by Larry C. Johnson
The dossier was distributed to reporters by the Obama campaign in June
“on the condition that they could not attribute it to the campaign,”
wrote WaPo’s Anne Kornblut.
Reason’s Kerry Howley
observed,
“It’s nice, I guess, that Obama wants to bring people together. Now
perhaps his research team can find a social glue superior to a shared
xenophobia.”
Members of South Asians for Obama
were shocked and upset:
“In addition to being offended by the clear anti-Indian sentiment in
the memo, we were particularly disturbed because the memo flies in the
face of what we respect most about Senator Obama — his inclusive
message and his ability to relate to people of all backgrounds.”
The supporters were also
disturbed that it took Obama so long to apologize:
“What really bothers me is that a (D-Israel), (R-Vatican) or (D-Mexico)
would have triggered an immediate apology. We deserve the same
consideration.”
There’s a hint of more racism in Blacks-Only-Gate. And there are
Homophobia-Gate, Geffen-Gate, Wasted-Soldier-Lives-Gate, along with
personal attacks on Sen. Clinton. More about those below the fold.
First, There’s Obama’s Failed Promise: Most notable about Punjab-gate — besides his attempt to shift the blame to his staff — is that
it goes against Obama’s promise that “
his opposition research team would focus on contrasting candidates’ policy differences, not personal attacks.”
As
The Hill’s Ben Goddard
noted,
“[Obama’s] ham-handed attack on Clinton’s ties to India made the
non-politician sound very much like the old-school crowd he’s been
trying to position himself against. Voters tell me he’s not what they’d
hoped for as an alternative.”
Then There’s Obama’s Frequent Shifting of Blame to His Staff: Jake Tapper
wrote at his ABC News blog,
Political Punch:
In his first public comments about the controversial opposition
research his campaign prepared about Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, trying
to tie her to outsourcing in India, Obama today blamed — for the third time in 5 months — his staff.
"It was a screw-up on the part of our research team," Obama told the Des Moines Register (LINK). "It wasn’t anything I had seen or my senior staff had seen." […]
Obama has blamed his staffers for other campaign mishaps.
In February, after Obama contributor David Geffen slammed Bill and
Hillary Clinton in Maureen Down’s New York Times column … Obama
spokesman Robert Gibbs said "We aren’t going to get in the middle of a
disagreement between the Clintons and someone who was once one of their
biggest supporters.”
Obama later distanced himself from that comment, telling reporters he
had been flying from Los Angeles to Iowa during the whole dustup and
that, "I told my staff that I don’t want us to be a party to these
kinds of distractions because I want to make sure that we’re spending
time talking about issues. My preference going forward is that we have
to be careful not to slip into playing the game as it customarily is
played.”
In May, Obama blamed staffers for his missing an event with firefighters in New Hampshire. …
Boy, it must be tough to be so continually disappointed with your staff.
Not to mention to have a campaign you have so little control over!
And Then There Are the Media Aiding and Abetting Clintonian Conspiracy Theories: Critic pundits like hyper-loquacious Chris Matthews are
piling on
Hillary Clinton right now, creating imaginative but
factually-unsupported theories about how Bill Sheehan’s questions about
Obama’s past drug use and Sheehan’s subsequent resignation were crafted
directly by Sen. Clinton to damage Obama — helped along by “reporter”
David Shuster twice terming Sen. Clinton’s laugh during yesterday’s
Iowa debate as a “cackle.” The media can’t say a good word about Sen.
Clinton these days. Even CNN’s usually fair-minded Wolf Blitzer, in a
poll of how the candidates drink their coffee, said that Sen. Clinton
is a “flip-flopper” because she sometimes drinks her coffee black, and
sometimes with cream.
Writes Washington Monthly’s
Kevin Drum, Sen. Clinton is “polarizing not because she wants to be,
but because the right-wing attack machine made her that way. She’s
‘polarizing’ only because a certain deranged slice of conservative
nutjobs detest her.” Either without consciously realizing how they’ve
been influenced by the “conservative nutjobs” — or, more frighteningly,
because they’re pandering to their conservative friends and viewers —
the media like Tucker Carlson, Chris Matthews, et al. are promoting the
memes that she’s polarizing and conniving.
This is not new media behavior. We saw the media turn on Vice President Al Gore during his presidential campaign.
In November 1999, Chris Matthews said, “[I]sn’t this getting
ridiculous? . . . Isn’t it getting to be delusionary?.” The next night,
Matthews was beating the same drum: “What is it, the Zelig guy who
keeps saying, ‘I was the main character in Love Story, I invented the
Internet. I invented Love Canal’.”
This is not shocking new media behavior to the Clintons. The Clintons
vividly recall the happy day of December 13, 1995 when — in the midst
of shenanigans by the Office of Independent Counsel and outcries from
Republicans during the Clinton administration’s two terms — the
Resolution Trust Corporation released its supplemental report on
Whitewater — which, to their relief, exonerated the Clintons, and
disproved all of the Whitewater conspiracy theories.
“It is recommended,” said the RTC’s report, “no further resources need
be expended on the Whitewater part of this investigation.”
