A thirty minute infomercial. Four million dollars. Seven networks, including BET. Replete with an Oval Office setting which complements his presumptuous presidential seal: 
Barack Obama made the best of the hundreds of millions of dollars he gained by reneging on his pledge to accept limited public financing, a pledge which John McCain also made, a pledge which John McCain kept, a pledge which made it financially impossible for John McCain to replicate such a blatant display of both greed and chutzpah.
With five days before Election Day, Obama’s bald-faced pitch for votes will go down in the annals of American elections as one of the greatest insults to the electorate and as one of the prime reasons for his victory, if that eventuality comes to pass.
Many people will no doubt forget that insult of a pledge unfulfilled or, considering our current society’s ambivalence toward morality, dismiss it as “just politics” and vote for a liar anyway and dismiss the inequity toward McCain and his supporters.
See here for one account of Obama’s infomercial, which was actually more akin to a sales pitch for a get-rich-quick scheme than for reasonable, thinking voters to cast their lot with him: http://news.aol.com/elections/article/obama-infomercial/230244?icid=200100397x1212001024x1200721779
Note, especially, the poll questions and responses. Only half the respondents said they watched all or part of it and thought it was a “good idea,” 57% thought Obama has run the best political ads, but 92% said such ads did not sway them.
Further down on that same page, 53% of those respondents indicated that McCain’s “personal story,” of fighting for his country, being imprisoned and tortured for 5 1/2 years, refusing early release from his imprisonment, spending decades in the Senate in service to his nation, “is more compelling.”
Yet, his personal story had no or little effect on 67% of them. Apparently, Obama’s “story” as a local Chicago activist/agitator and almost four years in the Senate of the United States carried more weight.
Check out MyWay.com for an analysis of the Hollywoodian spin used by Obama in his 30-minute effort to convince the undecideds that he’s not what he seems to be, namely an Obamian Candidate who has no reasonable or rational right to be running for president: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081030/D944H6R80.html.
As his own party’s Senator Hillary Clinton and his own VP nominee, Senator Joe Biden, have said, the presidency is not the place for someone to be looking to get some on-the-job experience.
Does that matter?
When that 3 a m call comes, and Biden believes that call, that test, will come within the first six months of an Obama administration, will Barack be ready to answer the call? Or will he ask for a pause in the crisis so that he can consult his handy-dandy presidential playbook so that he will know how to deal with it?
What he said in the first Democratic primary debate in South Carolina was that, “Well, the first thing we would have to do is, be certain we have an effective emergency response and good intelligence, and then be sure not to alienate the world community.”
One would hope the “world community” would listen up at 3 a m. If not, Obama would have to check his emergency response manual, consult Michelle, or wait until we are attacked again and again and again.
I’m guessing he will wait ’til Oliver Stone can produce an infomercial blaming it all on Bush.
