President Obama Exhumes bin Laden’s Corpse

Well, that certainly didn’t take long. 

A few days ago, President Obama visited the troops in Afghanistan on the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death. Such photo-ops aren’t unusual in and of themselves. I remember being in middle school when President Bush visited troops in Iraq. If nothing else, it’s in good taste for a Commander-in-Chief to go and tour the front lines.

All fine and good. Basking in the limelight of a good move is something everyone is willing to put up with, at least for a while. What was wasn’t in good taste, however, was that the President turned it into an early campaign stop by later suggesting that Mitt Romney wouldn’t have had the stones to order the raid that killed the deceased head of Al-Qaeda. A subsequent TV ad continued that line of attack.

It’s a curious move to say the least. Yes, we know that Barack Obama ordered the raid, and he’s shouldn’t be criticized for advertising this fact. How much of the credit he deserves for bin Laden’s death is up for debate, but he did order the raid. Credit where credit’s due, and all that. That said, why drag Mitt into it? It let Romney counterattack by saying that “of course” he would’ve ordered the raid, and it makes it appear like Obama isn’t campaigning on his record so much as hypotheticals of what his opponent would or wouldn’t do. 

The immediate comparison that might come to mind for liberals are ads that George W. Bush ran during his reelection campaign that mentioned 9/11. There is a key difference between the two that make Obama’s ad reprehensible while Bush’s were not. 

The Bush ads didn’t so much as mention his opponent John Kerry, let alone ask what the Democrat would’ve done. They solely focused on his leadership during a time of national crisis. The Obama ad, rather than touting his own record, is much more of an attack ad. It’s bad enough that even Ariana Huffington of The Huffington Post is disgusted by it. 

Poor form, though it’s unlikely to hurt him in the long run. 

—Sterling C. Beard