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I thought this AP article was a little over the top, with its description of a “mystical” speech and its report that McCain “peered through a crystal ball to 2013.” Then I saw this at the McCain site, with the melodramatic voiceover.
Campaign promises, fine. Everyone makes them. Maybe he thinks he can do all these things. The faux Hollywood dream sequence … I’m still on the fence whether to rate that “dumb,” “stupid,” “moronic,” or just go ahead and give it all five cheese fries. I realize “2013″ just happens to be the end date of the next presidential term, but here’s a tap with the clue bat. It sounds extra creepy. All five cheese fries it is. Keep this up, and you won’t have to wait that long for the end of the first McCain term. Hang on … I feel a mystical vision coming on … November, 2008 …
NYT, maybe squeamish, holds the fantasy rhetoric at arm’s length. This account makes me wondeer whether AP scribbler Glen Johnson, last seen telling Mitt Romney he was full of it in an extended press conference debate, is the reporter in question here:
Mr. McCain took issue when a reporter said the candidate had asked everyone to go along on a “magic carpet ride” to 2013. “I don’t think it has anything to do with fantasy,” Mr. McCain said pointedly. “I think it has everything to do with setting goals and achieving.”
NYT adds:
The speech was written over the last several weeks by Mark Salter, Mr. McCain’s closest adviser. If Mr. Salter employed the futuristic device as a way to avoid “Fact Check” rapid response e-mail from the Democrats — there were no real checkable facts in Mr. McCain’s divination — it did not stop opponents from issuing swift dismissals of his remarks.
“While Senator Obama agrees with many of the sentiments Senator McCain expressed today, he believes you cannot embrace the destructive policies and divisive political tactics of George Bush and still offer yourself as a candidate of healing and change,” said a statement from Senator Barack Obama’s campaign.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement that “this is not the first time Senator McCain has predicted victory in Iraq” and that he had “promised more of the same Bush policies that have weakened our military, our national security and our standing in the world.”
Not insignificant that the opposing camps are not quoted here ridiculing dream sequences and fantasy.
Here’s some lefty exulting:
John McCain has clearly given up on straight talk as he promises such outcomes while avoiding talk of the solutions. As ridiculous as this is, Democrats must not just laugh at all this and ignore the challenge. Voters care about the vision presented by the candidates. Voters want the candidate who offers the shining city upon a hill.
It’s a little ridiculous to slam a fantasy in the same graph in which you go gaga about shining cities on hills. It’s worth noting that uttering absurdities without dream sequence production doesn’t necessarily make them realistic. Via Instapundit, P.J. O’Rourke looks at the issue of promises and political fantasies, is all over the place with Satanic rhetoric and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, but pegs it with a couple of all-American sex analogies:
Two substantive political issues are the federal budget deficit and the war in Iraq. Now, if you’re electing Democrats to control government spending, then you’re marrying Angelina Jolie for her brains. This leaves the Democrats with one real issue: Iraq. And so far the best that any Democratic presidential candidate has been able to manage with Iraq is to make what I think of as the high school sex promise: I will pull out in time, honest dear.
In other Washywood criticism:
Gary Hart, Huffington Post: Anyone who disagrees with me could not possibly be John McCain. It’s a bad Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake:
John McCain is intelligent enough to know that our tragically flawed invasion of Iraq has indeed kicked open a hornets nest, a 1300 year old hornets nest of violent rivalry inside Islam, and that for us to put all the hornets back in the nest will take decades and trillions of dollars, that it will assure the decline of the American republic, and that it will represent a grasp at empire that would cause all of our founders to revolve in their graves.
Why then would he, a combat veteran, a courageous prisoner of war, permit himself to be captive to the perverters of language? Does he want to be president so badly that he will join that band of radicals who have seriously damaged American democracy, who have tortured and lied, who have twisted our very Constitution so wrongly that it is hardly recognizable?
I refuse to believe it. It is not the John McCain I have known for 30 years.
Related, different, Malkin: Night of the Living Amnesty!
Topics: Hollywood, McCain, moronocy
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:36 am on Friday, May 16, 2008
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May 16th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
It would be pretty laughable for Democrats to ridicule this after their utterly failed “100 days” promise in the last national elections.
It’s being criticized for being cheesy, and it is, but I think that’s almost an excellent commercial. If it had ended with McCain saying that these are the goals he will fight for as President, I believe it would be very effective. Then it would come across as a committment, rather than a prediction, or promises that a President alone can’t make. In fact, it would be a very good approach for the GOP itself to take, if they had one shred of credibility left.
May 16th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
[...] strict on following through with. However, some people have their bones to pick with the speech. Jules thinks it was cheesy. I can’t disagree with that assessment, even if the contents of the speech were good. [...]
May 17th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Let’s review -
General Tommy Franks said he believed it would take 3 to 5 years to stablize Iraq in 2008.
So our man McCain doubles that…there is an adage in the Computer Industry. A poorly planned project will take thrice as long as you think…while a well planned project will only take twice as long as you think.
2013 is 3 times Tommy Franks best estimate and twice his worst estimate.
There is 8 square kilometers of Sadr City to clear..which is being left to the Iraqi’s as their graduation exercise. Allowing 5 years for the 8 sq kilometers to be cleared is being conservative.