US Features
Unpopular Bush keeps low profile as McCain seeks distance (Feature)
By Chris Cermak Oct 24, 2008, 20:57 GMT
Washington - President George W Bush and his wife Laura may have cast their election ballots early, but apparently there was some skepticism as to just which candidate they voted for.
'Today the President and Mrs Bush cast their ballots for the 2008 election during the early voting process. The ballots will be mailed back to Texas today,' White House press secretary Dana Perino wrote in an emailed statement Friday.
Notice she failed to mention for whom? The media apparently did. About 20 minutes later came a second email.
'I find this hard to believe ... But so many reporters have asked just who the president voted for, I guess I have to make it clear - for months the president has said he supports John McCain for president and of course he voted for him,' Perino wrote.
But the confusion was a sign of the times. Bush, whose approval ratings have fallen below 30 per cent amid an unpopular war in Iraq and a financial crisis that may have tipped the US into recession, has been mostly absent from the campaign trail this year.
The outgoing president endorsed fellow-Republican McCain in March but the two have appeared only once in public together since - in May on an airport tarmac ahead of a fundraiser. Bush's limited role has largely been behind the scenes, at a few select private functions.
The president's absentee vote itself marked a clear departure from past years, when Bush cast his ballot on election day in his home town of Crawford, Texas. Perino said Bush would spend election night on November 4 at the White House.
Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has regularly sought to link McCain to the Bush administration - pointing especially to his economic plans and stance on Iraq - charging the country can't afford 'four more years like the last eight.'
McCain, who prides himself on a maverick reputation and willingness to take on his own party, has fought hard to distance himself from the current president during the 2008 election campaign.
'Senator Obama, I'm not President Bush,' McCain said in one of the more memorable moments of the candidates' final debate earlier this month. 'If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago.'
This week McCain used some of his toughest rhetoric yet, blasting Bush and the Republican party in an interview with the Washington Times.
'We just let things get completely out of hand' over the past eight years, he told the paper, citing higher government spending and the conduct of the post-war phase in Iraq.
Comments like those prompted reporters to ask Perino on Thursday whether Bush takes the campaign rhetoric personally.
'No, he doesn't,' she said. 'The president stands by his policies. He also stands by John McCain.'
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ABC News' Malone: Ashamed To Be Known As a 'Journalist'
In his latest piece, ABC News columnist Michael Malone absolutely skewers the mainstream media for debasing and corrupting a once-honorable profession: Editing Their Way to Oblivion: Journalism Sacrificed For Power and Pensions.
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The traditional media is playing a very, very dangerous game. With its readers, with the Constitution, and with its own fate.
The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I’ve found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.
But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I’ve begun — for the first time in my adult life — to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was “a writer”, because I couldn’t bring myself to admit to a stranger that I’m a journalist.
You need to understand how painful this is for me. I am one of those people who truly bleeds ink when I’m cut. I am a fourth generation newspaperman. As family history tells it, my great-grandfather was a newspaper editor in Abilene, Kansas during the last of the cowboy days, then moved to Oregon to help start the Oregon Journal (now the Oregonian). My hard-living - and when I knew her, scary - grandmother was one of the first women reporters for the Los Angeles Times. And my father, though profoundly dyslexic, followed a long career in intelligence to finish his life (thanks to word processors and spellcheckers) as a very successful freelance writer. I’ve spent thirty years in every part of journalism, from beat reporter to magazine editor. And my oldest son, following in the family business, so to speak, earned his first national by-line before he earned his drivers license.
So, when I say I’m deeply ashamed right now to be called a “journalist”, you can imagine just how deep that cuts into my soul. [...]
But nothing, nothing I’ve seen has matched the media bias on display in the current Presidential campaign. Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass - no, make that shameless support - they’ve gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don’t have a free and fair press. I was one of the first people in the traditional media to call for the firing of Dan Rather - not because of his phony story, but because he refused to admit his mistake - but, bless him, even Gunga Dan thinks the media is one-sided in this election.
...what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side - or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for Senators Obama and Biden. If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as President of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography. That isn’t Sen. Obama’s fault: his job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media’s fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.
