David Gergen on Obama

Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic Monthly has a quote from David Gergen. Please see below.

Gergen and Obama
07 Aug 2008

Andrew Sullivan: Is it me or has David actually gotten a little angry at the McCain campaign? He's not usually this blunt:

"Here is a man who grew up in a broken home whose father left at a young age and who was raised by a single mother," said David R. Gergen, director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, who has previously served as a White House adviser to Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. "It's an admirable story of rising from rags to riches, one that resonates. In many ways he's a modern Horatio Alger."

"Now the McCain campaign wants to create a dramatically different narrative," Gergen continued.

"They want you to see him as a man who went to fancy schools; who has had the beneficiary of an elite life, and is increasingly removed from the mainstream of normal American life. They want to create someone who is 'The Other.' That's what they did for John Kerry. They succeeded in turning his medals of honor in Vietnam into a liability.

"And now the McCain campaign wants to turn Obama's strength into a weakness and make him seem like a celebrity who has nothing to offer but high-blown words."