|
WASHINGTON: Blustery rows between potential White House foes John
McCain and Barack Obama, more typical of an election’s frenzied
last days than its opening shots, may augur a rancorous slog through
to November.
Despite both pledging to elevate the tone of US
politics, the senators are trading pithy personal jibes, as suspense
ebbs from Obama’s marathon Democratic race with Hillary Clinton
and eyes turn toward a general election.
Each man wants to negatively define the other in
voters’ minds in an early test of mettle before the long run-up to
November’s presidential vote.
Republican McCain is painting Obama as naive,
weak and dangerous, arguing he is an opportunist whose poetic
rhetoric masks inexperience and no record to back up his promise to
drain US politics of partisan bile.
Obama’s offensive so far is encapsulated by
one of his new attack lines: “John McCain has decided to run for
George Bush’s third term.”
The strategy is to shackle the Arizona senator
to the unpopular president and to suggest his policies on everything
from international relations to economics are simply a retread of a
failed approach.
Obama also seems intent on proving that he is no
soft touch after Democrats despaired over previous nominees, like
2004 pick John Kerry, who many saw as cowed by Republican attacks.
While there is mutual respect between Washington
veterans Clinton and McCain, it is equally clear there is already
festering antipathy between McCain and freshman senator Obama.
The 46-year-old Illinois lawmaker in fact seems
to get right under the 71-year-old Republican’s skin.
“For a young man with very little experience,
he has done very well,” McCain sarcastically told supporters in
Florida last week.
The Arizona senator is already attacking Obama
and his ideas, including his offer to talk to the leaders of US
foes, as a dangerous risk in a world thick with threats and
uncertainty.
In one recent swipe, McCain Spokesman Tucker
Bounds responded to Obama’s idea for an easing of restrictions on
contacts between Americans and Cubans as “weak” and
“reckless” and reeking of “political expediency.”
Stressing Obama’s inexperience is also a
veiled way for McCain to defuse the age question. If the Arizona
lawmaker wins the election, he will become, at 72, the oldest
president ever inaugurated for a first term.
McCain is also taking potshots at Obama’s
character, and ridiculing his brand of “new” politics.
He hammered Obama this week after the Illinois
senator criticized his stand on a veterans’ benefits bill.
“It is typical, but no less offensive that
Senator Obama uses the Senate floor to take cheap shots at an
opponent and easy advantage of an issue he has less than zero
understanding of,” McCain said.
He sharpened his attack further by highlighting
his own Vietnam war heroism, and Obama’s lack of military service.
“I will not accept from Senator Obama, who did
not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform,
any lectures on my regard for those who did,” McCain said.
Obama’s strikes have been less personal but
still mocking, with subtle digs about his likely opponent’s age.
He jokes that McCain’s signature bus the
“Straight Talk Express” has taken a diversion—and has provoked
McCain by painting him as a neophyte on economics, as many Americans
feel the financial pinch.
But his calculated decision to launch a
full-bore attack on McCain from the Senate floor, where
ungentlemanly conduct is frowned upon, appeared to be a deliberate
attempt to tweak his foe’s reputed temper.
“I respect Senator John McCain’s service to
our country . . . but I can’t understand why he would line up
behind the president in opposition to this . . . bill,” Obama
said.
“I can’t believe why he believes it is too
generous to our veterans.”
Obama has also sought to tie McCain to Bush in
foreign policy, frequently saying his fellow senator would be happy
to wage a 100-year war in Iraq.
The attack is no less effective for being a
selective use of McCain’s words at best. When he made the infamous
remark, McCain seemed to be talking about a long-term peacekeeping
mission not a hot war.
Obama, while careful to show respect to McCain,
has also subtly referred to his age, talking about how admiring he
is of the Arizona’s senator’s “half-century” of service to
the United States.
-- AFP
|