Why, for example to quote McCain’s lawyer, haven’t we seen an interview with Sen. Obama’s grad school drug dealer - when we know all about Mrs. McCain’s addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Senator Biden’s endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?...
pajamasmedia.com/edgelings/2008/10/24/editing-their-way-to-oblivion-jou rnalism-sacraficed-for-power-and-pensions/
Candidates aren't people, they're institutions, supported by huge sums of money, entrenched interests, scores of thinkers, and the baggage of their associations. Candidates have philosophies and the campaigns behind them have a culture all their own. From this standpoint, McCain is much closer to Bush than anyone else on the political landscape presently. Since winning the Republican nomination, McCain (the institution) has done everything it can to rush to the religious right, the moral majority and the corporate interests that support(ed) George Bush in his ascendence and throughout his presidency.
Barack Obama, by contrast, shares very little with Geo. W. Bush. It is very fair to associate the McCain campaign with an extension of the last eight years of liberal Republican corporate policy and interventionist, aggressive and heavy-handed foreign policy.
'We just let things get completely out of hand over the past eight years'
Key word in that sentence is 'We.'
- Ari
Perhaps the only institution in America whose approval rating is beneath that of Congress is the media.
Both have won their reputations the hard way. They earned them.
Consider the fawning indulgence shown insider Joe Biden with the dripping contempt visited on outsider Sarah Palin.
Twice last weekend, Biden grimly warned at closed-door meetings that a great crisis is coming early in the term of President Obama:
'Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. ... Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said ... we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.'
A 'generated crisis'? By whom? Moscow? Beijing? Teheran?
This is an astonishing statement from a chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee who has access to the same intelligence as George Bush. Joe was warning of a crisis like the Berlin Wall of July 1961, where JFK called for a tripling of the draft and ordered a call-up of reserves, or the missile crisis where U.S. pilots like John McCain were minutes away from bombing nuclear missile sites in Cuba and killing the Russians manning them.
Is Russia about to move on the Crimea? Is Israel about to launch air strikes on Iran's nuclear sites? What is Joe talking about?
If one assumes Joe is a serious man, we have a right to know.
Instead, what we got was Obama's airy dismissal of Joe's words as a 'rhetorical flourish' and a media -- rather than demanding that Joe hold a press conference -- acting as Obama surrogates parroting the talking points that Joe was just saying that new presidents always face tests.
Had John McCain made that hair-raising statement, he would have been accused of fear mongering about a new 9/11. The media would have run with the story rather than have smothered it.
Contrasting McCain with his hero, Joe declared a few weeks back, 'When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and ... said, 'Look, here's what happened.''
Nice historical reference. Except when the market crashed in 1929, Hoover was president, and there was no television.
Can one imagine what the press would have done to Sarah Palin had she exhibited such ignorance of history. Or Dan Quayle?
Joe gets a pass... But Joe also has a record of 36 years in the Senate.
Has anyone ever asked Joe about his own and his party's role in cutting off aid to South Vietnam, leading to the greatest strategic defeat in U.S. history and the Cambodian holocaust? Has anyone ever asked Joe about the role he and his party played in working to block Reagan's deployment of Pershing missiles in Europe, and SDI, which Gorbachev concedes broke the Soviets and won the Cold War?
In the most crucial vote he ever cast -- to give Bush a blank check for war in Iraq -- Joe concedes he got it wrong.
Is Joe's record of having been wrong on Vietnam, wrong in the Cold War, wrong on the Iraq War, less important than whether Sarah Palin tried to get fired a rogue-cop brother-in-law who Tasered her 10-year old nephew to 'teach him a lesson'?
'I've forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know,' says Joe humbly. Given his record, it is understandable Joe has forgotten so much of it.[...]
The media cannot get enough of the 'Saturday Night Live' impersonations of Palin as a bubblehead. News shows pick up the Tina Fey clips and run them and run them to the merriment of all.
Can one imagine 'Saturday Night Live' doing weekly send-ups of Michelle Obama and her 'I've never been proud' of my country, this 'just downright mean' America, using a black comedienne to mimic and mock her voice and accent?
'Saturday Night Live' would be facing hate crime charges.
How do we know? When the New Yorker ran a cartoon of Michelle in an Angela-Davis afro with an AK-47 slung over her shoulder, New Yorker editors had to go on national television to swear they were not mocking Michelle, but the conservatives who have so caricatured Michelle and The Messiah.
