Comments on: The Clark controversy, McCain’s Truth Squad and the impact on Dem veepstakes

By: Danny Vice

Danny Vice — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 08:08:32 +0000

Wesley Clark trips all over himself every time he says anything.

Last go around, Clark crowed endlessly about Kerry’s service, and how horrible it was that anyone would doubt Kerry’s integrity. He held Kerry up as a hero and ABSOLUTELY advertised his service as a reason why Kerry was fit to be commander in chief.

Now he flip flops right on his face - as he usually does.

Conservatives flip flop from time to time, but they don’t throw any vet under the bus unless that vet is out there denigrating our troops - like Kerry did.

They are two peas in a pod.

Clark is a disgrace to the uniform and it’s a tragedy our soldiers and vets had to listen to his blather.

On the other hand,does military experience give you an advantage when dealing with military commanders - something the next President will have to do often? That’s quite obviously a yes.

Danny Vice
http://www.theweeklyvice.com

By: dsimon

dsimon — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:38:48 +0000

Any time you sound like you’re mocking a guy who spent years in a POW camp, you’re on shaky ground.

If Clark were mocking McCain, I’d agree. But the fact is that Clark was not mocking McCain. The only way he sounds that way is if that one sentence is taken out of context. And that would give the Obama campaign another opportunity: to show that the McCain campaign is being deceptive in taking the one sentence and implying Clark was saying something he wasn’t. It would be in complete accordance with Obama’s efforts to move the country away from sound-byte politics and his attempts to elevate the level of political discourse.

If we’re going to accept the censoring of any statement that could possibly sound like a personal attack when taken out of context, then we’re not going to leave the candidates with much to discuss for the next four months.

By: zoot

zoot — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:55:52 +0000

dsimon, not to string this thread out further, but IMO the problem was tone . I cringed when I heard the comment because of that. Any time you sound like you’re mocking a guy who spent years in a POW camp, you’re on shaky ground. Both the GOP and the Dems for different reasons deify our Vietnam vets, and this just reinforces the ‘elite’ argument for a lot of Americans.

By: Ken Stevens

Ken Stevens — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:18:57 +0000

If this was not a good issue for Obama, all he had to do was shift the focus and call attention to such matters as McCain’s promise to stack the judiciary (including the Supreme Court) with rightwing ideologues along the lines of Roberts and Alito or his inane chanting about keeping our troops exposed in Iraq for another hundred years.

By: Ken Stevens

Ken Stevens — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:09:53 +0000

I fault Obama for being so quick to dismiss Clark’s accurate statement that he made in response to a question. What would he have preferred that Clark had done in response to that question? Lie and say that McCain’s military service made him well-qualified to become president? Sadly, by cutting him off at the knees, Obama probably destroyed his own best chance of getting a running mate with national defense experience. Let’s not try to resurrect Sam Nunn, whose military experience was safely in the Coast Guard and whose ideology would make him a typical Republican. Name a real Democrat who would have been better on that subject than Wes Clark and who would have been in position to accept the vice presidency.

By: dsimon

dsimon — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 03:16:35 +0000

“The McCain campaign would love to debate how McCain’s years as POW would reflect on his performance as president because this is a discussion they believe they would win hands down.”

Fine; let’s have it. I think the Obama campaign should have this debate because it’s completely obscure to me how having been a POW has any bearing on potential presidential performance.

Was McCain’s service heroically admirable? Sure. But why not make his campaign answer Clark’s question: how would his wartime service affect his ability to make good judgment calls as president?

Or have we gotten to the point were any legitimate criticism will be framed by the opposition as some kind of unfair personal attack?

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:21:21 +0000

So is the MSM going to attack McCain for his surrogate’s statements the way they did Obama for Clark’s?

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0708/Honoring_Clarks_service_too.html

By: zoot

zoot — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:14:30 +0000

(Scraping sounds as Zoot removes egg from his face.)

By: Taniel

Taniel — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:51:37 +0000

Zoot,
After checking the link Christina provides, it seems that her comment was meant as snark and a parody of GOP talking-points (though the link confused me even more for a second since it is also a parody).

By: zoot

zoot — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:45:45 +0000

Christina, the point being - what? That voters should elect him simply because of what happened in the POW camps? That’s bizarre. We’ve got bigger things to worry about right now than McCain’s war record.

Unfortunately he has neither the energy nor the intellectual flexibility and awareness of the world we now live in to lead this country. His enormous bravery in Vietnam isn’t going to resolve our health care issues or our housing melt-down, and he’s already demonstrated he doesn’t have the pragmatic understanding of world affairs to lead us out of the present impasse. Repeating the mantra ‘war on terror’ isn’t a substitute for creative thinking.