Tag: Barack Obama

The Globe takes the GOP’s bait

The Boston Globe takes dictation from the Republican National Committee today, turning an innocuous remark by a Barack Obama adviser into evidence that Obama is so arrogant he’s already acting like he’s president.

I’ll work backwards. In a brief item, the Globe’s Foon Rhee notes that the RNC was gleefully passing around a story from the Politico yesterday in which an Obama adviser described the candidate’s speech in Berlin, scheduled for Thursday, as the sort that a president might deliver. Here’s Rhee:

… Republicans are highlighting any perceived hint of Obama arrogance. The Republican National Committee yesterday sent out a report by the Politico website about an exchange between reporters and an Obama adviser about Obama’s speech tomorrow in Berlin that is expected to draw thousands.

“It is not going to be a political speech,” the adviser said. “When the president of the United States goes and gives a speech, it is not a political speech or a political rally.”

“But he is not president of the United States,” a reporter replied, according to Politico.

That’s how the item ends. But it looked fishy to me, and I was right. Next stop: the RNC’s Web site, which highlights the exchange under its “Audacity Watch,” an ongoing feature dedicated to the proposition that Obama is so insufferably arrogant that he believes he might actually be elected president this November.

Finally, going back to the source, here is the Politico story that got the Republicans all excited. You will not be surprised to learn that their faux outrage is derived entirely from a crucial omission. Here’s what the Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown actually wrote:

At a morning background briefing, reporters parried with senior advisers on the characterization of Obama’s speech Thursday in Berlin as a campaign rally. The outdoor speech at the Victory Column could draw thousands of people, similar to the size of Obama events in the United States.

“It is not going to be a political speech,” said a senior foreign policy adviser, who spoke to reporters on background. “When the president of the United States goes and gives a speech, it is not a political speech or a political rally.”

“But he is not president of the United States,” a reporter reminded the adviser.

“He is going to talk about the issues as an individual … not as a candidate, but as an individual, as a senator,” the adviser added….

After the briefing, Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki offered a statement from [Obama campaign head David] Axelrod to reporters: “The answer is that, of course, any event outside of a [congressional delegation trip] is a campaign event. But it is not a political rally. He will not engage his American political opponents. It is a speech to our allies and the people of Europe and the world. And as such, we wanted it to be open to the public and not just invited guests.”

In other words, the Obama campaign, far from claiming presidential prerogatives, was trying to answer criticism that Obama’s Berlin speech will be a campaign rally held on foreign soil. The anonymous adviser tried to draw an analogy to a presidential speech, got cut down and quickly corrected himself. Axelrod then clarified.

If you want to criticize Obama for holding a campaign rally in Berlin, well, be my guest. But the Republicans are dead wrong to label this affair as evidence of Obama’s arrogance, and they made their case through dishonestly selective quoting. The Globe should have taken five more minutes to determine whether the attack was fair or not.

McCain’s factually inaccurate op-ed

The John McCain op-ed piece that was rejected by the New York Times contains at least one bit of factually inaccurate information about Barack Obama. That alone is sufficient reason to send it back for a rewrite. Instead, McCain has chosen to go public and claim that the Times refused to publish what he had written despite having run a commentary by Obama last week.

Here is the inaccuracy:

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

The truth, of course, is that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has indeed endorsed Obama’s 16-month timetable for withdrawal. Republicans are now spinning like mad to make it appear that Maliki’s remarks had not been properly translated. But this Josh Marshall post makes it clear that Maliki said what he meant and meant what he said.

In fairness, it should be noted, as Time’s Joe Klein does, that McCain’s piece was rejected last Friday, and Maliki’s remarks were not reported until the next day. But Klein goes on to observe that the McCain campaign still refuses to acknowledge that Maliki said what he said. In any case, there’s no doubt McCain’s op-ed would need to be revised in order to avoid making a false statement about Obama (and Maliki).

According to the Times, the newspaper has published at least seven op-eds by McCain since 1996. I can’t imagine that it won’t be publishing another one or two before this campaign is over.

But if McCain wants his words published without any editing or vetting whatsoever, then he ought to buy an ad.

