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March 10, 2008

Clinton's Up-Is-Down World

By Robert Parry

Throughout history, it’s been common for politicians to shade the truth when caught
in a tight spot. But sometimes politicians push the limits, crossing the line into an
Orwellian world where up is down, where bullies are victims, where people objecting
to the lies are shouted down.
If that world seems familiar to Americans, it should. It is the world in which we’ve
lived for the past seven or eight years under George W. Bush, as his clever
operatives routinely turn truth inside out. Now, Hillary Clinton’s campaign is applying
many of these same head-spinning tactics to win the Democratic presidential race.
As for Bush, remember how Iraq War critics were treated in 2002-03. Anyone who
spoke up against the rush to invade – the likes of Al Gore, weapons inspector Scott
Ritter and the Dixie Chicks – saw their loyalty, their motives and even their sanity
questioned.
Gore was bitter and delusional. Ritter was a Saddam Hussein sympathizer for
questioning Bush’s clams about Iraqi WMD. For disrespecting Bush, the Dixie Chicks
deserved to face boycotts, have their CDs crushed under trucks, and even have their
lives threatened.
Angered that France urged caution on Iraq, Bush’s backers poured French wine into
gutters and re-named “French fries” as “Freedom Fries.” At a lower level, our
Consortiumnews.com articles, which objected to the twisted pre-war intelligence and
to the wishful thinking about the war, drew a flood of venomous e-mails.
Even though Bush’s aides encouraged this bullying and Bush winked at the harsh
treatment of dissenters, much of the U.S. news media treated him as the victim. In
this view, he was the target of irrational hatred from crazed Americans suffering from
what was termed “Bush Derangement Syndrome.”
Reality had no place in Bush World. When Iraq’s WMD never materialized, Bush
blamed Saddam Hussein for not letting U.N. inspectors in, although the inspectors
had been scouring Iraq for months until Bush forced them to leave in March 2003,
just before the invasion. [For more details on Bush’s lies, see our book, Neck Deep.]
Hillary’s Version
What’s been striking about recent turns in the Democratic presidential contest is how
the tactics of Hillary Clinton’s campaign have come to mirror the Bush strategies –
simultaneously playing the bully and the victim, asserting that up is down, and
bashing anyone who notices the contradictions.
Stunned by Obama’s surprising successes and his delegate lead, Clinton’s campaign
has thrown what it calls the “kitchen sink” at the Illinois senator – including overt
attacks on his ethics and sub rosa insinuations about his race and religion.
On Feb. 26, Internet gossip Matt Drudge reported that a Clinton staffer e-mailed
around a photo taken of Obama during a 2006 trip to Kenya when he was dressed in
a turban and other traditional garb of a Somali Elder. That reinforced earlier rumors
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spread about Obama as a secret Muslim, though he has long belonged to a Christian
church in Chicago.
Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe denounced the Clinton campaign for
circulating the photo, complaining of “shameful offensive fear-mongering.”
Instead of showing remorse, the Clinton campaign denied knowledge of the photo
and went on the attack. “If Barack Obama’s campaign wants to suggest that a photo
of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed,” said
Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams.
Some Clinton defenders went further, arguing that Sen. Clinton was the real victim,
since there was no hard evidence that the Clinton campaign was orchestrating the
Internet smears of Obama, which also have been spread by right-wing operatives in
talk radio and on the Internet.
On March 2, however, when Hillary Clinton had a chance to slam the door on these
tactics, she didn’t.
Asked on CBS’s “60 Minutes” whether she believed rumors claiming that Obama was
a closet Muslim, Clinton responded in a way that left the question open. “No, no, why
would I?” she said, before adding: “there is nothing to base that on. As far as I know.”
New York Times columnist Bob Herbert called Clinton’s response “one of the sleaziest
moments of the campaign. … As far as I know. If she had been asked if she thought
President Bush was a Muslim, would her response have included the caveat ‘as far as
I know’? What about Senator McCain? Why then, with Senator Obama?” [NYT, March
8, 2008]
But the Clinton campaign has been filled with such moments of injecting doubts
about Obama’s truthfulness and integrity, a nasty strategy that the Clintons used to
call “the politics of personal destruction” – when they were on the receiving end in
the 1990s.
Now, Hillary Clinton has become a chief practitioner of this brand of politics, taking
even minor questions about Obama and hyping them into character issues.
‘Change You Can Xerox’
At the Feb. 21 debate, Clinton lashed out at Obama for alleged “plagiarism” – or
“change you can Xerox” – in his borrowing of a rhetorical phrase about the
importance of words that was used previously and recommended to him by his
friend, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.
Though politicians frequently copy phrases and ideas from one another, plagiarism –
the unauthorized use of someone else’s words usually in printed form – is considered
a serious ethical violation and was clearly meant to suggest dishonesty by Obama.
However, during the same debate in which she leveled the plagiarism charge, Clinton
twice used wording that appeared lifted from former Sen. John Edwards and her own
