And McCain will suggest that while Senator Obama has asserted that he has the skills to reach out with the kind of conciliatory attitude necessary to move this country forward, and work with the Congress on the legislation required, it is just that, an assertion.
Senator McCain will point out that he has a record of doing just that, working in a bi-partisan fashion to pass important legislation, taking on tough and contentious issues like campaign finance reform and immigration.
But McCain will be gracious about it, and observe that it is not to be reasonably expected that any senator, no mater how gifted, can have achieved much of a record in two and a half years.
So he will turn his attention to Obama’s record of eight years in the Illinois legislature, where Obama voted “present” over one hundred and fifty times.
“Present?” McCain will ask. What does that mean?
Senator Obama will be asked to explain, did those “votes” indicate that (a) he couldn’t make up his mind, or (b) he did not think the people he was elected to represent needed to be represented?
McCain will point out that chronic indecision and a failure to discharge the most basic responsibility of your office are not qualities Americans look for in a president.
Finally, McCain will suggest that despite Obama’s claims to be a new and different kind of politician, his hands are not much cleaner than many other politicians. McCain will follow the money.
It has been reported in the mainstream media (Boston Globe, 14 February, www.boston.com) – and rather better documented in the blogs (www.soursewatch.com) – that between them Senators Obama and Clinton have donated almost $900,000 of contributions they have raised over the past three years to the Democrat super-delegates on whom their nomination may ultimately depend. The Obama campaign has also made donations to various groups and organization that subsequently endorsed or assisted him.
This is not illegal. It may even prove wise with respect to securing the nomination. But, it looks like the ultimate in insider politics, even vote buying.
Vote buying is not unheard of in Chicago, of course. Nor is it illegal, as the Obama campaign has done, to contribute money to organizations that then downstream that money to other organizations to which the Obama campaign has already given the maximum $5,000 allowed by the law.
But as an attorney for the non-partisan and not-for-profit Campaign Legal Center put it, “This is the sort of classic example, where even though the activities do not pass the smell test, they are nevertheless legal…”
Now that McCain is raising substantial campaign funds, he has followed Obama and Clinton and is withdrawing from public campaign financing in the primary election cycle. But my guess is he will challenge Obama to keep the pledge he made last March to join him in relying only on public financing for the general election.
Headlined in the New York Times last March 2, “McCain and Obama in Deal on Public Financing,” and described in the article as a “deal,” a “truce,” and an “accord,” Obama is now backing away from what the Times now obligingly reports as only “indications” he gave last year that he would accept public financing.
Understandably, as Obama contemplates the kind of money an African-American, super-star politician can raise among establishment elites and energized true believers, he may now be thinking that campaign finance reform is one change he does not believe in.
Senator Clinton never challenged Obama over his campaign finance practices. She was too vulnerable. Clinton has yet to release her income tax filings and has consistently ducked questions about where her money comes from.
