Four years ago, presidential nominee Barack Obama told the Democratic National Convention:
“If you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things.”
Fast-forward to Big Bird — a minuscule issue in a massively significant election.
Obama can’t seem to find anything else to talk about these days except that outsized piece of puppet poultry.
That, and how Mitt Romney wants to cut the federal subsidy to PBS.
As the Republican National Committee notes, Obama has mentioned Big Bird and Tickle Me Elmo no less than 13 times since losing the Denver debate last week.
In the same period, he hasn’t uttered word one about the terrorist attack that took four Americans’ lives in Benghazi — the one Obama & Co. kept insisting was not actually a terrorist attack at all.
And while Romney may be the one who supposedly wants to “kill” him, it’s Obama who’s under fire from Big Bird.
Sesame Workshop yesterday demanded that the Obama campaign pull an attack ad against Romney that focuses on Big Bird and uses his feathery yellow image.
“We have approved no campaign ads,” the company said, “and as is our general practice, have requested that the ad be taken down.”
Team Obama’s response: We’ll take it under further advisement.
Talk about disrespecting an icon.
Actually, given that even usually friendly journalists have ridiculed the ad as “goofy” and ineffective, you have to wonder why the campaign wants to keep it on the air.
Particularly since its small-minded message contrasts so ridiculously with the comprehensive foreign-policy speech Romney delivered just the day before.
But the answer seems obvious: Barack Obama has nothing substantive to say.
As he himself put it so well back in 2008, he doesn’t have a record he feels comfortable running on — so he’s trying to make the election about small things.
Like how Muppets need to fear a Romney presidency.
But you’d think that Obama would have something to say about 12 million Americans unemployed (not counting those who’ve given up looking for a job) and $6-a-gallon gas in California.
Not to mention that terrorist attack.