Campaign Problems

Charles Krauthammer on a character issue that may haunt the Obama campaign. An excerpt:

Obama’s political career was launched with Ayers giving him a fundraiser in his living room. If a Republican candidate had launched his political career at the home of an abortion-clinic bomber — even a repentant one — he would not have been able to run for dogcatcher in Podunk. And Ayers shows no remorse. His only regret is that he “didn’t do enough.”

Nicole Gelinas on flaws in the McCain mortgage buy-out plan. An excerpt:


McCain says that he’d limit his offer to people who “cannot make payments” on their current loans; who live in the home whose loan they want restructured; who can show that they didn’t falsify their original loan application; and who put some kind of payment down when they purchased the house. It could be an administrative nightmare to figure out who can or can’t afford his current mortgage: two families earning the same income with the same mortgage may have different spending habits, pushing one into foreclosure but not the other. McCain’s declaration of a vast new government program, which could encourage many more people to try their luck, only complicates things further.

The strangest thing about McCain’s proposal, though, is that he doesn’t seem to realize that it directly contradicts his own previous backing of the Paulson bill—for which he suspended his campaign, jetted to Washington, and lobbied his own party.