Hey, little Barry got his ass whupped, didn’t he? By the Principal, no less. Get a load of this picture.
Have you ever seen a guiltier little boy? Or a sterner headmaster? I wouldn’t want to be in Barry’s shoes, would you?
McCain gave him what for on a couple of issues, but what made him hang his head in shame was the talk about the rotten schools in DC, where, in case you don’t know it, almost only African Americans live. And yet, Barack is not for vouchers, which would give the kids the money to go to a school that their parents choose, just like the Obama kids do. What schools? you ask. Folks, can you imagine a world in which hundreds of schools whose tuition exactly matched the value of the voucher would not spring up? Neither can I. Yes, Barry was beaten here.
Mr. McCain gave Mr. Obama a couple of good scoldings. And sometimes a slap with the ruler. “You don’t tell countries you’re going to unilaterally renegotiate their treaties,” he said with exasperation to his errant, young student.
But Barry took a lesson from Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin. While McCain was berating him for minor issues, he sat there looking cute. He smiled at John, he smiled at us – that big, amused, toothy grin. He laughed charmingly. In serious mode, he arranged his face into different, pleasing shapes.
And here’s another tactic I noticed. Three times – about Ayers, about ACORN, and about Columbia (the nation, not his alma mater), he seemed reluctant to talk, then suddenly gave in and said, “Okay, you want to hear about blank, here it is.” Then, all three times, he told extremely convincing stories, if you didn’t know that they were entwined with misrepresentations, or sometimes outright lies. Long, fully-prepared stories, so don’t tell me these weren’t beans he was anxious to spill. Ayers is a professor, and besides, he had nothing to do with him, really; ACORN, yeah, he did some work for them, and they for him, but so what?
Well, they did take close to a million dollars from the campaign, and get this: Obama reported the money was for staging, sound and lighting, but that wasn’t true. The campaign admitted they “made a mistake” and amended their federal filing. It was really get-out-the-vote money. And, they got out voters that didn’t exist, voters that were taken from a phone book, and in one case, the whole starting line-up of the Dallas Cowboys. They fraudulated for him. But whose friends don’t?
McCain praised Obama’s eloquence, twice, and he meant it. But, he said, you have to look at the words. This is true, people. More than look. Figure out how many and what exact meanings these words have, and how they might be foolers. Mr. Obama is turning out to be very skilled in wriggling.
Barry’s good to look at and good to listen to, but I’m liking him less and less as he twitches and shrugs. Barry makes a point of not being forced into giving an answer to the specific question asked. He doesn’t want us to know what he thinks, because if you and I differ, one of us won’t like him.
I liked McCain’s attitude about a lot of things. Ayers, for instance. If Barack hung out with someone who bombed the Pentagon and is not sorry about it, pardon me if I think it’s relevant to the security of the country.
I think McCain won this round. And it was over great odds. Nobody expected anything of him, including the host. When the candidates were introduced, Bill Sheiffer, wearing Tim Russert’s chipmunk cheeks, he was so pleased, asked for a big, warm welcome for Bar-aaack Obaaama! It took a long, luscious time to sail out … “and John McCain” was dropped like an afterthought onto the carpet.
