The Associated Press ran this story yesterday asking:

The voices are growing louder asking the question: Is Barack Obama all style and little substance? The freshman Illinois senator began his campaign facing the perception that he lacks the experience to be president, especially compared to rivals with decades of work on foreign and domestic policy. So far, he’s done little to challenge it. He’s delivered no policy speeches and provided few details about how he would lead the country.

No policy speeches? What about this one on March 21? Or this one on March 2? Those are both specific foregin policy speeches. There’s this one from January 25, right after he started his exploratory committee, calling for universal health care.

For the life of me, I can’t figure out why the Associated Freakin’ Press couldn’t look at his issues page and see the specifics of what he’s proposed thus far.

Bill Kristol is an idiot. On February 11, remarking on Senator Obama’s announcement speech in Springfield, IL., he said:

We’re electing a war president in 2008. If I can go back to Obama and Lincoln for just one second, Lincoln’s “house divided” speech in 1858 was a speech saying we cannot live as a house divided on slavery. And he implicitly says we’ll have to fight a civil war if necessary on this.

Obama’s speech is a “can’t we get along” speech — sort of the opposite of Lincoln. He would have been with Stephen Douglas in 1858. Let’s paper over these differences, rise above politics and all get along. That’s not Giuliani’s mode. And I think in a war context, social conservatives want to win the war against Islamic jihadism.

Apparently Kristol flunked US History in high school. The House Divided speech was about the importance of preserving the union. Lincoln never remotely advocated fighting a civil war over slavery. Yes, he spoke greatly about his fear of the spread of slavery. But he never advocated war.

You can read Lincoln’s House Divided speech here.

Obama screwed up his timelines in his Selma, Alabama speech.

What happened in Selma, Alabama and Birmingham also stirred the conscience of the nation. It worried folks in the White House who said, “You know, we’re battling Communism. How are we going to win hearts and minds all across the world? If right here in our own country, John, we’re not observing the ideals set fort in our Constitution, we might be accused of being hypocrites.” So the Kennedy’s decided we’re going to do an air lift. We’re going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is.

This young man named Barack Obama got one of those tickets and came over to this country. He met this woman whose great great-great-great-grandfather had owned slaves; but she had a good idea there was some craziness going on because they looked at each other and they decided that we know that the world as it has been it might not be possible for us to get together and have a child. There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don’t tell me I don’t have a claim on Selma, Alabama. Don’t tell me I’m not coming home to Selma, Alabama.

Some were misled by the line about the Kennedy’s, but it’s true: JFK helped start this program BEFORE he became President.

The other issue is that the march across the bridge happened in 1965, yet Obama was born in 1961.
Obama is saying that he using Selma, and the bridge, as a metaphor for the entire civil-rights movement. Which does make some sense. A concrete example can help make more powerful an abstract concept. We will stipulate that was not entirely clear.