husband. (Her campaign dismissed those complaints about plagiarism as silly and
insignificant.)
Again, there was a similarity to Bush’s behavior, such as when he and his supporters
attack their critics for lacking realism or not facing the facts – when it is the Bush
camp that has demonstrated a breathtaking contempt for reality.
This throwing-stones-from-a-glass-house audacity may achieve some psychological
advantage, creating confusion about who’s really at fault or at least giving pause to
anyone who might dare point out the discrepancies.
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Even earlier in the Democratic campaign, the Clintons had put this approach on
display, attacking Obama over his positions – on the Iraq War, positive comments
about Ronald Reagan, and Obama’s relationship with a sleazy real-estate developer –
when the Clintons were arguably more vulnerable on the exact same points.
Hillary Clinton voted to give President Bush authorization to invade Iraq (while
Obama opposed the invasion); the Clintons both have praised Reagan far more than
Obama has; and the Clintons had closer ties to an ethically challenged developer,
Whitewater’s James McDougal, than Obama apparently had with Tony Rezko. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “The Clinton Audacity.”]
Distasteful Medicine
Beyond the arrogance of this holier-than-thou behavior, it often is mixed with an
annoying dose of victimhood whenever someone tries to give them a taste of their
own medicine.
For instance, after scoring political points in Ohio and Texas by bashing Obama’s
ethics, the Clinton campaign was outraged when Obama suggested that the Clintons
should follow his lead and release their tax returns.
A New York Times editorial and many good-government activists had made the same
point – and during the Feb. 26 debate, NBC’s Washington bureau chief Tim Russert
asked Sen. Clinton to release her tax returns before the Texas and Ohio primaries,
noting that she had loaned her campaign $5 million and that much of Bill Clinton’s
income came from “overseas business dealings.”
In response, Clinton offered a disingenuous answer.
“Well, I can’t get it together by then, but I will certainly work to get it together. I’m a
little busy right now. I hardly have time to sleep,” she said.
The truth is that she could have her tax returns released with one or two phone calls
to her accountant and her press office. She appears instead to have something in
those returns that she doesn’t want the voters to know – even as she insists that
she’s been fully “vetted” and Obama deserves more intense scrutiny from the press.
When Obama pressed on the tax-return issue, the Clinton team – surprise, surprise –
accused him of acting like a Republican.
Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson implied that Obama was “imitating Ken Starr,”
the right-wing special prosecutor who pursued the Clintons in the 1990s. Clinton
adviser Ann Lewis said Obama was “using Republican talking points” and had
“recycled many of the same Republican attacks.” [Washington Post, March 7, 2008]
Yet, using Republican attack lines was exactly what Clinton did to Obama in the Feb.
26 debate when she claimed Obama had “basically threatened to bomb Pakistan.”
That was a charge that President Bush and Sen. John McCain had made against
Obama earlier.
It also wasn’t true. As Obama explained, his real position was that he would authorize
an attack on al-Qaeda bases inside Pakistan if the Pakistani government refused to
act. He wasn’t threatening to “bomb Pakistan” in any reasonable interpretation of his
words.
NAFTA Flap
In the days before the key Ohio and Texas primaries, the Clinton campaign also made
hay out of a leaked Canadian government memo saying that an Obama adviser,
University of Chicago economics professor Austan Goolsbee, had equivocated to a
Canadian diplomat about Obama’s tough talk on renegotiating the NAFTA trade deal.
[NYT, March 4, 2008]
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Clinton accused him of giving “the old wink-wink,” again portraying Obama as
untrustworthy. It took the Obama campaign several days to pin down and explain the
details of the meeting, which both Obama and Goolsbee said had been
misrepresented in the memo. But the political damage was done, especially in
NAFTA-averse Ohio.
Much less attention was given to disclosures in Canada – after the primaries – that
the Clinton campaign had given similar NAFTA assurances to the Canadian
government to assuage its concerns about Clinton’s equally tough talk on NAFTA.
Ian Brodie, chief of staff to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, told reporters that the
Clinton campaign had called the Canadian Embassy in Washington to tell officials to
take her anti-NAFTA rhetoric “with a grain of salt,” the AFP wire service reported on
March 6.
Inside Canada, the leaking of the Obama memo – especially while documents about
any Clinton assurance apparently were withheld – prompted complaints that Harper,
a close ally of President Bush and the Republican Party, may have been interfering
with the U.S. political process to help his conservative friends in Washington.
But the bigger question may relate to whether Democratic voters want a nominee
whose campaign seems to have bought into the negative, reality-bending, albeit
winning strategies of the Republicans.
Some Democrats may view Clinton’s adoption of these Republican tactics as wrong
and even disqualifying. Others, however, may look kindly on the Clinton approach,
under the old theory: If you can’t beat them, join them.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated
Press and Newsweek