Obama's Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee - Clinton memo charges are cynical politics

[Adelante]

Robert KC Johnson writes on History News Network:

The Subcommittee

This morning, the Clinton campaign released a memorandum that Time’s Mark Halperin described as “question(ing) Obama’s national security credentials.” Among the allegations: the previously-stated claim that “when (Obama) took over the subcommittee that oversees NATO and Afghanistan and had a chance to follow up on the part of his 2002 speech that argued that Iraq diverted attention from Afghanistan, he failed to hold a single hearing.”

It’s worth reiterating: the Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on European Affairs doesn’t have primary jurisdiction over the campaign in Afghanistan. The Armed Services Committee (on which Senator Clinton serves) does.

The Subcommittee on European Affairs doesn’t have secondary jurisdiction over the campaign in Afghanistan. The full Foreign Relations Committee (which has held hearings on Afghanistan) does.

The Subcommittee on European Affairs doesn’t even have tertiary jurisdiction over the campaign in Afghanistan. The Subcommittee on Near East and South and Central Asian Affairs does.

Both Clintons, obviously, fully understand how the Senate operates; and recognize that any freshman senator who hopes to have any influence in the upper chamber isn’t going to hold hearings on a matter almost wholly tangential to his subcommittee’s jurisdiction.

For a minute, though, assume the Clinton campaign wasn’t aware of so basic an issue as committee and subcommittee jurisdiction, and that they really believed that the Senate addressed Afghanistan policy through the Subcommittee on European Affairs. Even then, the Clinton memo would mislead.

-snip

The Clinton memo’s charge about the Subcommittee on European Affairs—which the campaign now has repeatedly made—represents politics at its most cynical. It’s a false statement. The campaign officials who made it know it’s a false statement. Yet the issue is arcane enough that most readers of the memo wouldn’t know the statement was false—and the press (as seen by Halperin’s introduction) can be counted on to frame the issue in a neutral fashion, since most journalists want to avoid the appearance of editorializing.

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/48434.html

[C_U_L8R]

1. The Clintoons depend on lazy journalists

to not call them out on their BS.
Hey, if it worked for Bush, it'll work for anybody.