What liberal media?*

Check out the nominally liberal Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi, who absolutely unloaded on Barack Obama in Sunday’s paper in a piece headlined “The Audacity of Ego.” Ouch.

No doubt Obama is possessed of a healthy self-regard and then some. But isn’t it pretty typical for a presidential candidate — especially one who’s new to the national political scene — to undertake a foreign trip?

*Eric Alterman wrote the book.

More on that Obama cover

In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that the Obama campaign and its supporters on the left have made way too much of the New Yorker’s satirical cover depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as flag-burning, Osama bin Laden-loving terrorists.

Which puts me at odds with Jon Keller, who included me in a piece on the controversy last night on WBZ-TV (Channel 4).

Changing your mind is … unpatriotic?

You’re going to see a lot of this, unfortunately. McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers couldn’t manage a comment on Obama’s shift on Iraq without attacking his patriotism. Here is Rogers in the New York Times:

There is nothing wrong with changing your mind when the facts on the ground dictate it. Indeed, the facts have changed because of the success of the surge that John McCain advocated for years and Barack Obama opposed in a position that put politics ahead of country.

That last bit is so awkwardly grafted on that it’s obviously deliberate. And it’s going to happen a lot. Here we begin to see the real harm in Wesley Clark’s true but impolitic remarks about McCain’s getting shot down not being a qualification for president: they are so easily mischaracterized as an attack on McCain’s military service that they can be seen as justifying questions about Obama’s patriotism.

I recommend this David Greenberg essay in Slate on how patriotism has played out in presidential politics.

Fear itself

In my latest for The Guardian, I take a look at the unfavorable political landscape that Barack Obama will have to traverse this fall: the very public trial of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed; heightened tensions, and possibly war, with Iran; and a determination on the part of the Bush White House once again to use terrorism as a cudgel with which to bludgeon the Democrats.

Ganging up on Obama

I caught the podcast of “Meet the Press” early this morning and couldn’t believe my ears. Guest host Brian Williams devoted the first dozen or so minutes to pounding Barack Obama over his flip-flop on accepting public campaign money.

Fair enough. But you’d think someone would have brought up the fact that John McCain appears to be violating the campaign-finance law right now. Not Williams. Not McCain surrogate Lindsey Graham. Not even Obama supporter Joe Biden. At least Biden didn’t call Obama “clean and articulate.”

It’s one and out for Williams, who’ll be replaced by Tom Brokaw next week. Let’s hope that Brokaw is better prepared.

Wrong on the National Press Club

Josh Marshall passes along a Daily Kos item criticizing the National Press Club for providing a platform to an Obama critic from the lunatic fringe. The Kos piece — by Markos himself — urges readers to sign a petition asking the press club to disinvite the wingnut in question, someone named Larry Sinclair.

In fact, the National Press Club is merely renting space to a group called Veritas Federal Media, which is sponsoring the news conference. Click here and scroll down to June 18. You’ll see this: “This event is not affiliated with the National Press Club or the Eric Friedheim Library.” (The library is part of the press club.)

That said, the press club could certainly do a better job on its home page, where you’ll find a plug that looks very much like an official notice saying: “Larry reveals the truth about Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama.”

The anti-Obama right’s latest obsession

Did you know that there is a movement afoot on the right to demand that Barack Obama produce his birth certificate on the grounds that it might prove he’s not a “natural born Citizen,” as the Constitution requires of presidents? I hadn’t heard that one until it came tumbling out of Jay Severin’s careless mouth on WTKK Radio (96.9 FM) yesterday.

Anyway, I went to Google Blog Search, entered “Obama ‘birth certificate,'” and got 3,416 returns. Perhaps that’s not indicative of a major groundswell — many of the posts appear to be refutations of the crazier conspiracy theories out there. But the crazier conspiracies are indeed out there, including the notion that he was born in Kenya, and that he’s lying about his date of birth in order to cover that up.

This post on Daily Kos strikes me as smart and comprehensive. And National Review’s Jim Geraghty — a conservative who thinks Obama should produce his birth certificate — nevertheless offers a reasonable and non-hysterical perspective.