“Obama would not be able to get a security clearance; do we really want him, as president, having access to every secret of the U.S. government?”
Or something along those lines.
The exact wording is unimportant, and I’m sure the McCain ad team can come up with something better; what is important is that such a line of attack ties all of Obama’s questionable associations together and gives voters a reason for them to care about them, and would not be easily explained away by the Obama camp.
The Questionnaire for National Security Positions [PDF link] (which, take it from me, is an enormous pain in the butt to fill out) does not ask specifically about the applicant’s associations with felons or others with questionable pasts — as long as they are U.S. citizens, anyway.
It does ask, however, about foreign contacts (question 19); about foreign activities, including travel and financial interests (question 20); and about illegal drug use (question 23).
For a top-secret clearance, which is essentially what Obama is asking for, the investigation would be thorough and probably take several months. Campaign-style handwaving (he’s just a guy in my neighborhood) would not cut it, and would likely have the same effect on the FBI agents investigating as it should have, but didn’t, on the MSM — namely, that it appears Obama is hiding something.
As an aside, it says something of Obama’s association with Ayers that Obama threw his pastor of 20 years under the bus when he became a political liability, but he has been trying to obfuscate and/or defend his relationship with Ayers (and Ayers himself) although he is supposedly ‘just some guy.’ If he was really just some guy, why hasn’t be been under the bus since he came up in the primaries? Something to think about.
Obama and a security clearance has been brought up from time to time, but mostly as an aside. I think it is important to put it front and center as the unifying theme for the ‘character’ attacks by the McCain campaign.
