While Barack Obama was enthralling crowds in Germany on his way back from a trip to the Middle East that John McCain badgered him into taking (something I'm sure McCain was sorry he did), McCain was flailing about, trying anything to get some press, and seemingly forgetting that he too has made trips abroad and talked politics, though he's now criticizing Obama for this:
As his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, met one-on-one with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in the Middle East on Wednesday, Mr. McCain went on an awkward grocery-shopping trip with a mother and two children in a Pennsylvania supermarket and held a news conference at the dairy case. And as Mr. Obama spoke to a rousing crowd of more than 200,000 in Berlin on Thursday, Mr. McCain had a bratwurst lunch with the owner of a car dealership and other local business people at a German restaurant in Columbus.
McCain criticized Obama's trip and claimed that he wouldn't go and speak overseas as a candidate:
“Well, I’d love to give a speech in Germany, a political speech, or a speech that maybe the German people would be interested in, but I’d much prefer to do it as president of the United States rather than as a candidate for the office of presidency,” Mr. McCain told reporters outside Schmidt’s Restaurant und Sausage Haus, shortly before Mr. Obama began speaking at the Victory Column in the heart of Berlin. (The campaign’s choice of restaurant was consistent with the Republican National Committee’s decision to run anti-Obama advertisements in Berlin, N.H.; Berlin, Wis.; and Berlin, Pa.)
Instead, Mr. McCain said, he would be “campaigning across the heartland of America and talking about the issues that are challenging America today.”
But didn't John McCain just recently take a trip to Columbia to talk about fighting the drug trade, certainly an issue knee-deep in politics and policy? And didn't he go to Canada a couple of months back, talk about NAFTA and attack Obama directly? It would be nice if at least some of the media had pointed this out as McCain nastily attacked Obama yesterday.
|