Is there a media double standard? You betcha.
'Candidates aren't people, they're institutions,'
Wrong.
'supported by huge sums of money, entrenched interests, and the baggage of their associations.'
True, look at the people supporting Obama: George Soros, Franklin Raynes, Jim Johnson, Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Acorn, etc...
'From this standpoint, McCain is much closer to Bush than anyone else on the political landscape presently.'
They are both bipeds and mammals too. Is simply the inverse of Bush acceptable?
'McCain (the institution) has done everything it can to rush to the religious right,'
McCain the person is a Christian and has acted accordingly that doesn't make McCain the equivalent of Bush. Obviously. He hasn't been afraid to alienate the religeous right or republicans in general... Trust me.
Obama has NEVER reached across the aisle like McCain has. Whether it be the gang of 14 or voting for liberal supreme court justices McCain has been his own man. Obama has gone with the far left in the party 100%.
I fear for my country to an extent. The President's 'only' power anymore is to select US Supreme Court Justices to reinterpret our beloved country's culture. Currently, we enjoy a culture of death, be it assainating the unborn, subverting the natural law, and eliminating our own suffering to include suicide (call it what you may). This is a tragedy for us. I moved out of the US for awhile to get a better view of what is truly wrong anymore with my once great nation.
I do have great difficulty asking God to bless a nation of murderers anymore. Our Presidents are the fruit. Sadly, the roots are dying.
Adios,
Tommy
'I moved out of the US for awhile to get a better view of what is truly wrong anymore with my once great nation.'
You went native.
'Adios,'
Agreed.
John McCain has no one to blame but himself. He turned his campaign over to the the smear merchant Steve Schmidt instead of running an above-board campaign. He let the wingnuts like Kristol and Barnes and Gerson convince him to pick unqualified Sarah Palin instead of a moderate like Tom Ridge. So he lost the critical independents and swing voters to pander to the base.
You are so right, and besides, if McCain is so easily led astray by these people and their hateful ways, what does that say about his ability to stand up and lead this country......not much!
Marc Ambinder, writing in the Atlantic:
The patchwork problem of federal and state election regulations strikes again.
Military ballots are being tossed in Fairfax Co, VA because of a “technicality.” Not a lot of them compared to the size of the electorate, but more than a few.
The registrar of voters in [sic] a Democrat. He thinks it “stinks,” but the law is the law.
Fairfax general registrar Rokey Suleman said Thursday that he has had to reject some of the ballots because of a Virginia law passed in 2002. That law — then called Senate Bill 113, sponsored by then state Sen. Bill Bolling — requires that when an overseas citizen wants to request an absentee ballot and cast a vote with the same paperwork, it requires not only a witness signature but also the current address of the witness.
The McCain campaign said there’s not even a space for the witness to list an address. Suleman agreed; he said the federal document was changed in recent years and the space for the witness address was removed. But the Virginia law hasn’t changed.
THE DEMOCRATS ARE TOSSING OUT THE VOTES OF OUR SOLDIERS, SAILORS, AIRMEN AND MARINES.
McCain and Palin have, for the past several months, used the tactic of falsely accusing Obama of being a terrorist, a Muslim, the most liberal senator, a socialist, and a 'tax and spend' liberal. None of that worked, because the public is not as stupid as the Republicans who believe these things are.
Now they are using robotic sequential dialers to harass people using even more venomous terms. In some ares, they are calling him a homosexual lover, accusing him of having AIDS, and claim he will appoint Rev. Al Sharpton to his cabinet. They say he is going to give money to welfare recipients acting like that is Obama's idea, when all good Republican's know that their hero, Richard Nizon came up with the idea of Negative Income Tax.
The public sees through these slanders against Obama. And when he is President, these same Republicans will constantly call out for budget restraint every time Obama tries to help the folks on Main Street, while the GOP continues to promote tax waivers, exemptions, and credits for their Billionaire Buddies.
I second that.
'McCain and Palin have, for the past several months, used the tactic of falsely accusing Obama of being a terrorist, '
Associating with terrorists which is true.
' a Muslim'
He was born a muslim and went to muslim schools. Then he was a member of the damn America church...A lateral shift.
