Say Anything Blog

This is Obama campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs responding on Thursday to criticism of Obama’s “I don’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.” comments:

“What Barack Obama was talking about was that he didn’t get here after spending decades in Washington,” Gibbs said Thursday. “There is nothing more to this than the fact that he was describing that he was new to the political scene. He was referring to the fact that he didn’t come into the race with the history of others. It is not about race.”

Apparently the nature of Obama’s comments have changed since Thursday, and now Obama himself is saying the comments really were about race, but that he wasn’t accusing McCain of being a racist:

Obama also was asked about his comments this week regarding what he said would be the Republican attack, comments which the McCain campaign said were playing the race card. Obama turned back to the room of reporters noting that many were on hand in Missouri when he said things like the fact he didn’t look like presidents on currency.

“Almost none of you, maybe none of you, thought that I was making a racially incendiary remark or playing the race card,” he said. “It wasn’t until John McCain’s team started pushing it, that it ended up being on the front page of the New York Times two days in a row.”

He then looked broadly, repeating the idea that he does not “come out of central casting,” noting, “I’m young, I’m new to the national scene, my name is Barack Obama, I am African-American, I was born in Hawaii, I spent time in Indonesia. I do not have the typical biography of a presidential candidate.”

“Let me be clear,” he said later. “In no way do I think that John McCain’s campaign was being racist, I think they’re cynical. And I think they want to distract people from talking about the real issues.”

Obama’s denial might explain his “dollar bill” comments, but they don’t explain these comments from June which clearly attempt to indict his political critics as racists:

    “We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid.

  “They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”

Obama says that nobody in the media called him out on his comments until the McCain campaign criticized him because of it.  But is it really surprising that the fawning national media wouldn’t criticize Obama over such a blatant smear of his critics until McCain made a big deal of it so that they couldn’t ignore it?

Also, I’d like someone to ask Obama why he thinks his difference in appearance as compared to past Presidents qualifies him to be the next President.  I thought we were supposed to be living in a society where things like appearance, particularly skin color, don’t matter.

If Obama thinks his skin color doesn’t matter, why does he keep bringing it up?  Heck, why is he the only person bringing it up?