It comes from a college blogger by the name of Alex Mayer. I found him this summer when he interned at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and was a regular contributor to their blog Political Fix. He finished his midterms and put down a great point-by-point take down of the Powell endorsement of Obama:
In order:
1.”In the case of Mr. McCain, I found that he was a little unsure as to deal with the economic problems that we were having and almost every day there was a different approach to the problem. “
Arguably true. But Obama’s reaction to the crisis was also far from impressive — repeating easy, vague partisan attacks on “deregulation” and “Bush’s economic policy” haven’t exactly evidenced a brilliant grasp of the financial crisis. Obama also vacillated, never taking a position on the AIG bailout, and he showed absolutely zero leadership, either for or against, the Paulson bailout plan. Surely the lackluster performance of both candidates can’t have swayed Powell’s decision.
2.”The selection of Sarah Palin…She’s a very distinguished woman, and she’s to be admired; but at the same time, now that we have had a chance to watch her for some seven weeks, I don’t believe she’s ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president.
This still boggles my mind — I find it absolutely incomprehensible how someone could argue with a straight face that “Sarah Palin is not ready to be president of the United States” as an argument for supporting Barack Obama — who began his presidential campaign after serving just 134 days as a U.S. Senator. Powell says he came to this conclusion after watching her performance for “some seven weeks” — but somehow failed to notice the utter lack of readiness of Barack Obama — who is running for President, not Vice President — after nearly two years of campaigning.
3.”I also believe that on the Republican side over the last seven weeks, the approach of the Republican Party and Mr. McCain has become narrower and narrower…And I’ve also been disappointed, frankly, by some of the approaches that Senator McCain has taken recently, or his campaign ads, on issues that are not really central to the problems that the American people are worried about.”
Negative campaigning? One can argue that McCain’s campaign has been much more negative than Obama’s only if one ignores all of Obama’s negative attack ads, for instance, ones that tell outright lies about McCain’s healthcare plan. But even if that were true, are campaign tactics really a good reason to determine who someone as weighty as Colin Powell is going to vote for for president? Certainly his decision-making must have been a little deeper than that.
4.”And the party has moved even further to the right, and Governor Palin has indicated a further rightward shift.”
That assertion is just completely untrue — the Republican party nominated McCain, who was the least conservative of all the major nominees this year. Conservative pundits and talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh attacked McCain daily throughout the primaries.
And McCain is definitely less conservative than George W. Bush, who Colin Powell endorsed in the past. If anything, conservatives grudgingly settled for McCain as their best bet, while liberals nominated Obama precisely for his adherence to left-wing ideology. Apparently that “leftward shift” in the ideology of the Democratic party doesn’t worry Powell, though it should.
Well done, young man.
Keep an eye on Alex. I have a feeling we will be seeing a lot more from him in the future.
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