Given the truth, it may be the most offensive campaign ad — ever.
From the guys who supposedly want to concentrate on the issues, we get this, enthusiastically conveyed by Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press:
John McCain is mocked as an out-of-touch, out-of-date computer illiterate in a television commercial out Friday from Barack Obama as the Democrat begins his sharpest barrage yet on McCain’s long Washington career.
The new fighting spirit comes as McCain has been gaining in the polls and some Democrats have been expressing concern the Obama campaign has not been aggressive enough.
Well, it is aggressive. The trouble is, it’s also deeply offensive, and goes to a place I don’t believe any presidential campaign ad has ever gone:
1982, John McCain goes to Washington,” an announcer says over chirpy elevator music. “Things have changed in the last 26 years, but McCain hasn’t.”
“He admits he still doesn’t know how to use a computer, can’t send an e-mail, still doesn’t understand the economy, and favors two hundred billion in new tax cuts for corporations, but almost nothing for the middle class,” it says. It shows video of McCain getting out of a golf cart with former President George H.W. Bush and closes with a photo of him standing with the current President Bush at the White House. “After one president who was out of touch, we just can’t afford more of the same.”
Here’s the truth (bolds are mine):
(the Boston Globe; March 4, 2000; via Ace and Sweetness & Light)
McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain’s severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes.
(Forbes; May 29, 2000; via Ace and Jonah Goldberg at the Corner)
In certain ways, McCain was a natural Web candidate. Chairman of the Senate Telecommunications Subcommittee and regarded as the U.S. Senate’s savviest technologist, McCain is an inveterate devotee of email. His nightly ritual is to read his email together with his wife, Cindy. The injuries he incurred as a Vietnam POW make it painful for McCain to type. Instead, he dictates responses that his wife types on a laptop. “She’s a whiz on the keyboard, and I’m so laborious,” McCain admits.
(New York Times; July 13, 2008; via Ed Morrissey at Hot Air)
Q: But do you go on line for yourself?
Mr. McCain: They go on for me. I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don’t expect to be a great communicator, I don’t expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need – including going to my daughter’s blog first, before anything else.
Jonah Goldberg at the Corner credibly contends that the combination of the points made above show that McCain “actually has more cyber-cred than Obama.”
Barack Obama is mocking the physical challenges of his opponent, caused by his opponent’s 5-1/2 years as a POW, to falsely accuse him of not being capable of things he is, with assistance in some cases, actually doing.
For this, an AP reporter cheers Obama on for “showing a newly aggressive tone.”
The sentiments stated in the ad come from the standard-bearer of the supposed party of compassion, conveyed with fanfare by the supposedly objective Essential Global News Network.
If there is a lower point to which Obama, his campaign, and its media elite water carriers can go, I’m not sure I want to see it.
They should be totally ashamed of themselves, and embarrassed at how wrong they are. I doubt they are either.
John Stephenson put a post up ahead of me over at NewsBusters, and asked, “Will Media Report Obama’s Mocking of McCain’s Disability?” Does anyone doubt that an ad campaign such as this would finish off a GOP candidate?
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UPDATE: There was a point briefly raised here about Bush Admin e-mails that was incorrect; it has been removed. I thought the President had abandoned using e-mail upon entering office; what he abandoned was sending e-mail to family and friends, because he couldn’t guarantee their privacy.
UPDATE 2: Wait a minute; I was right, but I don’t know whether it started on Day One of his administration or came later. The WSJ link is from October 2006 –
He (Bush) added: “I tend not to email or — not only tend not to email, I don’t email, because of the different record requests that can happen to a president. I don’t want to receive emails because, you know, there’s no telling what somebody’s email may — it would show up as, you know, a part of some kind of a story, and I wouldn’t be able to say, ‘Well, I didn’t read the email.’ ‘But I sent it to your address, how can you say you didn’t?’ So, in other words, I’m very cautious about emailing.”
So it really is the case that:
- The Obama campaign mocked its opponent’s war-caused physical handicaps.
- Claimed they prevent him from doing things he actually does (in some cases with help from a loving spouse).
- Used as its central claim his supposed inability to do something that the next president will probably continue not doing, or will at most do very rarely, for the reasons President Bush cited.
In the process, the campaign and its candidate exposed its guttural instincts and thought processes for all the world to see.
Great show, guys and gals.
UPDATE 3: Mark Steyn weighs in at the Corner (HT Instapundit) — “It’s extraordinary that someone who wants to be our president and our commander in chief knows how to send an e-mail …but not how to do a five-minute Google search.”
UPDATE 4: John at Powerline — “I guess now we’ll find out whether Barack Obama is capable of shame.” Don’t hold your breath waiting for it.