McCain och Obamas bästa citat och värsta misstag

Politico har gått igenom den långa kampanjens ”best lines, worst gaffes”.

Några av kampanjens mest förödande misstag:

Obama

The gaffe: Obama introduces Sen. Joe Biden as “the next president of the United States.”
The occasion: Aug. 23 rally in Springfield, Ill.
The significance: With inexperience the salient knock against Obama, some deemed this slip Freudian, and the McCain campaign made quick work of it. “Barack Obama sounded as though he turned over the top spot on the ticket today to his new mentor,” mocked McCain spokesman Ben Porritt.

The gaffe: Obama says he wants to “spread the wealth around.”
The occasion: Oct. 13 conversation with Wurzelbacher at a campaign stop in Ohio
The significance: If Obama had simply omitted these four words in explaining his economic philosophy, we might never have heard of Joe the Plumber, and McCain would have had a far more difficult time lambasting Obama as a “socialist.”

McCain

The gaffe: McCain can’t remember how many homes he owns.
The occasion: Aug. 21 interview with Politico reporters Mike Allen and Jonathan Martin in Las Cruces, N.M.
The significance: Just a week after the $5 million goof, McCain further undermined his entire line of attack on Obama’s “elitism.”

The gaffe: McCain says “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.”
The occasion: Sept. 15 campaign rally in Jacksonville, Fla.
The significance: McCain had made this same statement on numerous occasions in the months leading up the Wall Street collapse, so there was a good chance these words would come back to bite him one way or another. But to offer them up once more, mid-bank meltdown, was one time too many.

Bästa oneliners för kampanjerna är antagligen dessa två:

McCain

The line: ”Sen. Obama, I’m not President Bush. … If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago.”
The occasion: Oct. 15 presidential debate at Hofstra University
The significance: Hands down, the most memorable line from the final presidential debate. Republican operatives could barely contain their excitement afterward — or their wish that this had been said in the first debate and not the final one.

Obama

The line: “John McCain likes to say that he’ll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell — but he won’t even go to the cave where he lives.”
The occasion: Aug. 28 Democratic National Convention speech
The significance: After weeks of enduring McCain campaign ridicule for his position on hunting down terrorists in Pakistan’s tribal area, Obama countered with the sharpest barb of his nomination speech, staking a claim on McCain’s war-on-terror turf.

[tags]usa, presidentvalet, barack obama, john mccain, usa-valet[/tags]