Catch-phrases
February 13th, 2008“In your heart, you know he’s right.” That’s what they used to say about John McCain’s hero, Barry Goldwater back in 1964. Democrats countered, “In your guts you know he’s nuts!” Allen Iverson once said, in response to criticism from his coaches in the media that he didn’t care about practice and missed it: “What are we talking about? We’re talking about practice? Practice? Not the game, not the game, not the game that I live and die for, but practice?! What are we talking about, man?” Senator McCain asks, What’s Obama talking about? “Platitudes?” Platitudes?! Platitudes! When I heard those comments this morning, I must confess to smiling wide and enjoying the show, because Obama does speak in platitudes and offers little in terms of substance. He is a flower-girl politician with wonderful little phrases that ultimately don’t add up to more than rhetoric. If he continues his campaign as if he were Adlai Stevenson or Michael Dukakis, John McCain is going to eat his lunch! Speaking of which, Walter Mondale turned to his opponents in 1984 and asked, “Where’s the beef?” during a debate. How much have things changed since then, when we are talking about platitudes?