Obama Talks Lipstick and McCain
Obama Talks Lipstick and McCain | The Trail | washingtonpost.com
Updated 11:27 p.m.
By Peter Slevin
NORFOLK, Va. -- Sen. Barack Obama branded the McCain campaign's assault on his "lipstick on a pig" comments as a "phony and foolish" diversion that diminishes political debate and hurts American voters.
"Enough," Obama declared. "I don't care what they say about me. But I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and Swift Boat politics. Enough is enough."
"We've got an energy crisis," Obama said at a campaign event where he had planned to focus entirely on education policy. "We have an education system that is not working for too many of our children and making us less competitive. We have an economy that is creating hardship for families all across America. We've got two wars going on, veterans coming home not being cared for -- and this is what they want to talk about.
"You know who ends up losing at the end of the day? It's not the Democratic candidate. It's not the Republican candidate. It's you, the American people. Because then we go another year, or another four years or another eight years without addressing the issues that matter to you."
Obama made the lipstick comment Tuesday night in Lebanon, Va., while dismissing Republican rival Sen. John McCain's claim to be an agent of change in Washington. Listing a host of issues on which he said McCain has the same position as President Bush, Obama said, "That's not change."
"That's just calling something that's the same thing something different," Obama continued. "You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper and call it change. It's still going to stink, after eight years.
"We've had enough of the same old thing."
The McCain campaign immediately saw an opening to attack. Surrogates said Obama was targeting Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who had likened herself to a pit bull with lipstick at last week's Republican National Convention in her speech accepting the vice presidential nomination.
Within minutes, Republican operatives arranged for former Massachusetts governor Jane Swift to talk with reporters by conference call. She called Obama's comments "disgusting" and contended that Obama had called Palin a pig.
"As far as I know," Swift said, when asked by a reporter how she could be so sure, "she's the only one of the presidential candidates or vice presidential candidates who wears lipstick."
By dawn, the McCain campaign had issued a video press release, quickly picked up by television, calling the remark a "smear."
The McCain campaign has been saying that this year's campaign will be decided by the candidates' personalities and biographies, and less by their positions on the issues.
In the Washington Post/ABC News poll released this week, 48 percent of respondents said the candidates' positions on issues are their main concern, compared with 37 percent who said they place greater weight on personal qualities such as experience and leadership.
Among issue voters, Obama is leading McCain 56 to 37 percent.
Among so-called personal quality voters, McCain is ahead 56 to 39 percent.
In the past 24 hours, Obama has held substantive events in the battleground states of Ohio and Virginia to discuss education policy and a press conference to set out his thoughts about Iraq and Afghanistan. Neither got the nearly attention the McCain camp received when it made an issue of the lipstick and the pig.
Obama criticized the media's handling of the McCain camp's allegation.
"What their campaign has done this morning," Obama said, "is the same game that has made people sick and tired of politics in this country. They seize on an innocent remark, try to take it out of context, throw up an outrageous ad, because they know that it's catnip for the media."
Obama told his audience here about his remark and the McCain campaign's response. People laughed.
"See, it would be funny," Obama replied, "except of course the news media all decided that was the lead story yesterday."
A questioner at Norfolk's Granby High School asked Obama how he will combat the McCain campaign's attacks.
"Our job is to just drum home, day after day, the facts. I still have faith that the truth will out in the end," Obama said. "We are going to hammer away at the fact that the stakes in this election are too high."
Asking the assembled press corps to take notice, he said the McCain campaign is using the media all too well.
"The other side, they're not good at governing, but they're good at running campaigns. They're very good at understanding what piques the media's interest," Obama said. "This whole thing about lipstick, nobody actually believes that these folks are offended.
"Everybody knows it's cynical. Everybody knows it's insincere," Obama said. "The media knows it."
While Obama was still speaking, McCain spokesman Brian Rogers fired back.
"Barack Obama can't campaign with schoolyard insults," Rogers wrote in an e-mail to reporters, "and then try to claim outrage at the tone of the campaign."
Washington Post polling director Jon Cohen contributed to this report from Washington.
Public opinion reflects the results on the ground, and it's shifting. 
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