Reply #74: It seems like the "mis-remembering"

[stillcool]

thing is contagious...

Non-issue? Looks that way

Thursday, Nov 15, 2007

* There’s been an attempt recently to try to pivot on Barack Obama’s statements about the Clinton archive records…

Barack Obama, who’s been scolding Hillary Rodham Clinton for not hastening the release of records from her time as first lady, says he can’t step up and produce his own records from his days in the Illinois state Senate. He says he hasn’t got any.

“I don’t have - I don’t maintain - a file of eight years of work in the state Senate because I didn’t have the resources available to maintain those kinds of records,” he said at a recent campaign stop in Iowa. He said he wasn’t sure where any cache of records might have gone, adding, “It could have been thrown out. I haven’t been in the state Senate now for quite some time.”

Obama’s statement that he has no papers from his time in the Illinois statehouse - he left in 2004 - stands in stark contrast to the massive Clinton file stored at the National Archives: an estimated 78 million pages of documents, plus 20 million e-mail messages, packed into 36,000 boxes. While any file from Obama’s time in the state Senate would be far smaller, the idea that no papers exist at all is questioned by one historian.

“Most of those guys do keep this stuff, especially the favorable stuff. They’ve all got egos,” said Taylor Pensoneau, a historian who has written about Illinois legislators and governors and worked with them as a lobbyist for the coal industry. “It goes in scrapbooks or maybe boxes. I don’t think it’s normal practice to say it’s all discarded.”

And…

The real issue, Clinton’s campaign said, is the availability of “schedules, memos and other documents” from Obama’s time in the state senate.

On Meet the Press Sunday, Obama said he did not have a scheduler and therefore there are no schedules to be had. A spokesman for the Obama campaign said Obama passed along many of his files to his successor, Kwame Raoul.

* I sent an e-mail to a handful of legislators this morning asking about their record-keeping practices. Here are the responses I’ve received so far…

* Rep. Lou Lang…

I think we all have large file cabinets and diaries that we keep for a while but there is not a special requirement that we keep any particular records in any particular way

* Rep. John Fritchey…

I would venture to say that I keep better files than most, but the only record of my meetings would be on the personal calendar that I keep. I do keep most substantive correspondence going back several years though. I would doubt that at the state legislative level, anybody keeps the type of contact records that they are referring to. There is a big difference between the state house and the White House.

* Sen. Jacqueline Collins…

As it relates to records. No, I don’t keep an account of who I meet with. My secretary may have the information jotted down on a daily schedule but I don’t think she retains that information because of the volume of paper we receive on a daily basis.

* Rep. Sara Feigenholtz…

We have old message books and my Chicago staff puts everything in outlook. I keep a lot of stuff… but after 13 years we have to purge so we don’t hoard.

* I’ll post more as they come in, but it looks to me like this Obama thing is just another national non-issue.

* Rep. Susanna Mendoza…

…I don’t religiously keep a detailed file or anything; it’s more like folders on bills with corresponding notes or info in them. Regarding my scheduling, I definitely don’t keep records of that and don’t really know anyone who does. So many of the meetings we end up having are not even scheduled and end up being with people who drive to Springfield to meet with legislators without a previous appointment. I’d be surprised if anyone keeps detailed records of their schedules and definitely believe Obama when he says that there probably aren’t any files or records of his to look over.

From Media Matters...

**Some records from Obama's state Senate career, as the AP later acknowledged, are available via public records requests from various state agencies.

**Illinois agencies have copies of his requests for information or help, but accessing those records would involve contacting the agencies and asking them to comb though eight years of records to find correspondence from Obama."

--------------------------

According to a statement by the Obama campaign:

**The reporter failed to contact State Senator Kwame Raoul to confirm that Senator Obama provided him with records tracking constituent requests and casework.

**The reporter failed to contact other State Senators who served at the time and would confirm that they, like Obama, did not keep records beyond those that the state archived even though contact information was provided.

**And it takes a months-old conversation about whether or not Obama had ever intervened in any capacity in a domestic or international criminal trial in his career in public office out of context and implies the inquiry related to Senate records.