For the first time, bloggers were credentialed to cover the annual meeting of the
Newspaper Association of
America. So I had a
good seat during Barack Obama's speech at the Associated Press annual luncheon.
Obama was introduced by
William Dean Singleton who thanked him for the "first sold out Associated Press luncheon in 162 years." Obama quickly made
mincemeat of John McCain:
Now, Senator McCain and the Republicans in Washington are already looking ahead to the fall and have decided that they plan on using these comments to argue that I'm out of touch with what's going on in the lives of working Americans. I don't blame them for this -- that's the nature of our political culture, and if I had to carry the banner for eight years of George Bush's failures, I'd be looking for
something else to talk about too.
But I will say this. If John McCain wants to turn this election into a contest about which party is out of touch with the struggles and the hopes of working America, that's a debate I'm happy to have. In fact, I think that's a debate we need to have. Because I believe that the real insult to the millions of hard-working Americans out there would be a continuation of the economic agenda that has dominated Washington for far too long.
I may have made a mistake last week in the words that I chose, but the other party has made a much more damaging mistake in the failed policies they've chosen and the bankrupt philosophy they've embraced for the last three decades.
Obama said "running for George Bush's third term" is a bad bet. Instead, he's "making a different bet. I'm betting on the American people."
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