Democrat Barack Obama said Friday that rival Hillary Clinton is trying to scare voters with a new television ad that raises the prospect of a foreign crisis over images of children asleep in their beds.
"We've seen these ads before," the Illinois senator said at a campaign event in Houston, Texas. "They're the kind that play on people's fears to scare up votes.
"Well, it won't work this time," he continued. "Because the question is not about picking up the phone. The question is: What kind of judgment will you make when you answer?"
The ad, launched Friday in Texas ahead of that state's crucial March 4 primary, shows children asleep in their beds in the middle of the night while a narrator references a potential national security crisis and asks, "It's 3 a.m. and your children are safely asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?"
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe denounced the ad in a conference call with reporters earlier Friday. And in his comments in Houston, Obama said, "We've had a red phone moment. It was the decision to invade Iraq. And Senator Clinton gave the wrong answer. George Bush gave the wrong answer. John McCain gave the wrong answer."
Told you he'd eat that "3am Children" ad that Hillary put up for breakfast.
And of course, he'll come back with a rebuttal that slaps her back:
"When that call gets answered, shouldn’t the president be the one – the only one – who had judgment and courage to oppose the Iraq war from the start… Who understood the real threat to America was al-Qaeda, in Afghanistan, not Iraq," the narrator continues. "Who led the effort to secure loose nuclear weapons around the globe… In a dangerous world, it’s judgment that matters."
Hillary has had "35 years of experience" by her own account, and she should have known better then to put out a cheap, not well thought out ad like that. She HAD to have known that it was going to blow up in her face, and here we are, and it did.
She's much better when she attacks him directly on things he HAS done rather than things he said he would do. For example:
At a rally in Waco, with more than two dozen military veterans and flag officers standing behind her, Clinton criticized Obama for being "missing in action" during key security decisions in the Senate and claimed that he had "no responsibility" when he gave an anti-war speech in 2002 as an Illinois state senator.
Her comments coincided with a new campaign ad released in Texas that asks voters who they want to answer the phone in the White House at 3 a.m. when "there's something happening in the world."
Obama criticized the ad earlier Friday, saying it was an attempt to "scare up votes."
Clinton disputed that notion in her speech Friday, saying, "Well I don't think people in Texas scare all that easily."
In a salvo against Obama that lasted several minutes, Clinton said, "
There's a big difference between giving a speech at anti war rally as a statesenator and dealing with an international crisis as president.""There's a difference between giving a speech when you have no responsibility," she argued, "and having to step up and take charge and take the responsibility for your actions."
She charged that Obama was "missing in action" when he missed a Senate vote last year on a nonbinding resolution in that labeled the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization (Clinton voted for the measure and faced heat from Obama and other Democratic rivals for supporting a measure pushed buy the Bush administration.)
She also said Obama was "missing in action" by failing in his chairmanship of a Senate subcommittee on Europe to hold a hearing on NATO's presence in Afghanistan, a fact she has emphasized in recent days on the campaign trail.
Directly attacking your opponent for their record as "missing in action" is a much better approach to chipping away at Obama's credibility.
I mean, come on, even Hillary's campaign manager should have known better. Do I need to give Hillary pointers? I'm available for the low, low price of $350,000.
Travis
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