Annotating McCain's New Attack

Sen. McCain's speech today in Albuquerque, NM is indented.

 

My opponent has invited serious questioning by announcing a few weeks ago that he would quote -- "take off the gloves." 

Obama has a  history of taking off gloves and then putting them back on.

 

Since then, whenever I have questioned his policies or his record, he has called me a liar.

Not direclty --his campaign has, though.

And, in truth, so the did media, when it seemed as if every web ad/ commercial released by the McCain campaign contained deliberate distortions. McCain today is referring to what he's said about Obama's vote to raise taxes on individuals earning more than $42,000. The vote was for a non-binding budget resolution that set a discretionary spending baseline; by the same standard, McCain has voted to raise taxes too. In any event, Obama's actual plan wouldn't touch families earning less than $250,000 -- except to give them a tax cut.

 

Rather than answer his critics, Senator Obama will try to distract you from noticing that he never answers the serious and legitimate questions he has been asked. 

How would Obama fix the Social Security system? Medicare? How would he pay for his spending? etc.

 

But let me reply in the plainest terms I know.  I don't need lessons about telling the truth to American people.  And were I ever to need any improvement in that regard, I probably wouldn't seek advice from a Chicago politician.

Mrowwww.

 

My opponent's touchiness every time he is questioned about his record should make us only more concerned. 

Hector the projector here? Obama's been touchy? 

 

For a guy who's already authored two memoirs, he's not exactly an open book. 

For a guy who's co-authored five books, McCain's not an open book either.

 

 It's as if somehow the usual rules don't apply, and where other candidates have to explain themselves and their records, Senator Obama seems to think he is above all that.  Whatever the question, whatever the issue, there's always a back story with Senator Obama.  All people want to know is: What has this man ever actually accomplished in government? 

The heart of the critique, and  McCain's answer is: nothing. What major legislation is he mostly responsible for? On anything major, when has he worked across at the aisle at the expense of his political self-interest?

 

What does he plan for America?  In short: Who is the real Barack Obama? 

(He's not one of us.)

 

But ask such questions and all you get in response is another barrage of angry insults.

Our current economic crisis is a good case in point.  What was his actual record in the years before the great economic crisis of our lifetimes?

What's McCain's? During his 26 years in the Senate, when was he Paul Wellstone? What did McCain do in 1987? How did he hande LTCM? Etc. Is there a record? Obama's younger than McCain, and there haven't been that many crisis in his lifetime.

This crisis started in our housing market in the form of subprime loans that were pushed on people who could not afford them.  Bad mortgages were being backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and it was only a matter of time before a contagion of unsustainable debt began to spread.  This corruption was encouraged by Democrats in Congress, and abetted by Senator Obama.

Two years ago, McCain warned about Fannie and Freddie; a year ago, he seemed to have forgotten the warning; whatever his foresight, he didn't seem to do anything either except to "call" for a solution.

 

Senator Obama has accused me of opposing regulation to avert this crisis.  I guess he believes if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough it will be believed.  But the truth is I was the one who called at the time for tighter restrictions on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that could have helped prevent this crisis from happening in the first place. 

This is true as far as it goes. But despite McCain's "call," the crisis still happened.

 

Senator Obama was silent on the regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and his Democratic allies in Congress opposed every effort to rein them in.  As recently as September of last year he said that subprime loans had been, quote, "a good idea."  Well, Senator Obama, that "good idea" has now plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

 The question isn't whether subprime loans were a good idea; it's whether they were dumped on people who couldn't pay their mortgages, and Democrats in Congress bear some responsibility for failing to get their heads around the downside risks of Fannie and Freddie. To them, and even to President Bush, it was an unalloyed positive that so many middle-to-lower income families were getting equity in their homes. And McCain is probably right: there was an element of small-c-Washington corruption in feeding the frenzy.  Republicans and Democrats are complicit.

 

To hear him talk now, you'd think he'd always opposed the dangerous practices at these institutions.  But there is absolutely nothing in his record to suggest he did.  He was surely familiar with the people who were creating this problem.  The executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have advised him, and he has taken their money for his campaign.  He has received more money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than any other senator in history, with the exception of the chairman of the committee overseeing them.  Did he ever talk to the executives at Fannie and Freddie about these reckless loans?  Did he ever discuss with them the stronger oversight I proposed?  If Senator Obama is such a champion of financial regulation, why didn't he support these regulations that could have prevented this crisis in the first place?  He won't tell you, but you deserve an answer.

 

The question is: the crisis seems to have spread way beyond Fannie and Freddie and most Americans don't blame Fannie and Feddie. So is McCain's critique here too narrow? 

...

 Who is the real Senator Obama?  Is he the candidate who promises to cut middle class taxes, or the politician who voted to raise middle class taxes?  Is he the candidate who talks about regulation or the politician who took money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and turned a blind eye as they ran our economy into a ditch?  Is he the candidate who promises change, or is he the politician who has bought into everything that is wrong with Washington?  We can't change the system with someone who's never fought the system. Washington is on the wrong track and I'm going to set it right.  The American people know my record.  They know I am going to change Washington, because I've done it before.  They know I'm going to reform our broken institutions in Washington and on Wall Street because I've done it before.  They know I'm going to deliver relief to the middle class, because that's what I've done. 

The problem is: Americans don't know that McCain is going to reform broken institutions. They don't know that he's done it before. They don't know that he's going to deliver relief to the middle class. They don't, en masse, trust McCain in this area. They trust Obama.