Moonage Political Webdream

I heard someone on Foxnews or CNN comment that this election will be moreso a referendum on Obama than an election of competing candidates.  I tend to agree with that given the overwhelming support Obama gets from media.  Now, to me, that’s not as cynical as it sounds.  Part of being a national candidate is getting the media to acknowledge you.  Now, the Democrats have done a much better job of late cornering the free campaigning one gets from media.  But, as McCain is trying to get across the last week or so, that comes with a double edged sword.  If a candidate gets too smarmy with media, I think there is a public whiplash to it.  I think that had a lot to do with Al Gore’s perceived smugness that I truly think cost him the election.  It bit Hillary in that she was told she was the presumptive candidate long before she even had an opponent.  When she got surprised in a couple of primaries, she had to play catch up as the presumptive favorite.  When the media turned its lust to Obama, Hillary was toast.  Media is cruel to its mistakes.  Now, I gotta wonder if this perceived lust of the media isn’t getting to Obama.

A couple of months ago I did a little piece on Obama Bushisms.  Basically, poking a little fun at the thought of what “change” was there in replacing a President who muddled facts and words with a President who muddled facts and words.  Not much IMO.  But, Obama hasn’t let up from there.  For some reason, his campaign of “change” seems to have focused on “change of mind”.  In that a commitment in the past means nothing during the campaign of right now.  Leeched from Hot AIr.  In responce to the events of Katrina:

I agree with the President’s decision to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help replenish supply shortages resulting from Hurricane Katrina. Nearly all oil and natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico has been shut down, and releasing this oil will help increase production and stabilize prices. However, I do believe that this tragedy makes it very clear that that the reserve should only be used in the event of an emergency, and that we shouldn’t be tapping the reserve to provide a small, short-term decrease in gas prices.

And then, on July 7 of this year:

I do not believe that we should use the strategic oil reserves at this point. I have said and, in fact, supported a congressional resolution that said that we should suspend putting more oil into the strategic oil reserve, but the strategic oil reserve, I think, has to be reserved for a genuine emergency. You have a situation, let’s say, where there was a major oil facility in Saudi Arabia that was destroyed as a consequence of terrorist acts, and you suddenly had huge amounts of oil taken out of the world market, we wouldn’t just be seeing $4-a-gallon oil. We could see a situation where entire sectors of the country had no oil to function at all. And that’s what the strategic oil reserve has to be for.

But, that one was a beauty.  We didn’t need to fill the SPR, but we didn’t need to use it unless it was an emergency.  ( Gotta wonder where it was going to come from in a time of emergency if you never filled it in the first place? )

And now, during the “emergency” of an election:

Democrat Barack Obama called today for tapping the nation’s strategic oil reserves to help drive down gasoline prices, a shift from his previous position on the issue.

The reversal is the second refinement in Obama’s energy policy. Last week, he said that he would reluctantly consider accepting some offshore oil drilling. Obama had previously said he opposed such drilling, which is strongly backed by rival John McCain, who has urged that states be allowed to decide whether to drill.

Now, if the media didn’t love him so much, he wouldn’t have to worry about people catching on to promising whatever is expedient at the moment conflicting with whatever was expedient for the moment in the past.

Technorati Tags: gas, Media, obama, SPR

Tags: gas, Media, obama, SPR

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