{"id":16007,"date":"2008-06-26T13:25:23","date_gmt":"2008-06-26T17:25:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/16007.html"},"modified":"2008-06-26T13:25:23","modified_gmt":"2008-06-26T17:25:23","slug":"dr-no-is-almost-as-old-as-barack-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/dr-no-is-almost-as-old-as-barack-obama\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Dr. No’ is almost as old as Barack Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"

John McCain clearly wants to make unflattering Barack Obama comparisons, but he seems to be having a little trouble with cultural references. <\/p>\n

A couple of weeks ago, McCain said Obama reminds him of William Jennings Bryan<\/a>. Given that Bryan last ran for president literally 100 years ago, this was something of a dud. Shortly thereafter, McCain went with a Jimmy Carter reference, which is likely to fall flat with about half<\/a> the voters.<\/p>\n

Now, the McCain campaign is going with an ad, riffing off the first James Bond film, “Dr. No<\/a>,” which was released just one year after Barack Obama was born.<\/p>\n

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“No To Drilling Offshore Oil,” the web video says<\/a>, “No To A Gas Tax Holiday. No To Innovation. No To The Electric Car. No To Clean, Safe, Nuclear Energy. Barack Obama Truly Is The Dr. No Of Energy Security.”<\/p>\n

I suppose this might qualify as outside-the-box thinking, but the video is pretty ridiculous.
\n
\nFirst, of course, is the generational problem. James Bond movies remain popular, but if the campaign is sensitive about McCain’s status as a septuagenarian, picking a 46-year-old movie as a cultural reference might not be the best idea. (As Oliver Willis recently noted<\/a>, “McCain went from a 19th century comparison to a 20th century comparison. At some point in his campaign I suppose he might join Sen. Obama and the rest of us in the 21st century.”)<\/p>\n

Second, and more importantly, is the substance. Obama has said no to various McCain campaign ideas, but only because they’re bad ideas<\/i>. Obama opposes coastal drilling? Yes, and so did McCain up until a few days ago. Obama opposes a “gas-tax holiday”? Of course he does; even the McCain campaign concedes<\/a> that it wouldn’t lower the price of gas for consumers. Obama opposes “the electric car”? No, he opposes McCain’s gimmick for a battery bounty. Obama opposes “nuclear energy”? Actually, Obama was the only candidate in the Democratic field to suggest that expansion of nuclear power should be on the table as part of a broader discussion on energy policy.<\/p>\n

The irony is, McCain’s title can be just as easily applied to himself.<\/p>\n

* McCain said no to financial incentives<\/a> to produce clean wind energy.<\/p>\n

* McCain said no to subsidies for alternative fuels<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* McCain said no to supporting tax incentives<\/a> for renewable energy and energy efficiency.<\/p>\n

Remind me, who’s<\/i> supposed to be “Dr. No”?<\/p>\n

McCain’s new video is not only foolish, its message is actually backwards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John McCain clearly wants to make unflattering Barack Obama comparisons, but he seems to be having a little trouble with cultural references. A couple of weeks ago, McCain said Obama reminds him of William Jennings Bryan. Given that Bryan last ran for president literally 100 years ago, this was something of a dud. Shortly thereafter, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16007\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}