Response that Barack Might Make to McCain's Attack Ads

Like it or not, I am embroiled in defending my candidate for President. And although it appears that I am not likely to convince the only person who responded to my post just before this one, perhaps there are others who might listen to reason. (And it would help my morale if even one of them would comment.)

Drew Westen wrote in the Huffington Post today, and I pass on to my readers Drew's suggested response that Obama might make to the slime that McCain has recently approved for TV attacks on Obama.


"Senator McCain, I don't presume to know what's in your heart.

I don't presume to know why you were in the minority even in your party in voting against the Martin Luther King holiday;

any more than I presume to know what you were thinking when you and President Bush were eating birthday cake at your home in Arizona when people were hanging from the rooftops--not just black people--in New Orleans during Katrina.

I don't presume to know what was in your heart when you suddenly reversed course this week from supporting affirmative action programs aimed at giving people who are willing to work hard a hand up and not a handout --

to suddenly supporting a ballot initiative in your home state that would set the clock back 40 years --

when you had previously described those ballot initiatives as thinly veiled efforts to divide American against American.


"But I'll tell you what I do know. Your party has used race to try to divide us in every election since 1968.

You have personally attacked my patriotism, and you're not going to do it again.

You've spoken to me in patronizing ways that frankly a man of your limited knowledge of the issues that confront the American people--who can't even keep straight who the warring factions are in the Middle East, which is supposedly your strong suit --

and who is so out of touch on the economy that his first response to the mortgage crisis was to blame it on the victims of unscrupulous lenders--has no business doing --

and you will not speak to me that way again.

You and your wife have attacked my character and the character of my wife, and I suggest you not try that again, because that is a road you do not want to go down.

I have always assumed that you were a man of honor, but frankly, your relentlessly negative attacks on me and your indifference to the truth is starting to make a lot of Americans wonder.

For a man who said he wanted to run an honorable campaign, how many weeks and how many phone calls from Karl Rove did it take you to find the low road?

"My comments were intended simply to warn the American people not to be taken in by efforts to paint me as different, as outside the mainstream, as not like them, as not sharing their values, because they are attempts to divide Americans in a way that is un-American.

No more, no less.

Do I think you or your Republican allies will use my race to try to drive that point home? It's already been done.

Did Fox News ever refer to your wife as your "Baby Mama?"

And what exactly did your surrogate, Terry Hill, mean last week when he described me on national television as "more politician than he is American"?

"Senator, I believe we are one nation, under God, indivisible, and I will do everything in my power as president, and in this campaign, to keep it that way. I suggest you aspire to the same standard. That's what I believe it means to be an American."