Thursday, April 17, 2008

What did Joe Louis say?


He can run, but he can't hide.


After last night, Sen. Obama is finding out what Joe Louis meant. The tag team of George Stephanopolous and Charlie Gibson from ABC asked Obama some tough questions last night, which Obama struggled with. And today, the message is: the debate moderators were bad!


Here's a real simple question - if George Stephanopolous intimidates Obama, what the heck is going to happen if he's across the table from Putin, or Chavez, or Ahmedinejad?


He can run, but he can't hide.


I put the question to the Obama supporters who read this blog - do you agree with the folks at the Huffington Post? If so, why? I'm genuinely curious about how Obama supporters feel about this.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mark,
I’ve honestly never read HuffPost or dailykos. Sure I’ve linked to a few articles on both, but I generally avoid left wing sheep. As for last nights debate, I didn’t really think it was much of a debate. Obama was clearly not ‘on’ last night, and that was undoubtedly the worst performance he has had since the early days of this campaign. Do I think that Gibson and Stephanopolis ganged up on him? Yes, somewhat. But so what, he’s running for President. And I am from a family of Chicago Machine hacks, so I know that politics ain’t beanbag. All’s fair and he needs to get roughed up a little. But honestly, that was a media carnival, Steph was in the tank for HRC, the first hour didn’t deal with anything substantive and during that time, the moderators never asked any questions about any real issues facing the state of PA. Perhaps the people in PA should be bitter about that.

Am I concerned, and/or was my confidence in Obama shaken? No. Not at all. He had a bad night. Everyone has them. He had about 17 good ones before that. BTW, George Bush had an absolutely horrible debate against John “The Human Tooth Ache” Kerry four years ago (the night Bush had the transmitter strapped to his back). Based upon your ‘concerns’ about Obama last night, am I to assume you voted for Kerry?

I also think that there’s a silver lining to last nights fracas? I liked the restraint Obama showed in not wading in to the muck. I liked the fact that his operatives seem to have done a pretty good job of spinning his performance, and, while Obama definitely seemed frustrated at times, he restrained himself and even defended HRC on one occasion. In other words, even on a bad night, he was classy. Meanwhile, Hillary wallowed in ABC's mud…perhaps a little too much.

All in all, I saw in Obama’s performance a frustrated yet honest commitment to trying to stay away from the Morris-Rove politics that has paralyzed our country since the end of the Cold War. Clearly, Obama didn't have his best night, and I admit that in the second half of the debate, when issues finally turned substantive, he was still off. But who wouldn’t be after 50 minutes of 3 way tag-team attack. Yet he carried himself with grace and dignity in the face of farce. That's the kind of President I want.

Hey, I hope you are feeling better.
Rich

Gino said...

O got kinder treatment in the past, but no network worthy of credential should have made stephy a moderator on any debate involving HRC.
only bill clinton could be more in the tank for hrc than stephy.

Mr. D said...

Thanks, Rich. I appreciate your synopsis.

All I'll say is this - the more I see of Obama, the less I see.

Anonymous said...

A slick orator does not a president make.

Blaming the moderators for a bad performance is akin to blaming the refs for a loss in sports. In the end it may satisfy the people who are wining partisans, but it doesn't change the result that is posted on the big board