Dear Senator Obama: I would like to apologize to you for assuming that your private assurances to me regarding your desire to cooperate in our efforts to negotiate bipartisan lobbying reform legislation were sincere. When you approached me and insisted that despite your leadership’s preference to use the issue to gain a political advantage in the 2006 elections, you were personally committed to achieving a result that would reflect credit on the entire Senate and offer the country a better example of political leadership, I concluded your professed concern for the institution and the public interest was genuine and admirable. Thank you for disabusing me of such notions with your … decision to withdraw from our bipartisan discussion. I’m embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics I failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical gloss routinely used in politics to make self-interested partisan posturing appear more noble. Again, sorry for the confusion, but please be assured I won’t make the same mistake again…. Sincerely, John McCain.
Obama’s one example of bipartisan, self-sacrifice was a careless lie, told to the wrong audience about the wrong senator … one who was waiting in the wings and just might remember. It was another kind of audacity of hope—hoping that no one would notice.
How could this possibly be his best example of bipartisan sacrifice? How could a candidate boasting regularly of his ability to cross the aisle not have a legitimate story? How could a “brilliant” Harvard attorney make such a claim? How could a man bringing a “new kind of politics” choose a story demonstrating the very oldest kind? How could the candidate of “change” prove so clearly, so nakedly, to be the master of changing nothing but the facts?
Immediately after the forum, Obama repeated claims denying culpability on obstructing the “Born Alive Infant Protection Act.” To Rick Warren, he claimed to oppose same-sex marriage while having earlier denounced a citizen vote on a measure to protect traditional marriage in Warren’s own state of California. These were just some of the obfuscations in the Saddleback Forum.
Honest men look you in the eye and give straight answers. Liars parse words and avoid your gaze. Both types were plain to see at Saddleback. Obama’s convoluted tale of his great, bi-partisan moment provided its own moment, one where all of us could see just which of these two types of men he was.