What was the media’s response after 150 copies of the report were
distributed to all major media organizations? Silence. There were no
articles in the
New York Times or
Washington Post, and no TV news reports. Two weeks later, the
Times printed a short item in its “News of the Week in Review,” but the
Washington Post never mentioned the report exonerating the Clintons.
For a Moment, Imagine That a President Barack and First Lady
Michelle Obama Were Under Constant Assault From the GOP Coupled With
Silence From The Media: What would a President Obama do then? Blame his staff?
Will the media, that are fawning towards him now, treat him the same way then?
History tells us much. We know that Sen. Clinton has weathered the
storms, the attacks, and the inconsistencies of media reporting —
particularly during eight years in the glare of the White House
spotlight. Yes, she has scars. But it’s better to be cautious and
proactive against assaults than to blame others or fumble the
apologies. Or, as Sen. Obama has failed to do: Not once apologize
directly to Sen. Clinton for his or his campaign’s attacks on her.
For a Moment, Let’s Try Out Another Scenario: Imagine if Hillary Clinton had responded
as Obama did yesterday:
The moderator asked how he squares his promise to bring change with his
use of so many former Clinton advisors. Hillary had a good laugh at
that one. But he shot back that he looked forward to getting her advice when he’s President, too.
What would Chris Matthews et al. have said if it had been Sen. Clinton
who said she’d look forward to getting Obama’s advice when she’s
President? They would have said that “there she goes again, implying
that she’s inevitable.”
The Rest of The Gates:
Wasted-Soldiers’-Lives-Gate: Lynn Sweet
wrote in February:
In his first stumble, White House hopeful Barack Obama on Monday took
back words from the day before, when he said the lives of U.S. soldiers
killed in Iraq were “wasted.”
Homophobia-Gate: From Radio Left blog’s, “
Senator Barack Obama, Tarnished Angel,” November 3, 2007:
Obama organized a series of gospel concerts for black evangelicals in
South Carolina. The objective was to bring them into the Obama for
President camp.
Donnie McClurkin, a black gospel singer who claims to be cured of his
homosexuality through Jesus Christ, headlined the events. (To see Mr
McClurkin prance around the stage, you would never guess he had gone
back into the closet.)
When challenged about McClurkin by LGBT and civil rights groups,
Senator Obama ignored the concerns and not only kept McClurkin on the
program, but allowed him to talk to the audience from the stage. Mr.
McClurkin, as would be expected, told them that homosexuality is a sin
and he had been cured through prayer.
Senator Obama apologized, and hired a gay evangelist to appear at later concerts in the series.
Totally necessary
Senator Obama made a mistake that demonstrates his lack of experience –
a primary concern about his candidacy. Worse, it was totally
unnecessary. He could have allowed McClurkin to sing, but not make a
speech. He could have engaged another gospel singer who doesn’t have
McClurkin’s baggage. McClurkin’s comments and McClurkin himself were
not a requirement for Obama to successfully reach out to black
evangelicals. To me, that is the saddest and most hurtful aspect of the
entire affair.
[…]
Barack Obama owes that audience an apology for subjecting them to Donnie McClurkin’s diatribe against gays.
So, far all Obama has done is make an incomplete apology and step into it again. …
Blacks-Only-Gate: Also from Radio Left blog’s, “
Senator Barack Obama, Tarnished Angel,” November 3, 2007:
Senator Obama delivered a civil rights speech in South Carolina which
compounded the offense by scrupulously limiting it to blacks. He didn’t
mention the struggle for civil rights of any other group.
[…]
I have never seen anyone I respected be so hypocritical as to pander to
bigotry in a civil rights speech until Obama’s Civil Rights speech in
South Carolina yesterday. It is common practice at least, and required
under these circumstances, to make mention of the other groups that
have struggled along with blacks for civil rights.
Geffen-Gate: The
New York Times’s business reporter David Carr caustically
noted “media mogul David Geffen’s
drive-by maiming of the Clintons earlier in the week in remarks he made to Maureen Dowd of The New York Times.”
Despite David Geffen’s vicious attacks on Hillary Clinton and his ardent campaigning for Obama, Barack Obama
refused to apologize.
Campaigning in Iowa, Obama said to the AP, “It’s not clear to me why I’d be apologizing for someone else’s remark.”
I guess that Sen. Clinton could have said something similar about Bill
Sheehan’s remarks. Instead, while she pointed out that she did not know
about or authorize Mr. Sheehan’s remarks about Sen. Obama’s past drug
use, she took the extra step of personally meeting with Sen. Obama and
apologizing to him, to his face.
UPDATE: “[T]he Obama campaign yesterday circulated a negative,
and ultimately false, story about Bill Clinton — that he allegedly made
money giving a speech on September 11, 2006.” — Greg Sargent, TPM’s Election Central, June 15, 2007. The Drudge Report headlined the false story, according to an investigation by The Carpetbagger Report, June 15, 2007. So the Obama campaign sends its negative attacks, with a don’t-tell-anyone-where-you-got-it, to Matt Drudge? Carpetbagger Report:
“[W]hat really bugs me is that the Obama team got the story wrong. They
dug up some dirt, dished it, but screwed it up and hit a very popular
former president for something he did not do.”
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