Obama gets IT – “We’ve got serious problems and we need serious people” – The American President (1995)
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Barack Obama called out John McCain in his speech tonight. Obama gave a Michael-Douglas-type of invitation to John McCain. In “The American President”, Douglass’ character (President Andrew Shepherd) spent most of the movie getting beat up by his Republican challenger Senator Bob Rumson, played brillantly by Richard Dreyfuss. Towards the end of the the film, Shepherd calls out Rumson by saying “If you want to talk about character and American values, fine, just tell me where and when and I’ll show up.”
The most amazing aspect of this speech was that it was bold and yet humble. Obama deftly handled the national defense issue in a way that was pretty clever; linking the successful Democratic presidents of the past to the two major international incidents of the last 70 years – FDR & WWII / JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The best line of the speech has to be “John McCain says he will follow Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell; he won’t even follow him to his cave.”
Obama says he gets it. Change doesn’t come from Washington; change goes to Washington. He may be right but if he is able to maintain his unique balance of strength, substance and style…change may be coming to Washington in sixty-seven days.
5 Responses to “Obama gets IT – “We’ve got serious problems and we need serious people” – The American President (1995)”
Amen!!
Re: “The best line of the speech has to be “John McCain says he will follow Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell; he won’t even follow him to his cave.”
There were about twenty-one more “best lines.”
One funny thing is that best line is a modification of a Jon Stewart take-down of McCain a couple weeks ago. Stewart's line was “He'll go to the gates of hell, but not to Pakistan.”
Am I to believe that the man who wants to sit down with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and have tea will go with the troops against Bin Laden in Pakistan?
Forgive me for being skeptical, but I'll put more faith in the Democratic Party if they replce Obama with Joe Biden's mom, who knows you go out and bloody the nose of bullies and don't try to muli-nationally negoate with them.
Leo, when did he ever say he wanted to have tea? He said he would be open to negotiation. It would be like saying that Reagan just wanted to have tea when he met with the leader of the Evil Empire in a series of summits.
Secondly, Obama has stated that if he knew where Bin Laden was in Pakistan, he would strike unilaterally, while McCain has said he would not. Of course, that might be the wrong position and that's a fine argument to make. But worst case scenario, Obama's lying about getting Bin Laden and therefore agrees with McCain's stated position.
Don't listen to Leonidas, I think he is getting McCain-points for spreading smears on internet message boards.