Notverybright wants to know how many houses John McCain owns. John McCain wants to know how many houses he owns, too. Obama knows, and here’s the answer:
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Seven. Or at least, that’s what we think. This house-owning stuff is hard.
When Chemists Attack
Science, science education, and other things
This is a silly ad for a few reasons:
1. McCain is rich. Obama is quickly getting rich off of book sales. Most big-name politicians are rich. Rich-bashing is silly- there are much more serious issues than who owns lots of houses.
2. August 20th was yesterday. They shot this ad and had Barack Obama do the voiceover in less than 24 hours?
3. McCain was answering the question of what Republicans are going to do if China overtakes us economically. Here’s what he said in context: “I still believe the fundamentals of our economy are strong. We’ve got terribly big challenges now, whether it be housing or employment or so many of the other — health care. It’s very, very tough times. It’s very tough. But we’re still the most innovative, the most productive, the greatest exporter, the greatest importer.”
He already said we’re in tough times- I don’t know what else you want him to say. It seemed like a hopeful Obama-esque “things are hard now but America is great at stuff” kind of reply.
4. I’m not an economist, but there’s no reason we couldn’t have strong fundamentals and short-term economic pain. Our fundamentals, and this economic question about China, are concerned with long-term stability, not with a cyclical (and painful) recession. If Obama wants to make an argument about how our fundamentals suck, that’s fine, but this ad doesn’t address that at all.
McCain is rich. Obama is quickly getting rich off of book sales. Most big-name politicians are rich. Rich-bashing is silly- there are much more serious issues than who owns lots of houses.
The power of the ad isn’t that McCain is filthy rich, although I’m guessing that your typical South Carolina McCain voter might not know how filthy rich McCain actually is.
It’s that McCain is so out of touch that he doesn’t even know how many houses he has.
And who says that the Obama campaign doesn’t have a recording of Obama saying “I’m Barack Obama and I approve this message”? 🙂