Behold My Power!

In my last post, I took John McCain to task for the nasty tone his campaign has taken over the last week, as he and Palin whipped up anger, resentment, and vitriol towards Barack Obama at their rallies and with their dirty advertisements. Well, clearly someone in the McCain camp read that post, printed a copy of it, and gave it to Senator McCain to read (as he doesn't know how to use the Internet), because later in the day he changed his tune and actually came to Obama's defense at a Minnesota town hall rally. I take full credit for this shift, however temporary, to responsible campaigning. I could describe it, but here's some video instead, put together by the progressive blog Talking Points Memo:


Extraordinary stuff. Senator McCain comes to his senses and displays some of that honor and integrity that he's known for, saying that his supporters need to be respectful of Senator Obama, and gets booed for it - although more supporters cheered for his call for politics to be conducted in a civil manner, which is encouraging. Hopefully, given the history of racism and violent acts towards minorities in this country, this appeal for respect by McCain will lead to cooler heads, because the ginning up of supporters into an angry mob is, at best, not a good idea and at worst highly irresponsible.

Back to the video for a moment - in my opinion, the most extraordinary piece of that clip is the part where McCain tells his supporters they don't need to fear Obama: "He is a decent person, and a person that you do not have be scared as President of the United States..." Thus undercutting the entire message of his last week of campaigning, the tune of which was that we should be scared of a President Obama. We shouldn't be scared of that of course - we should elect Barack Obama to the presidency on November 4, and I'm hopeful that we will.

-EB

p.s. The Alaska legislative panel investigating Sarah Palin's part in "Troopergate" (dominated by Republicans, by the way) tonight found that Gov. Palin abused her power in firing the state public safety commissioner. That, and having to admit that a President Obama isn't really scary, add up to one really bad day for the McCain campaign. And to some schadenfreude for Democrats everywhere. (Yeah, I used the word "schadenfreude" - and I'm not afraid to do it again. I might even pull out "zeitgeist." Just watch me. I'll do it.)