Let us face it, in this first real encounter with his November opponent, Obama went down in flames. Like the Lincoln - Douglass debates this one pitted the non-orator against the much lauded orator. The man of quiet wisdom was pitted against the one who was a master at delivering a prepared speech. And the much lauded orator blew it. How could this happen?
Obama is lauded as a great orator by the media. Really? Is he? Look at the number of ah, um, ah, well, um, sequences that he got into at Saddleback and in other debates for that matter. He is a great orator? No. I must confess that he is a great reader of something that someone else wrote and put on a teleprompter. When the teleprompter isn't there Obama chokes or maybe it is just the real Obama coming out. I wonder if he will have a teleprompter when he meets with a head of state over a conference table or takes the "phone call at three A.M".
McCain is not a great orator but he has things in common with Lincoln, a quiet wisdom and a wealth of knowledge and experience and more important, he is able to draw from that pool and use it when needed. He thinks fast on his feet. He showed that ably at Saddleback. Allow me to observe that if I have a choice of a guy who can read a teleprompter or one who can think on his feet, I will take the latter every time if the person is going to be in a position of decision making. If I want someone who will make an impressive speech, I will take the teleprompter reader. But a president must be able to think on his feet.
Lincoln told a story during the debates about a train engine that had a small boiler. It was so small that when the whistle blew it couldn't run. The boiler couldn't make enough steam for both. He then likened his opponent to the engine. He told the people, “When Mr. Douglass talks, his brain doesn't have the ability to think.” Obama is somewhat the same.
So why did Obama look like so good? In the earlier debates Obama generally went last, or at least not first, in answering a question. The others answering the question gave him material and more important, time to think up an answer. He could think before he had to talk. He could listen to the other answers and draw from them to form his answer and in fact if you listen to him that happened all too often. I would also not be surprised if I learned that the Obama staff was holding up queue cards (known in the industry as idiot cards) in the back to help him or they had a headphone for him to listen to it would not surprise me.
And what was the answer to the Obama crash and burn at Saddleback from the Obama camp? The only thing was an attack by proxy on Saddleback Church! The Obama camp is like the ball team that blames the field for the loss. The field wasn't level. It wasn;t their playing. According to the charge, McCain listened to Obama and thus had time to study the questions and Obama's answers. Let's suppose I didn't trust Rick Warren, McCain, the Secret Service and Warren's staff and thought they could all possibly participate in such dishonesty. It is like believing the police at the OJ quarters, who didn't know each other conspired to frame him. It isn't credible. Even if ethics didn't demand it, wisdom would say to the McCain camp, “Don't do it.” Why? If McCain had been given access to Obama's answers it would have been easy to show that his answers were targeted to rebut the Obama answers. It would have not been prudent for the candidate that went second to try to take that advantage. It would have been too easy to stumble on an answer and reveal awareness of what the first candidate said. That the Obama camp would consider this possibility shows they either underestimate their opposition or that they would have done it, given the opportunity! Consider that breach of integrity. And these people want to run the country. Having that would be Honest Bill Clinton gone to seed!
But one questioning Obama's integrity has more ammunition in his own statements. Some of Obama's answers boggle the mind when they are examined because they totally ignore facts. He says that deciding when life begins is above his job description yet he has voted to allow the survivors of late induced abortions to be left to die. If he really felt it was above his job description he would have voted to err on the side of safety. That is what you do when you can't be sure.
He called his vote against the war the hardest decision of his life. What vote? He was in the Illinois Senate, not the U.S. Senate when that happened. During the primaries he chided Hillary for that vote and repeated that he did not vote to go to war. He wasn't there to take part in that vote. And voting against the war for someone from a Democrat state like Illinois isn't an act of courage it is out and out cowardice! And if there was a vote that took any courage it was the one he seems to want to forget, the vote for war funding. The war is wrong but he will fund it. Does that make sense? Sure it does. That bill had pork in it. Lots of pork. Democrat pork. It would have taken courage to vote against it.
Although this was in another forum his talk about properly inflating tires is a joke. Experts tell us it will help, maybe two percent. But this is not overall oil usage. It is just gasoline. It is less than a half of a percent. This is good to do, we should do it but for someone who is setting policy to say this is a solution means they just plain don't understand the problem. If Obama doesn't understand this, what else doesn't he understand? The war? National security? Abortion? Judges?
Obama was willing to throw a black Supreme Court justice under the bus to satisfy his financial support, the radical left. What else will he throw under the bus for this radical fringe? National Security? These people hate the US and want to see her fall.
So the Navy pilot shot down the orator. The orator couldn't even see (in this case hear) the enemy. But like the pilot his instincts told him where the enemy was, where he would be and where the gunfire should be placed to take him down. And like an unskilled pilot, the orator flew into the bullets. It was crash and burn.
