Article: Like Dukakis, Obama shrugged

[NJSecularist]

This is a very good article I found while searching the web. While I am a fan of Obama and voted for him in the primaries, this article - rather, an opinion piece - presents a very good case for why Hillary may be the best nominee - and why Obama's naivety, much like Kerry and Dukakis, about what the Republicans have in store for him in the fall may ultimately doom him.

http://www.pahrumpvalleytimes.com/2008/Feb-29-Fri-2008/opinion/20001001.html



I was plopped on this train and granted an interview with the Democratic presidential nominee. I asked Dukakis how he intended to fight back against the charge by Republicans that he was a "pastel patriot" who had vetoed the required recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in the public schools of Massachusetts.

Dukakis replied curtly that his state supreme court had given him an advisory opinion that the bill was unconstitutional. He said no one would fall for such nonsense. He shrugged. I mean literally.

As I walked out of the rail car, an Arkansas Democratic official -- no need to say which -- looked at me and rolled his eyes. I don't think it was about my question. I think it was about the answer.

Sixteen years later, another Democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry, also shrugged -- figuratively, if not literally. It was at the very notion that conservatives could discredit his war record.

Read the rest of the opinion piece for the gist - I can only post 4 paragraphs.