Criticism of Sen. Obama: OK or Off Limits?

http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=5292

By Mark Rhoads

While campaigning in Missouri a few days ago, Sen. Obama replied to a McCain TV ad that showed brief pictures of http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3513 to point this out.First, the question of Sen. Obama’s relative lack of experience in national government is fair game.  It might be less of an issue if he had some other notable experience in his life that developed leadership for high office but he has none.  Ross Perot was a successful businessman and that fact enabled him to reach a threshold of credibility for a serious independent race in 1992.  President Eisenhower had been  a five-star general, Chief of Staff of the Army, and first Commander of NATO which required great administrative skills.

Second, Sen. McCain has never said Obama is “not patriotic enough.”  By his own actions, Obama like other liberals seems to demonstrate he is uncomfortable with some symbols of patriotism such as the America flag lapel pin.  This is nothing new for elitist liberals.  After wearing a flag lapel pin all during his US Senate campaign in 1970, Sen. Adlai E. Stevenson, III (D-Illinois) immediately jettisoned his pin the day after he was elected.  Liberals claim they express their patriotism in other ways and there is nothing wrong with that.  But in doing so they should concede that those who are more comfortable with symbols of patriotism are not for that reason ultra-nationalist right wingers.

No one has ever heard a major Republican leader say about Obama, “he’s got a funny name.”  During the Democratic primary in North Carolina, other Democratic campaigns were believed to be behind a push-pull fake phone poll that often repeated Obama’s full middle name as in “Barack http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3657 was infuriated by this tactic and he was right that time to be mad but the phone calls did not come from Republicans.  It is true, relative to many previous candidates, that Sen. Obama has an unusual name but the major person talking about that now is Obama himself.

http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2008/08/criticism-of-se.html#more

2008-08-01