{"id":693,"date":"2008-08-29T13:25:56","date_gmt":"2008-08-29T18:25:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/2008\/08\/29\/obama-and-biden\/"},"modified":"2008-08-29T13:25:56","modified_gmt":"2008-08-29T18:25:56","slug":"obama-and-biden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/29\/obama-and-biden\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama and Biden"},"content":{"rendered":"

I actually watched Obama’s speech at the convention last night.  It’s the first political speech I’ve seen in a long time, which may make my perspective either ignorant or fresh.  I actually expected, because of his reputation, to be convinced by Obama that he would be a fine president, even if I disagreed with some\/most of his policies.  That, however, was not my impression from his speech.  What I kept thinking, over and over again, throughout the first half of his speech is, “that’s a lie,” “that’s not true,” “that’s deceptive.”  I believe that he was fundamentally dishonest.  He was lying, and he knows it<\/em>.  Now, John McCain may be no better in this category, I don’t know.  Maybe I misunderstand the genre of political speech.  But my honest impression is that he said what he did for political points, not because it is true or he believes it (excluding, perhaps, some things at the end).  At the end of the broadcast, the commentators said that McCain had issued a point-by-point rebuttal.  I felt like I could have easily written one myself, without any reference to Obama’s competition.  But I didn’t and I won’t.  Nor am I going to take the time to read McCain’s rebuttal.  But you can<\/a>, if you want. <\/p>\n

In looking for the rebuttal, I found this McCain ad<\/a>, congratulating Obama.  It strikes me as completely sincere.  <\/p>\n

Krauthammer’s take<\/a> on the speech\/convention is different than mine.  He argues that no one attested to Obama’s leadership because no one can. <\/p>\n

Many of the readers of this blog are younger than me, and so they may not remember the plagiarism scandal that doomed Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in 1988.  I wasn’t carefully following Democratic primary races at that time, so I didn’t know all of the details.  Does character matter?  Does what someone did 20 years ago matter?  Those answers depend in part on the age of the guilty (plagiarism is different when you’re 16 than when you’re 36), and whether it’s a one-time offense or a pattern.  I had the mistaken impression that Biden’s error was a one-time youthful indiscretion.  This article in Slate tells you “Why Biden’s plagiarisms shouldn’t be forgotten<\/a>.” <\/p>\n

The Palin choice strikes me as brilliant.  Time will tell. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I actually watched Obama’s speech at the convention last night.  It’s the first political speech I’ve seen in a long time, which may make my perspective either ignorant or fresh.  I actually expected, because of his reputation, to be convinced by Obama that he would be a fine president, even if I disagreed with some\/most\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-things-i-should-avoid-writing-about"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}