Imagining the Election: A battle of archetypes

This is an excellent compare and contrast piece on the two main candidates in the 20088 Presidential campaign. It speaks of each candidates strengths as well as their weakness. I found it to be an enjoyable read, and I hope you do as well.

One way to envision the McCain-Obama presidential race is as a boxing match — particularly like the famous Mohammed Ali championship fights.

The deliberate McCain is like a Sonny Liston or George Foreman trying to cut the ring in half and force his lighter-footed opponent onto the ropes. For McCain, this comes in the form of numerous proposed town-hall debates, where he hopes that face-to-face questions and answers will fall on his less-seasoned opponent like sudden haymakers.

In turn, Obama is like Ali; his style is to keep moving — and stay out of reach of his opponent. Obama does this through rhetorically masterful addresses to large, adoring crowds. He knows that the more McCain is forced to spar at a distance via set speeches in front of a teleprompter, the more he wears down the elder senator, who appears outclassed on the evening news.

Or maybe the better analogy is Aesop’s fable of the tortoise and the hare. At 71, a slower McCain keeps plodding along at a steady pace, hoping that an overconfident, dashing Obama will rest on his wide lead in many polls, coast, make some more gaffes, and then let him crawl on by. Something like that happened in the Republican primary when the once dead-last, written-off McCain eventually walked past all his front-running rivals.

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reply to post by LLoyd45


Not bad, from what i take of it, it seems as if the author is saying "Cmon McCain, you should easily be able to beat Obama" and discredits McCain for not being able to beat Obama, much the way The democrats blasted Kerry for not being able to beat Bush.

But i find this one snippet

Can McCain the combat veteran still take down Obama as the liberal proponent of gun control? Nope. Obama says he supports the recent Supreme Court decision striking down Washington, D.C., gun laws — attributing his earlier approval of similar gun-control legislation to the indiscretions of an aide who filled out a questionnaire wrongly.

Most interesting, but what obama actually said about the DC gun control was

Q: Is the D.C. law prohibiting ownership of handguns consistent with an individual's right to bear arms?

A: As a general principle, I believe that the Constitution confers an individual right to bear arms. But just because you have an individual right does not mean that the state or local government can't constrain the exercise of that right, in the same way that we have a right to private property but local governments can establish zoning ordinances that determine how you can use it.

Q: But do you still favor the registration & licensing of guns?

A: I think we can provide common-sense approaches to the issue of illegal guns that are ending up on the streets. We can make sure that criminals don't have guns in their hands. We can make certain that those who are mentally deranged are not getting a hold of handguns. We can trace guns that have been used in crimes to unscrupulous gun dealers that may be selling to straw purchasers and dumping them on the streets.

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So .... the author got it wrong

Originally posted by Andrew E. Wiggin
So .... the author got it wrong

I'm not sure if he did or not. Barack has a history of blaming his staffers and aides when things go wrong.

This is probably the one thing about him that troubles me so much. If a man won't own up to mistakes, and blames others instead, I have no use for him in any capacity.

I've made a lot of mistakes myself over the years, but owned up to them at great expense to myself, my career, and at times my integrity. I like to think it made me a better person.

I've even accepted responsibility when a subordinate of mine screwed things up. Maybe I'm just a sucker and too idealistic at times..