Democratic Senator Barack Obama has responded to President George Bush and presumptive Republican nominee Senator John McCain — calling Bush’s suggestion that he favored “appeasement” of terrorists “appalling” and blasting McCain’s agreement with Bush on the issue.
He called the attacks “dishonest and divisive” and accused McCain of “hypocrisy” for going after him despite having advocated talking to foes himself. He also cited various Republicans bigwigs and policymakers who also advocate dialogue. Here is his speech, via TPM:
Barack Obama struck back hard at President Bush and John McCain Friday, accusing them of hypocrisy and of distorting his position on dialogue with nations hostile to the United States, telling a South Dakota crowd that “I’m running for president to change course, not to continue George Bush’s course.”
“I want to be perfectly clear with George Bush and John McCain, and with the people of South Dakota,” he said at a Watertown campaign stop. “If George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate about protecting the United States of America, that is a debate that I’m happy to have any time, any place and that is debate I will win because George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for.”
In his comments before the Israeli Knesset Thursday, Bush seemed to equate the Illinois senator’s foreign policy views with those of Nazi appeasers in the years before World War II, though he did not mention any names. Obama strongly criticized the president for the remarks Friday, calling them “the kind of appalling attack that’s divided our country and that alienates us from the world.”
Read it all.
Democrats should be heartened by Obama’s response. He shows here that he can not only respond quickly, but eloquently and with some humor as well. He used Bush’s comments to further tether McCain to Bush and use it as an argument for a change not only in policies but in the tone and seriousness of discussion of issues.
UPDATE: The Los Angeles’ Times Top of the Ticket blog has an interesting take on it — and “update” comments from McCain indicating that the presumptive GOP nominee is indeed saying “me, too” to Bush’s comments.
Signaling he’s not about to let the “appeasement” issue die, Barack Obama moments ago scored President Bush and John McCain on foreign policy. Speaking at a forum on agricultural issues in Watertown, S.D., Obama slammed the Republicans for contending that he was willing to negotiate with terrorists.
McCain is once again squarely aligning himself with Bush:
McCain’s spokesman, responds. “It was remarkable to see Barack Obama’s hysterical diatribe in response to a speech in which his name wasn’t even mentioned. These are serious issues that deserve a serious debate, not the same tired partisan rants we heard today from Senator Obama. Sen. Obama has pledged to unconditionally meet with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — who pledges to wipe Israel off the map, denies the Holocaust, sponsors terrorists, arms America’s enemies in Iraq and pursues nuclear weapons. What would Sen. Obama talk about with such a man? It would be a wonderful thing if we lived in a world where we don’t have enemies. But that is not the world we live in, and until Sen. Obama understands that, the American people have every reason to doubt whether he has the strength, judgment and determination to keep us safe.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.