'the most liberal senator,'
He is, according to the nonpartisan NATIONAL JOURNAL: ''Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., was the most liberal senator in 2007, according to National Journal's 27th annual vote ratings. ''
' a socialist, '
He wants to socialize entire industries.
'a 'tax and spend' liberal. '
He is, and that is what he voted for and how he behaved in Illinois.
'None of that worked, because the public is not as stupid as the Republicans who believe these things are.'
No, it hasn't worked because: 1) For some reason people do not care that he is going to be a disaster. Oh they seem to recognize on some level that he will be. They just don't seem to care.
2) The American public doesn't realize that they are turning over power to the EXACT same people who caused the financial crisis to begin with. They don't realize that because the media hasn't done it's job. They WILL realize it as soon as Obama starts punishing small business.
'In some ares, they are calling him a homosexual lover, accusing him of having AIDS, and claim he will appoint Rev. Al Sharpton to his cabinet'
LOL, that is a lie. A flat out lie.
'They say he is going to give money to welfare recipients acting like that is Obama's idea'
He will, at the cost of creating jobs.
'The public sees through these slanders against Obama.'
It isn't slander if it is true.
Ten days to election, and they are pouring millions into ads, canvassing neighborhoods, making calls, getting out the vote, enraging Democrats -- all in an effort to turn around a dire political situation. The Republican National Committee? No. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The business community is back in politics. After years of contented political gridlock, American companies are now officially horrified at what an all-Democratic Washington intends to inflict on the U.S. economy. The Chamber is throwing its extensive resources at denying the left a filibuster-proof Senate. In doing so, it has stuck its finger in the Democratic leadership's beehive, and is facing retribution.
It says something about the momentousness of this race that the Chamber doesn't care. While the trade group has always been a force, over this decade many businesses have inched back from in-your-face politics. They felt comfortable with Republicans in charge. They felt comfortable with Democrats running Congress, since divided government rarely brings change. They felt comfortable not offending either political party, and not inviting attack by liberal activists.
They do not feel comfortable now. The Democratic Party once respected the need for a healthy U.S. business community. That was in part because business was ferocious enough to demand respect. But a resurgent labor movement has asserted control over the party. And business has been more concerned with PR than principle. This, and the recent financial crisis, has emboldened Democrats to pursue a pure antimarket agenda.
Their 'card check' legislation means thuggish unionism. Their tax policies would squelch American capital. They'll reverse tort reform. Their antidote for today's financial mess is a super-Sarbanes-Oxley. Trade? What's that? Energy? What's that? Henry Waxman will start so many witch hunts, he'll need a lottery to see who goes first.
This agenda has inspired what Bill Miller, who runs the Chamber's political shop, describes as an 'unprecedented' rallying of the business community around the Chamber's political efforts. Under the feisty leadership of Tom Donohue, the association understood early on that -- sexy presidential election aside -- the real worry was a liberal, antibusiness supermajority in Congress.
online.wsj.com/article/SB122480679998364971.html
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Doesn't that tell you anything? It should.
quote:
Doesn't that tell you anything? It should.
unquote.
Actually it does,the use of massive smear has had the opposite effect in the outside world .Perople allover the world are truly chocked by these tactics that are used and condoned by McCain.
Only 1 percent of the French trust McCain whilst 85 percent of them would vote Obama.Figures like that are common all over the world.
Now the GOP internet smear task force might say all that is irrelevant as only US citizens vote .That may well be,ut guess who would be tested in the first six months of being in office,and guess who would e embraced worldwide.
The oinnacle of wisdom has been reached again by a member of the republican internet task force.
He thinks Bus and McCain have only this in common:'From this standpoint, McCain is much closer to Bush than anyone else on the political landscape presently.'
They are both bipeds and mammals too. Is simply the inverse of Bush acceptable?
Voila,the condensed wisdom of the GOP.
What does this has to do with politics....and that is from the same person that claims the media are biased.i guess he is angry because the media is not portraying McCain in hagiofraphic fashion?
Bush ha been telling for months he will vote for McCain,probably because of this;
They are both bipeds and mammals too. Is simply the inverse of Bush acceptable?
Come on guys,you cant be serious using tactics like this and then claim the meia is biased.
'Actually it does,the use of massive smear has had the opposite effect in the outside world '
It isn't a smear if it is true and the outside world can go screw itself. we are electing an American president, not a world one.
