The Clintons and the 'War on Obama' - Democratic Underground

democracy1st

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Mon May-05-08 03:17 AM
Original message

The Clintons and the 'War on Obama'

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek.

Last December, when I first learned via Clinton insiders that their “oppo” package would include Barack Obama’s associations with fiery black preacher Jeremiah Wright and Vietnam War-era radical William Ayers, I shrugged at what sounded to me like sub-standard fare from the dark side of American politics.

Besides those two themes, Clinton insiders were plotting how to exploit Obama’s past political ties to indicted real-estate developer Tony Rezko, and they even were hashing over how they might slip in suggestions that Obama’s dead mother had been a leftist. (When I heard the “oppo” about the dead mother, I really couldn’t believe my ears.)

Even then – in December before the first votes had been cast – the Clintons were so caught up in their ambition to return to the White House that they were veering toward the worst aspects of politics, what is generally associated with the American Right and the most ruthless Republican operatives – guilt-by-association, red-baiting, McCarthyism and racial messaging.

The rationale that I heard from the Clinton operatives was that these Obama vulnerabilities would be exploited by the Republicans in the general election, so it was necessary to destroy Obama when there was still time for another Democrat (i.e. Hillary Clinton) to be nominated.

But part of me didn’t believe the Clintons would go through with this War on Obama. I had trouble envisioning people who had been victimized by similar tactics – indeed whom I had defended when they were on the receiving end – resorting to such acts against a fellow Democrat, who by all accounts is a decent fellow and a good family man.

Plus, in doing so, the Clinton camp struck an enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend alliance with some of the same pro-Republican media outlets that Sen. Clinton had dubbed in the 1990s the “vast right-wing conspiracy.”

This alliance of convenience made Hillary Clinton an odd bedfellow with right-wing media mogul Richard Mellon Scaife, Fox News and even Rush Limbaugh, who has been urging Republicans to vote for Sen. Clinton in the Democratic primaries as a way to block Sen. Obama’s nomination.

And, with the right-wing media onboard, the mainstream news commentators could be counted on to tag along – which many did.

For instance, when Obama appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" on May 4, Tim Russert's first 12 questions were about Rev. Wright, followed by additional questions about wearing a flag pin and how would Obama "defend or define his patriotism." The first question about a substantive issue -- gas prices -- wasn't asked until halfway through the hour-long program.

When I first heard about the Clinton campaign’s “oppo” plans last December, the “Ayers theme” was already in the mix (along with Rev. Wright and Obama’s mother), all supposedly raising doubts about Obama’s patriotism.

When the Ayers theme failed to catch on with the major news media at the start of the primary season, Clinton surrogates didn’t give up. They took the attack line to right-wing talk radio and the Internet where it was kept alive. Among others, Fox News’ Sean Hannity demanded that Obama be pressed on questions about Ayers.

Debate Payoff

The Clinton campaign’s doggedness paid off on at the April 16 debate in Philadelphia when ABC News moderator George Stephanopoulos framed the Ayers question much as the Clinton campaign and the right-wing media have, suggesting some dangerous association between Obama and a mad bomber.

Stephanopoulos even depicted Ayers as someone who had taken pleasure in the 9/11 attacks, saying: “In fact, on 9/11 he was quoted in the New York Times saying, ‘I don’t regret setting bombs; I feel we didn’t do enough.’”

At this point, Sen. Clinton could have demurred, but instead chose to pile on. (After all, her campaign has been flogging this theme for months behind the scenes.) She also couldn’t resist pushing the 9/11 hot button.

“If I’m not mistaken, that relationship with Mr. Ayers on this board continued after 9/11 and after his reported comments, which were deeply hurtful to people in New York, and I would hope to every American, because they were published on 9/11 and he said he was just sorry they hadn’t done more. And what they did was set bombs and in some instances people died,” Clinton said.

In their comments, both Clinton and Stephanopoulos led viewers to believe that Ayers had either hailed the 9/11 attacks or used the 9/11 tragedy as a ghoulish opportunity to suggest that more bombings were desirable.

But that wasn’t true. The offensive comment that Clinton and Stephanopoulos referred to was from an interview about a memoir that Ayers published earlier in 2001. The comment was included in a New York Times article that appeared in the newspaper’s Sept. 11, 2001, edition.

As Sen. Clinton and Stephanopoulos surely knew, that edition went to press on Sept. 10, hours before the 9/11 attacks. In other words, the Ayers comment had no relationship to the 9/11 attacks.

What Clinton and Stephanopoulos did was what lawyers refer to as “prejudicial” – they introduced an emotional component, 9/11, in a deceptive way to elicit a visceral reaction from those listening.

After the debate, the New York Times published a fact-checking article that noted the time discrepancy between Ayers’s comment and 9/11:

“Mr. Ayers did not make the remarks after the attacks on the World Trade Center that day. The interview had been conducted earlier, in connection with a memoir that he had published, Fugitive Days, and he was referring to his experience in the Weather Underground.”

For a political couple criticized in the past for “doing or saying anything to get elected,” the Clintons seem determined to prove their critics right.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/050308.html