Last week, Senator Obama made this assertion:
“We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. ‘He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?'”
Senator McCain should have responded this way:
“Barack Obama wants you to think about his race and name.
“He does not want you to think about his lack of preparedness for the Presidency of the United States or managing billion dollar government programs or serving as Commander-and-Chief in time of war.
“Mr. Obama is still that kid in college who said:
“…We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society’s stifling constraints. We weren’t indifferent or careless or insecure…” [Barack Obama writing in ‘Dreams of My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance’]
“They were indifferent and careless and insecure.
“Barack Obama is still insecure and with good reason; his record in Congress is as thin as his innuendo. Running the United States of America is not railing against ‘the man and the system’ and street organizing.
“Oh, if you have a problem, he has an unworkable, trillion-dollar new government program, new taxes, and will hand you back a few dollars of your money and your children trillions of dollars of new debt.
“That is the real change he has in store for you, a change for the worse to a man whose only clue as to how to run a government is to throw your money at you like a bone to chew on.
“America is better than that. We walk out the door each day and go to work with hope, not a handout.
“When times are bad, we step up; we don’t step on our neighbor.
“He wants to talk about his race because he cannot win on either the issues or his record.
“My name is John McCain. I’ve worked hard with Conservatives and reached across the aisle to get things done.
“Yes, I have also been to college, and sown wild oats.
“Yet I have grown up since. I have gone to war, spent 5 1/2 years in a communist prison cell being tortured, served 23 years in the Navy and 26 more years in the United States Congress fighting for you.
“The Presidency is not OJT, the Oval Office is no place for on-the-job training. Your children’s futures are too important and our nation’s challenges are too great.
“You know me, I will keep the faith. I’ve been through the fire.
“This election is not about color, it is about hitting the ground running on January 20, 2009, and America’s future.”
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Editor — The above advice was unsolicited. John McCain can use it or lose it, just as he can win or lose the coming election and Barack Obama can talk about his race and name.