In short, he had no facts, perhaps explaining why Novak has been dubbed “No Facts” for years. Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson’s categorical statement would seem to have put an end to this pseudo-event: “The Clinton campaign has nothing to do with this item.” But it did not end. Instead, it is being kept artificially alive. As soon as Novak published his rumor, Obama elevated and dignified it as though it had credibility.

“But in the interest of our party, and her own reputation, Senator Clinton should either make public any and all information referred to in the item, or concede the truth: that there is none,” he declared. Obama turned the alleged smear upside down. Rather than acknowledge that the predictable right-wing smear artist Novak was responsible for the innuendo, Obama accused Senator Clinton of being ultimately to blame. With this extraordinary statement, Obama lashed himself to Novak’s credibility as a reliable source on a story that transparently lacked any true source. Even when the Clinton campaign forthrightly again denied the item was false and that no one involved in the campaign had anything to do with it, Obama’s campaign refused to let the matter die. Obama campaign manager David Plouffe once again accused Senator Clinton and her campaign of doing what Novak claimed: “Are ‘agents’ of their campaign spreading these rumors? And do they have ‘scandalous’ information that they are not releasing?” Once again, the Clinton campaign openly stated it had nothing to do with the story at all. Then, Plouffe made another statement that suggested Obama had somehow wrung a confession out of the Clinton campaign and still implied that it was behind Novak’s lie: “The Clinton campaign has admitted that they do not possess the ‘scandalous information’ in question and we take them at their word. But what we don’t accept is their assertion that this is somehow falling for Republican tricks.”

The following day, November 19, Obama began a new line of attack, picking up a discredited story circulated months ago. “I’m not in this race to fulfill some long-held plan or because it was owed to me,” Obama said. An Obama spokesperson reinforced the point: “Barack Obama has not been mapping out his run for president from Washington for the last 20 years like some of his opponents.”But where did this new attack originate? Just as he had used Novak’s false story for the previous two days, now he tried to damage Senator Clinton’s reputation by using another patently false story. Months ago, Jeff Gerth, the reporter who spent years hyping the Whitewater fables as real, and his co-author Dale Van Natta, attempted to promote their anti-Hillary screed, “Her Way,” with the supposedly startling revelation that Hillary and planned to run for president 20 years ago. But Gerth and Van Natta had no actual source. And the one source to whom they did attribute the story, Pulitzer Prize winning historian Taylor Branch, was someone they never interviewed and who told the Washington Post, “The story is preposterous. I never heard either Clinton talk about a ‘plan’ for them both to become president.”Despite this story’s exposure as false for months, Obama eagerly exploited it to try to portray Senator Clinton as Lady Macbeth. First using Novak and then Gerth for his materials, he painted her as a dirty trickster, dishonest and recklessly ambitious.But why does Obama do this? Once Novak’s story was exposed as a smear itself, why didn’t he stop? Why did he keep it going? And why did he revive the Gerth falsehood to tarnish Senator Clinton’s character?

Obama’s tactics appear in sync with Rove’s script. His feigned victimhood is a negative attack on Senator Clinton’s character to drive the numbers, which in turn Obama hopes will determine the nomination. While posing above the fray, but executing Rove’s strategy and exploiting Novak’s innuendo, Obama has embraced the audacity of hype.

 

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