The Candidate We Still Don’t Know
Frank Rich

On occasion I read the NY Times Frank Rich Op-ed page just to see if he has developed ulcers from holding in his true feelings about Republicans.

The piece I read today must have been very therapeutic for him, both mentally and physically.

As I went on vacation at the end of July, Barack Obama was leading John McCain by three to four percentage points in national polls. When I returned last week he still was. But lo and behold, a whole new plot twist had rolled off the bloviation assembly line in those intervening two weeks: Obama had lost the election!

plot - twist - bloviation - Karl Rove - free pass - revelations

While reporters at The Post and The New York Times have been vetting McCain, many others give him a free pass. Their default cliche is to present him as the Old Faithful everyone already knows. They routinely salute his “independence,” his “maverick image” and his “renegade reputation” - as the hackneyed script was reiterated by Karl Rove in a Wall Street Journal op-ed column last week. At Talking Points Memo, the essential blog vigilantly pursuing the McCain revelations often ignored elsewhere, Josh Marshall accurately observes that the Republican candidate is “graded on a curve.”

Most Americans still don’t know, as Marshall writes, that on the campaign trail “McCain frequently forgets key elements of policies, gets countries’ names wrong, forgets things he’s said only hours or days before and is frequently just confused.”

I can just hear Frank saying, ‘I’m much better now.’

To appreciate the discrepancy in what we know about McCain and Obama, merely look at the coverage of the potential first ladies. We have heard too much indeed about Michelle Obama’s Princeton thesis, her pay raises at the University of Chicago hospital, her statement about being “proud” of her country and the false rumor of a video of her ranting about “whitey.” But we still haven’t been inside Cindy McCain’s tax returns, all her multiple homes or private plane.

Ahhh, it does my heart good to see Mr. Rich finally letting go of the hostility. It’s not healthy to keep things bottled up.

A few articles by (Columnist?) Frank Rich
The Grand Old White Party Confronts Obama
Frank Rich author of The Greatest Story Ever Sold

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