As the 2008 presidential campaign hurtles into its final days, John McCain confronts a choice: He can either start telling the public about the real Barack Obama, or he can lose.
For much of his career, McCain has been a media darling. He could count on the press to carry his water as long as he was a “maverick” Republican, driving more conservative members of his party crazy. But as he surely knows by now, when it comes to Barack Obama and the press, all bets are off. In covering Obama, the press has adopted a “don’t ask/don’t tell” policy designed to boost the least-vetted, least-known candidate ever to seek the presidency. It isn’t by accident that the media has denied all less-than-glowing stories about Obama the kind of consistent, sustained coverage that allows them to penetrate public consciousness.
If McCain is going to have a chance at winning, he must make sure that the public becomes thoroughly acquainted with the real Barack Obama – the most radical presidential nominee ever. And because the press evidently intends to abdicate its responsibility to acquaint voters with the less-popular parts of Obama’s record, he’ll have to rely on paid advertising to do it.
For starters, McCain should consider running a series of “Did You Know” ads about Barack Obama. He should ask voters, “Did you know that:
Barack Obama has multiple ties to those responsible for the present economic crisis?:
Franklin Raines, the immediate past CEO of Fannie Mae – who has collected a $90 million golden parachute while driving Fannie into the ground – has advised Obama on housing issues.
Jim Johnson, yet another former Fannie Mae CEO, resigned from Obama’s vice presidential search team when it was revealed he had received a sweetheart home mortgage deal.
Despite serving in the Senate for only four years, Obama himself has been the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac largesse in the entire Congress, ahead even of former presidential candidate John Kerry, who’s spent two decades in the Senate?
Obama’s long-time political ally, radical group ACORN, played a key role in pressuring banks to offer loans to those who were unlikely to be able to pay them back. ACORN has taken credit for pressuring banks to accept undocumented income as a basis for offering loans, for offering loans without using credit scores, and for making 100% financed loans available to low-income people.
There is more, of course. Do voters know:
That, in apparent defiance of federal election law, the Obama campaign refuses to identify individual donors who have provided almost half the funds for his campaign, including obvious fakes like “Mr. Good Will” and “Mr. Doodad Pro”? And that 11,500 donations to his campaign – totaling almost $34 million – may have come from overseas? Or that two Palestinians living in a Hamas-controlled refugee camp spent $31,300 in Obama’s online store? Who are all these people, and why won’t the Obama campaign obey the law and identify them?
Continued... |