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Obama is pressed on the issue repeatedly on the campaign trail, but he refuses to budge, preferring to take pains to spell out his reasons.
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Posted by bruni
on August 08, 2008
Too Fit to Be President?
Facing an Overweight Electorate,
Barack Obama Might Find
Low Body Fat a Drawback
By AMY CHOZICK
August 1, 2008; Page W1
Speaking to donors at a San Diego fund-raiser last month, Barack Obama reassured the crowd that he wouldn’t give in to Republican tactics to throw his candidacy off track.
“Listen, I’m skinny but I’m tough,” Sen. Obama said.
But in a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama’s skinniness be a liability? Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them.
The candidate has been criticized by opponents for appearing elitist or out of touch with average Americans. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll conducted in July shows Sen. Obama still lags behind Republican John McCain among white men and suburban women who say they can’t relate to his background or perceived values.
“He’s too new … and he needs to put some meat on his bones,” says Diana Koenig, 42, a housewife in Corpus Christi, Texas, who says she voted for Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary.
“I won’t vote for any beanpole guy,” another Clinton supporter wrote last week on a Yahoo politics message board. Continue reading…
Posted by bruni
on August 05, 2008
“I don’t think [my ads are] negative,” McCain said at a news conference here. “I think we’re drawing the difference between us.”
The Obama campaign fired back quickly. “It’s downright sad that on a day when we learned that 51,000 Americans lost their jobs, a candidate for the presidency is spending all of his time and the powerful platform he has on these sorts of juvenile antics,” spokesman Hari Sevugan said. The new McCain spot, titled “The One,” opens like a Hollywood movie trailer, with a deep-voiced announcer declaring: “In 2008, the world will be blessed. They will call him: The One.” It then cuts to some of Obama’s loftier moments — his declaration that “we are the ones we have been waiting for,” and part of his speech upon clinching the Democratic nomination: “This was the moment when the rise of our oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
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