If you are amazed and confused as to why Barack Obama didn’t nip the Wesley Clark story in the bud you need look no further than this example of liberal punditry. The Clark comment wasn’t an insult, or it was true, or no one cares or it’s a holiday week — pick your excuse for doing nothing. At most there is a concession that that tactics were poor:
[I]s this the best possible line of attack for an Obama supporter to take, when Barack’s only big claim to executive leadership was being a community organizer? Not generally a job that involves ordering bombs to fall.
Because Obama, his advisors and those on the Left who apparently reflect and shape Obama’s views don’t hear and understand the comments of a Clark as disrespectful and insulting there is no need to alter course. It’s okay to intimate that getting shot down and permanently maimed for your country is no big deal and being tortured as a POW just proves you missed out on vital foreign policy education. Yawn. Ho-hum.
There is no better example, I think, of the difference between Obama and the Clintons. As products of middle America and politicians from a Red state it is not an error, for all their many faults, that either Bill or Hillary would have made or allowed their surrogates to make. They (like the conservative critics and even many mainstream media reporters who expressed shock this week) understand that there are just certain things one does not say without leaving the impression that you are indifferent to military valor. The man who is already viewed with suspicion on matters of national security and whose affections for America have rightly or wrongly been called into doubt shouldn’t be seen as winking and nodding while Clark (and then Rand Beers) used McCain’s war service as political fodder.
However, Obama did just that and ordinary Americans will judge whether that reflects well on him or not. But the reaction from the liberal pundits does explain, if there was any doubt remaining, just how divorced from regular Americans’ sensibilities the Left’s candidate can be. Those gun clinging, religious types just get worked up over the darnedest things, don’t they?
