be worse; one of Rush Limbaugh's earliest lines of attack against Obama was that his ears stuck out too far.)
Sorry about the repeat: this is the first time I've written on this particular site.
As for why the race remains so stubbornly close despite Jim Glass'(!) statement that Obama should be "25 points ahead" (despite being a borderline traitor and an economic incompetent and a celebrity and so on): I think the explanation is twofold and obvious.
First: the GOP, by sheer luck, picked by far the strongest possible nominee they could, simply because of his personal story -- how can anyone, even if they dislike everything else about the man, not help admiring the fact that he held out under torture for 6 years without breaking and reading a false confession? (Which makes it all the sadder and more irritating that, when push comes to shove, he keeps folding on his own supposed opposition to torture -- but that's another story.)
Second, McCain's a military man -- and a military man, who, unlike John Kerry, never expressed any embarrassing doubts about whether America's conduct in a particular war was morally doubtful. And Americans, despite their growing concern about the economy, are still nervous as hell about their military vulnerability (with good reason), and are thus very strongly drawn to putting someone in the White House who has military experience. (To that extent, it's Ike all over again.)
What could Obama do to alleviate this? He could pick a running mate with clearly recognized military-related experience himself. The obvious names that come to my mind are Gens. Jones and Zinni, or Sam Nunn (lousy on gays in the military, but excellent on nuclear nonproliferation, which is rather more important -- and I speak as a gay).
But if Obama REALLY wants to throw a Hail Mary pass -- although I strongly doubt he'll do it -- he could pick Sen. Hagel. Vietnam background; anti-Iraq War, firmly anti-torture, a (former) close friend of McCain's who has nevertheless just issued a sorrowful but firm televised attack on McCain for sleazy campaign tactics. Granted that he's still hard-Right on most domestic issues, but then it's the Veep's job to keep his mouth shut when he disagrees with the Prez -- and I think, if Obama did pick Hagel, I and most of my fellow liberals would just swallow a bit and follow along. Eight years of Bush-Cheney will do that to you.
Obama's mentor Frank Marshal Davis.
His penchant for seeking out Marxist professors.
But you know. Megan believes in the free market. Which is why she supports Obama.
"The man is an empty suit who runs for higher office every three years like clockwork."
Empty suits don't graduate Magnum Cum Laude. Thanks for playing.
"First, I want split government. Complete control of Congress and the Presidency by the same party will get us more fiscal control like the last eight years. Second, at least McCain has done some substantive in his life other than get elected. Third, I actually think you can be too smart to be President. Nixon and Clinton are good examples. Obama may be in the same boat.
And finally, the Dems just scare me."
So you'll vote for the party that's taken a hatchet to everything from the Bill Of Rights to the Magna Carta, because that "scary party" might do something REAL CRAZY like balance the budget again or fix your atrocious health-care system? Yes, I'm sure by now everyone rues having a "too smart" Bill Clinton as C-in-C: the menace of economic prosperity, improved foreign-affairs & a government that threatened to become functional at any moment was only narrowly averted by the All-American Hero, Newt Gingrich. Yeah, McCain did something substantive - he trashed 5 jets & got shot down in a 6th, after graduating 3rd from the bottom of his class, which, given the divot in the Oval Office at present, must make him totally worthy timber for an important job like POTUS. We're America: we don't need no stinking standards!
"With everything Obama has going for him he should be ahead by 25 points by now."
In a political climate this polarized, any lead of more than 2 or 3 points is very telling indeed. The media gladly cherry-picks polls to generate drama (= better ratings) & has already been caught willfully editing out a McCain screw-up to try & prop up his truly creepy & clueless public image. The man makes Reagan look like a Rhodes Scholar.
Check the political betting sites. Or better yet, check the projections by electoral college, state-by-state (how the race will actually be run). The Dems will have to be asleep at the wheel for the next few months to win by under 75 seats. Bad economy, bad war, bad candidate ... a trifecta of pure epic fail. It's no horse-race: the GOP is about to be royally thrashed, & even they know it.
The polls said Truman never had a hope in hell, & I believe they scoffed at Shrub's odds for a second term as well. Other than exit-polls, the best survey of voting trends is the special elections, & they've gone heavily if not unanimously Dem since last year. Also look at who's sponsoring the poll, & who's buying it -that usually speaks volumes. Polls are even easier to rig than elections.