McCain, Palin should 'rein it in': Gergen

This is why Obama needs to tell the full story of his relationship with William Ayers as soon as possible. In the absence of disclosed facts that square with what is in the public realm, people assume the worst. Even though I read yesterday that Todd Palin has provided an affidavit in the Troopergate case, until that information is in the public realm, there will be suspicions. At least when as much information is available as possible, opinions can be better informed and less emotional.

The institution that bears the greatest responsibility for the current failings of this campaign is the news media.

The media has failed to ask the hard questions of Barack Obama and instead treats him as the second coming of the messiah.

Many supporters of John McCain have observed the double standard that allows the mocking of McCain and Palin and ignore the failings of Obama and Biden.

This has led to the challenging of the media at the McCain events and I do not feel it will end when the election is over.

The media should report the news and leave their personal opinions at home or for the editorial pages!

Keep em talkin! Keep em talkin! keep em talkin! The more McCain and Palin talk about Bill Ayers and that other garbage the more ridiculous they sound. The media needs to discuss the Sarah's involvement with the American Independence Party and why she has a relationship with an organization that has espoused secession from the U.S. That is a curiosity that the American voters who view her as a goddess should know.

They should rein it in, but they won't. If they did, what else would they have to talk about?

The Ayers thing is such old news it's not even funny. You don't think something would have come out by now if there was anything to this? It's a story that has been vetted for over 20 months. Lots of people have ties to Ayers - Ayers is currently a Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Education. His interests include teaching for social justice, urban educational reform, narrative and interpretive research, children in trouble with the law, and related issues.[35]

He began his career in primary education while an undergraduate, teaching at the Children’s Community School (CCS), a project founded by a group of students and based on the Summerhill method of education. After leaving the underground, he earned an M.Ed from Bank Street College in Early Childhood Education (1984), an M.Ed from Teachers College, Columbia University in Early Childhood Education (1987) and an Ed.D from Teachers College, Columbia University in Curriculum and Instruction (1987).

He has edited and written many books and articles on education theory, policy and practice, and has appeared on many panels and symposia.

Ayers worked with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley in shaping the city's school reform program,and was one of three co-authors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge grant proposal that in 1995 won $49.2 million over five years for public school reform. In 1997 Chicago awarded him its Citizen of the Year award for his work on the project. Since 1999 he has served on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, an anti-poverty, philanthropic foundation established as the Woods Charitable Fund in 1941. According to Ayers, his radical past occasionally affects him, as when, by his account, he was asked not to attend a progressive educators' conference in the fall of 2006 on the basis that the organizers did not want to risk an association with his past.

Obama's history (limited as it is) is well known. Get over it people you are going to lose the election on substance alone. Your candidate and his pick for VP are laughable.

This year could have changed things. The G.O.P. had three urbane presidential candidates. But the class-warfare clichés took control. Rudy Giuliani disdained cosmopolitans at the Republican convention. Mitt Romney gave a speech attacking “eastern elites.” (Mitt Romney!) John McCain picked Sarah Palin.

Palin is smart, politically skilled, courageous and likable. Her convention and debate performances were impressive. But no American politician plays the class-warfare card as constantly as Palin. Nobody so relentlessly divides the world between the “normal Joe Sixpack American” and the coastal elite.

She is another step in the Republican change of personality. Once conservatives admired Churchill and Lincoln above all — men from wildly different backgrounds who prepared for leadership through constant reading, historical understanding and sophisticated thinking. Now those attributes bow down before the common touch.

And so, politically, the G.O.P. is squeezed at both ends. The party is losing the working class by sins of omission — because it has not developed policies to address economic anxiety. It has lost the educated class by sins of commission — by telling members of that class to go away.---David Brooks (link to the rest of the article, below))

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/opinion/10brooks.html?em

What has happened that there seem to be no Republicans like there used to be: Dirksen, Taft, Eisenhower, Warren, men of conscience and integrity? I though McCain was one in 2000. What happened to him?

The McCain campaign calls Obama "too risky for America" in a new Web ad that focuses on his political relationship with Bill Ayers, a founding member of the radical Weather Underground

The now-defunct Weather Underground was involved in bombings in the early 1970s, including attacks on the Pentagon and the Capitol. Obama was a young child at the time of the bombings.

Obama and Ayers, now a university professor, met in 1995, when both worked with a nonprofit group trying to raise funds for a school improvement project and a charitable foundation. CNN's review of project records found nothing to suggest anything inappropriate in the volunteer projects in which the two men were involved.

McCain isn't interested in "the truth", he knows there's no story here. It's all about smear. His latest---Obama tried to influence Iraqi leaders for his own personal ambitions. Sickening, how far the "country first" Rethuglicans will go to stay in office.

Obama's lead is at its biggest point polling today is showing. So much for the 'gloves off' kitchen-sink strategy of McSame. Help me Rick Davis!! What should I say?! At least this train wreck is coming to an end in 3 weeks. The Repubs are in serious trouble and could lose 8-12 Senate seats. They are a fractured party, and the financial conservatives are now distancing themselves from the sociopsycho conservatives (the ones yelling 'kill him'?)

The subject line should read - You're gonna love this.........

Here's a junior (1st term) senator and the leader of a foreign country. Where's he (Obama), or anybody at his level get off doing this? He's threatens the well-being of our country!

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/10/obama-sought-to-sway-iraqis-on-bush-deal/

He's threatens the well-being of our country!

Posted by: Driver | October 10, 2008 6:05 PM

Right. Four more years. BTW, how's your 401K doing?

The Democratic party was desperate and found Obama. They use dirty trick linking McCain to the war and the bailout crisis to get votes from McCain. People find out that Obama does not have as much experience as the democrats have claimed.

I fear David Brooks, even bearing gifts. But agree with him n a few things:

Trying to bite your opponent's ear off is considered a declasse tactic, Sarah Baby, according to Mike Tyson.

Citizen Kane trashing Susan Alexander's boudoir after she walked out on him---not a pretty picture, John McC.

Is there going to come a point in the next days or weeks when you and Sarah will just lie back and enjoy it???

I think some of the people here are missing the point. If the republics don’t tone down their rhetoric, the nut cases may start shooting at Obama supporters, or maybe just anyone they think supports him. Isn’t this akin to inciting violence against a public official, or possibly each other. I’m glad that a least the supreme court let me keep my guns, I may need them to protect my family. And this mess that the Rove slime machine has created will result in the destruction of the republic party. Not that I care about the right anyway, having always been a democrat, but we need to stop this hate mongering. “United we stand, divided we fall” are words once spoken by one of our greatest presidents, words that seem to fall on deft ears in today’s politics. If anyone can’t see the attempt by republics to divide this country, you’d have to be blinder than a bat, and dumber than a rock. So what happened to country first? How can the republics claim to be good for the country, when their trying to divide it? What will it take to stop their fear mongering? Blood in the streets?

David Gergan must be pitching for a job with Obama, Everytime he speaks about him you can see him drooling.

If Ayers is so dangerous, then why isn't he in jail or exiled?

McCain has lost the thoughtful independents like myself because I worry that he's living in the past. He can't seem to get past the Viet Nam years.

Is there a more serious psychological defect lurking in the background?