Jennifer Rubin, writing over at Commentary Magazine, explains how Barack Obama made a really bad move with his effort to drown John McCain in an oil slick.“Hoist with his own petard!”–or oil rig, I suppose–is what the McCain camp is crowing about with regard to campaign donations from “oil companies.” Barack Obama, who accused John McCain of receiving big money from big oil companies, it seems has received more money than McCain from the employees of the biggest oil companies. This sound familiar? He did it in the primary. He tried the same game, a lie really, when he accused Hillary Clinton of taking lobbyist and oil company company. That’s illegal of course and it turned out that he took his fair share of money from oil company employees.
Well, it happened again. And plenty of media outlets are calling foul. In fact, Obama had mounted a swift negative attack against McCain (with a cool Exxon logo) because of donations that McCain received from oil company employees. Now it turns out that among employees of big oil companies Obama leads in donations. By a lot. So the Obama team has more headaches in what was already a rotten week. The media always loves a good hypocrisy tale...
So that’s a long way of saying this was a cynical ploy that went awry at a very inopportune time for The One. And aside from the political karma of this specific issue, there is more at work (which explains why the McCain camp is so giddy). This certainly is one more nail in the coffin of the New Politics canard. Obama was going to bring an end to gotcha politics? An end to made-up issues? Not from The One. He appears to be strictly old school. And what’s more, this time around his fan club in the mainstream media is leading the boos.
