I had no idea that dart was actually going to challenge me on my assertion that McCain has attacked Obama for his lack of experience. My Rove quote was not offered as a rebuttal to that, but instead to underline the irony of Rove predicted that Obama would be the one to make a VP choice based on who could get him elected, versus who could help him govern. Do even the McCain supporters suggest that, out of all the other possibilities, Palin was the most qualified to help McCain govern???
But, at any rate, here’s evidence that McCain has attacked Obama for his lack of experience, for those who have been living under the rock with dart.
WashingtonPost McCain Attacks Obama as Inexperienced
By Juliet Eilperin
STOCKTON, Calif. -- At a boisterous rally that was interrupted twice by antiwar protesters, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) launched into a scathing attack on Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), mocking his youth, his lack of foreign policy experience and his support for pork-barrel projects.
"I have the knowledge, the background and the judgment to lead this nation. My opponent does not," he said before a crowd of a couple hundred supporters at an airport hangar. Then, poking fun at the 46-year-old Democratic front-runner, McCain, 71, added: "I admire and respect Senator Obama. For a young man with very little experience, he's done very well. For his very, very great lack of experience and knowledge of the issues, he's been very successful."
Wall Street journal cited McCain camp using Biden’s former argument to bolster their own that Obama does not have enough experience:
Wall Street SEDONA, Ariz. -- John McCain's campaign pounced quickly Saturday morning to attack Barack Obama's running mate Sen. Joe Biden by using the Delaware politician's own words against him.
The Republicans have been gathering ammunition against Sen. Biden for weeks now and didn't have to look very far. Early in the lengthy presidential primary season, while he was still a candidate himself, Sen. Biden criticized Sen. Obama's inexperience on several occasions, as well as his foreign policy naiveté.
he idea of nominating someone without "unimpeachable credentials on national security and foreign policy," Sen. Biden said during a radio interview in August 2007, would be "a tragic mistake."
"There has been no harsher critic of Barack Obama's lack of experience than Joe Biden," said McCain spokesman Ben Porritt. "Biden has denounced Barack Obama's poor foreign policy judgment and has strongly argued in his own words what Americans are quickly realizing -- that Barack Obama is not ready to be President."
McCain camp using the Clintons to bolster their argument that Obama is not “ready to lead”:
(CNN) -- Sen. Hillary Clinton may have endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president in a speech at the Democratic National Convention Tuesday night, but Sen. John McCain's campaign said she stopped short of saying that he is ready to lead the country.
"Sen. Clinton ran her presidential campaign making clear that Barack Obama is not prepared to lead as commander in chief. Nowhere tonight did she alter that assessment. Nowhere tonight did she say that Barack Obama is ready to lead," McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said in a statement.
"Millions of Hillary Clinton supporters and millions of Americans remain concerned about whether Barack Obama is ready to be president."
International Herald Tribune Despite a three-month head start, Senator John McCain has struggled to solidify lines of attack against Senator Barack Obama for the general election, Republican operatives say and some of his own advisers acknowledge, running into problems that bedeviled Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's primary campaign against Obama.
The McCain camp faces the challenge of negatively defining an opponent who has a relatively short tenure in office and a thin record to dissect, unlike longer-serving senators like Clinton or John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee. McCain advisers also say they are wary of unleashing allies to attack Obama, given how some conservatives have overstepped and been criticized for racially tinged remarks.
McCain shook up the management of his campaign on Wednesday, in part because of concern within his organization and among Republicans generally about his difficulty in putting Obama on the defensive.
Like those unleashed by Clinton's team in the winter and spring, the McCain camp's attacks on Obama have had a lurching quality for weeks now, several Republicans said in interviews. Some days McCain or his allies have gone after Obama's relative youth and inexperience; other days they have criticized his shifting positions (on public campaign financing) or policy stands (on guns and gasoline prices) or even his and his wife's patriotism.
And, of course, there is the “dangerously unprepared” ad that took Obama’s comments about Iran out of context, as verified by
Factcheck The ad says Iran is "threatening to eliminate Israel" and implies that Obama fails to acknowledge the threat:
McCain ad: Terrorism, destroying Israel, those aren't "serious threats"? Obama – dangerously unprepared to be president.
But on the contrary, when Obama spoke to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in June, he told that pro-Israel audience that "there is no greater threat to Israel – or to the peace and stability of the region – than Iran." He also said this:
Obama, June 4: The Iranian regime supports violent extremists and challenges us across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race and raise the prospect of a transfer of nuclear know-how to terrorists. Its president denies the Holocaust and threatens to wipe Israel off the map. The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat.
We call a foul ball on this one. By separating Obama's words from their context, and from his other comments on the subject, McCain's ad distorts Obama's stated views on Iran.
I hereby predict that, in response to this evidence that the McCain camp has, indeed, attacked Obama for his lack of experience, Dart will pretend that he never doubted that McCain has been doing so, and will instead argue that McCain was right on all of these attacks. In the process, he will ignore my main point, which is that McCain’s choice of Palin has neutered that plan of attack.
Just in case anyone other than Dart is suffering from confusion about my main point – I brought this up to demonstrate one point – that the Palin choice will weaken this particular line of attack that McCain was using against Obama. I even stated that I thought it was one of McCain’s
strongest arguments against Obama, and that I also had concerns about his lack of experience, compared to Hillary. See my statement that prompted the subsequent comments:
Beastie:
I think it was a political mistake because, in declaring Palin "ready to be president", McCain has eliminated what may have been his most effective criticism of Obama, which was that lack of experience rendered him not ready to be president.
Beastie:
To be honest, though, I really did think McCain's strongest point against Obama was lack of experience, because that concerned me, too. So when I pointed out that I thought the Palin appointment was a mistake because it neutered that charge, I wasn't being politically cynical, but stating what I think is reality. When someone has had a fairly short political life, much more is unknown. I felt like Hillary was "safer" in that regard, although I was disappointed in how long it took her to admit that going into Iraq was a mistake, and I don't like the fact that she took a lot of money from insurance lobbyists. So I'm happy he picked Biden, who has a clear record of great foreign affair credentials. I do think Obama picked someone who could really help him govern effectively, while McCain picked someone he hoped would get him elected.
I have to say that the fact that some of you are seemingly incapable of
even admitting this one point – that the Palin choice neutered McCain’s “lack of experience” attack – demonstrates that some of you are just as biased as I am on this issue, but less able to admit it.