Apologies From the Heart (of Darkness?)

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Apologies From the Heart (of Darkness?)
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Published: December 14, 2007


(Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press)
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton apologized to Senator Barack Obama, center, for a staff member’s remarks about drug use.

It must be the season of apologies in presidential politics. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton apologized personally to Senator Barack Obama on Thursday for a top adviser’s public suggestion that Republicans would go after Mr. Obama for his youthful drug use. This came a day after Mike Huckabee apologized to Mitt Romney, a Mormon, for remarks that suggested Mormons believe that Jesus and Satan are brothers.

But in the aftermath of the apologies, both the Clinton and Huckabee campaigns kept the original slurs alive through a series of interviews, raising questions about the sincerity of their apologies, especially in the heat of a wide-open campaign with the first voting less than three weeks away. At the same time, as the news media report on the apologies, they, too, become complicit in regurgitating the original comments. Reporters have the choice of either helping keep the accusations in circulation or keeping readers or viewers in the dark.

In the Clinton case, William Shaheen, a co-chairman of Mrs. Clinton’s national and New Hampshire campaigns, told The Washington Post on Wednesday that the Republicans would probably go after Mr. Obama for having used marijuana and cocaine, indiscretions that he wrote about himself. Mr. Shaheen went on to suggest that Republicans would probably also question whether Mr. Obama ever shared drugs with others or was a dealer. Mrs. Clinton, a Democrat from New York, apologized to Mr. Obama on Thursday morning when they ran into each other at Reagan National Airport in Washington as they were both headed to Iowa for the last Democratic debate before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses. Later in the day, Mr. Shaheen announced that he had quit the campaign.

On Thursday afternoon, Mrs. Clinton’s top adviser, Mark Penn, appeared on MSNBC with Mr. Obama’s top adviser, David Axelrod, and John Edwards’s top adviser, Joe Trippi. They argued with one another, and it was there that Mr. Penn dropped the word “cocaine,” saying that the Clinton campaign had not raised the issue of “cocaine use.” That seemed to infuriate the others. “This guy just said ‘cocaine’ again,” Mr. Trippi said.

And yet, the campaign for Mr. Obama, an Illinois senator, has been using the Shaheen comments as part of a fund-raising appeal, keeping the issue alive because Obama advisers say they believe it will backfire against the Clinton campaign....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/us/politics/14clinton.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[AX10]

1. http://tinyurl.com/2qdf8d

http://tinyurl.com/2qdf8d

[DeepModem Mom]

2. RFK makes a good historical analogy there. nt