Election '08

It’s been a while, but here goes…

By Garrett Nix ⋅ and published April 26, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

I haven’t yet figured out why, but I find myself reading opinion articles in The Washington Post entirely too often. On the plus side, there is not a single Wolf Blitzer in sight. On the downside, they have a Charles Krauthammer… ewww. I suppose that often enough there is genuinely intelligent commentary, and not as much parroting as one may encounter, say, listening to an “independent military analyst“, but it still makes me feel a bit icky on occasion.

It was that latter feeling that I rightfully received yesterday when I found myself reading an article by Geoff Garin decrying the Obama campaign’s “direct, personal character attacks” against a certain female Presidential hopeful. It is the Obama campaign, Garin believes, that has turned the Democratic Party into a circular firing squad. As the bottom of the article states in italics, Garin is a strategist for the Clinton campaign (more specifically, Mark Penn’s replacement), so it seems perfectly natural for him to be crying “foul!” even as the group he represents is busy devising how they can sneak a pea-shooter into a knife fight. But that’s politics, right?

Just so we’re all clear on this situation, I am in no way intending to insinuate that the Obama campaign has not, at times, sunk to the level we are so used to seeing in Presidential elections. They have, of course, tossed their share of negativity into the forum. For better or worse, I consider myself enough of a cynic to realize that regardless of the name checked on my ballot in November, I will most likely be disappointed by our future Presidential adminstration repeatedly in the coming years. Regardless, it would be nice to see the Clinton campaign move away from their attempts at playing the victim, when it could be argued that her campaign has long been more on the offense against Barack Obama than his campaign has been against her.

In the second paragraph of “Fair Is Fair”, Mr. Garin accuses Obama’s head strategist David Axelrod of “keeping with the direct, personal character attacks that the Obama campaign has leveled against Clinton from the beginning of this race…” after quoting Axelrod as saying that he did not believe Senator Clinton “would bring ‘the changes necessary’ to Washington”. To state that this is a character attack is misleading. Axelrod seems, rather, to be making an inference from a combination of facts in Hillary’s past. A look at the contributions to Clinton’s campaign shows that she has received over three times the amount of high-level ($4,600+) donations than has Barack Obama, who is the leader in smaller ($200+) donations. It is practically common sense to infer from this that a relatively large portion of Hillary’s financial base consists of those who, while quite possibly interested in having a Democrat in the White House, might not be looking to see any major shake-ups in the system that has provided so much for them. Mr. Axelrod might also be thinking of the years that Hillary spent serving Wal-Mart, which certainly does not do much to boost her claim of being a friend to those who may be interested in bargaining with their employers in some sort of collective manner. Finally, Senator Clinton has received several hundred thousand dollars more from lobbyists and political action committees than has Senator Obama. Going from these few examples, it doesn’t appear that David Axelrod was out of line in suggesting that his candidate might better represent the voice of change inside the Beltway. Of course, it seems almost absurd that an argument has even arisen over the vague idea of who is more capable of change, but Garin is incorrect in labeling David Axelrod’s opinion as an attack on Clinton’s character.

Later in the article, Garin takes offense to more remarks from the Obama camp, saying that “Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, held a conference call with reporters and called Hillary ‘one of the most secretive politicians in America today’”, which Garin acknowledges as “a striking personal charge in the era of Dick Cheney”. Shortly thereafter, Garin makes note of David Axelrod’s accusation of Hillary “having a special interest obsession”. These are strong statements from high-level people within the Obama campaign, to be sure, but Garin would find it quite difficult to counter them with numbers. According to a Los Angeles Times article about a watchdog group’s book on wasteful government spending, Senator Clinton tops the rest of Congress with “281 individual spending projects” for a cost of over $296 million. Senator Obama took second place on that list with “53 special earmarks, totaling almost $97.4 million”, but Garin’s candidate is by far the big winner. Bloomberg.com went even further, stating that “only Barack Obama has voluntarily made his earmark information publicly available”, and that “the Clinton campaign refused to respond at all to requests that she identify her earmarks”. Garin should consider that refusal at least slightly questionable, considering the amount of taxpayer money involved.

Have these accusations from the Obama campaign honestly been unwarranted? Have they been “mean-spirited” and “unfair” as Garin suggested? While there may be a bit of hyperbole involved, a quick look at Clinton’s past can only leave one answer. Sorry, Geoff, but fair is fair.