'Perople allover the world are truly chocked by these tactics that are used and condoned by McCain.'
Telling the truth? Guess you are going to get 'chocked' then. Oh well.
'Only 1 percent of the French trust McCain whilst 85 percent of them would vote Obama.'
Yet another great endorsement for John McCain. Obama should go run France.
'Figures like that are common all over the world.'
So what? Again, we are electing an American president. Europe just wants to see us weaker and humbled in the pipe dream that you can reclaim your long lost glory. Go watch soccer.
'Now the GOP internet smear task force might say all that is irrelevant as only US citizens vote .'
Guess that makes me the 'GOP internet smear task force' because yes, you are completely irrelevant.
'That may well be,ut guess who would be tested in the first six months of being in office,and guess who would e embraced worldwide.'
McCain has already been tested, Obama will provoke a crisis and europeans only embrace you if they want something.
'What does this has to do with politics.'
A lot more then 'tonny from belgium' has to do with the Presidential election in the United States of America.
Thanks for the answer,but please clarify how McCain has already been tested ?
And regarding 'business fights back...
he business community is back in politics. After years of contented political gridlock, American companies are now officially horrified at what an all-Democratic Washington intends to inflict on the U.S. economy
My answer:1 percent of the US population owes 38 percent of all assets.Of course they will fight to keep you all poor,that's why they have the GOP.
McCain is constantly being tested, and he's failing miserably.
a stranger with a dark sketchy past and has no resume. I don't trust strangers with a dark sketchy past and no resume.
more bombs than Ayers....
'Thanks for the answer',
Shuddup.
'but please clarify how McCain has already been tested ?'
McCain attended the US Naval Academy, he was chosen for and Qualified to be a carrier deck pilot which is the toughest, most mentally challenging occupation there is. He served with honor and courage and volunteered for the toughest missions that were being flown. After an accident on Forrestal which killed 134 sailors he was offered a trip home which he declined. He then flew against the most defended target in human history (Including Berlin in WW2) ........
'You know, I have been through this with you before. You are willfully ignorant and will just ask the same stupid question on the next thread. Not that you deserve an explanation to begin with.
John McCain has devoted 50 years of service to the USA. McCain has been tested in war and peace.
Barack Obama was in the senate for 143 days. The longest thing Obama has done is spend time in the Damn America church.
McCain is old now, and what has his service got to do with being a good President? He is so in Bush's back pocket, he'll never claw his way out or convince voters that he can!
'McCain is old now,'
Better to be old and wise then have 143 days in the senate and 20 years in the damn America church.
'and what has his service got to do with being a good President?'
It was just a start... I realized that I don't owe tonny an explanation. His service DOES have something to do with being a good president because he SERVED. Obama hasn't served anything other then himself.
'He is so in Bush's back pocket,'
That is simply not true. It is just the programming that has been drilled into your ear.
Besides, Obama is in George Soros' back pocket and Soros hates the USA too.
McCain is losing and finally realizes that he better get out there and verbally distance himself from his buddy, Bush, whom he's been cemented to for 8 years - 90% of the time in his own words. Now if he could shake Palin off, he might have a chance.
LOVE GWB!
His poliocies may have ruined the United States, but they have greatle benefited CHINA. Thanx George. Thanx a million. No, thanx a billion. No..no..thanx a trillion. Ha hahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
It should have been P-O-L-I-C-I-E-S.
NOT poliocies.
I am a cross dressing homosexual and I write here on M & C under different names but I am the one writing loooooooon posts that are meaningless.
Soros hates the U.S. so much he's given .l billion out of $9 billion to charity. Obama believes strongly in strengthening the middle class and puts great emphasis on education - neither of which the McCain/Palin campaign addresses. McCain has lost his way, forfeiting principle for gain of a few points in the polls, and his choice of a running mate who is utterly unqualified to ascend to the presidency. He questioned Obama's readiness to be commander in chief, then picked a running mate who clearly isn't ready. McCain's snideness and erratic behavior make me question his ability to lead this country. I have already cast my vote.
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Yet another ode to Obama..Oct 24th, 2008 - 22:58:43
Just when you think Monsters and critics has hit bottom they keep digging....
McCain isn't Bush, despite the sly attempt at linking them.
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