Congress, Fox News
Obama Campaign First Denied a Similar Story But Then Admitted It Was True – Obama Said His People Acted ‘Naively’
A spokesperson for Stephen Harper, the conservative prime minister of Canada, has denied reports that his administration received back-channel communications from the Hillary Clinton campaign that soft-pedaled Clinton’s statements that, as president, she would re-negotiate NAFTA:
Mr. Harper’s communications director, Sandra Buckler, said yesterday that Ms. Clinton’s campaign did not brief Canadians on its NAFTA stand. “The answer is no, they did not,†she said.
Mr. Harper’s communications director, Sandra Buckler, said yesterday that Ms. Clinton’s campaign did not brief Canadians on its NAFTA stand. “The answer is no, they did not,” she said.
That will likely be a reassuring public response for Ms. Clinton’s campaign, which used the leaks to hobble Mr. Obama with charges that he attacked NAFTA on the hustings but reassured Canada in private.
The Clinton campaign suggested Obama’s attacks on NAFTA were merely political rhetoric intended to garner votes in the Ohio rust belt where NAFTA is blamed, in part, for wrecking the economy:
CTV, the well-regarded Canadian news network, reported this week that a top Obama adviser contacted the Canadian government to calm fears that the senator was serious about rewriting pro-corporate deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement to benefit workers, farmers and the environment. According to CTV, the Obama adviser told the Canadians that “when Senator Obama talks about opting out of the free trade deal, the Canadian government shouldn’t worry. The operative said it was just campaign rhetoric not to be taken seriously.”
After that report aired on Wednesday, an Obama campaign spokesperson claimed in an interview with CTV that “no message was passed to the Canadian government that suggests that Obama does not mean what he says about opting out of NAFTA if it is not renegotiated.”
But in an interview with Time Magazine, Obama himself admitted the message had been sent — and that his campaign operatives had been naive:
BARACK OBAMA: It turns out yes, [Obama economic advisor Austan] Goolsbee was invited over [to the Canadian consulate in Chicago] and someone naively didn’t understand that what he thought were casual conversations might end up in the memo to the Prime Minister of Canada. But, what he said turns out to be entirely consistent [with] what I’ve been saying on the campaign trail, which is I wasn’t interested in repealing NAFTA but I was interested in strengthening the labor and environmental provisions.
In August, the media let it slide when Obama said in a debate that after he took office he would “would immediately call the president of Mexico, the president of Canada, to try to amend NAFTA…” In fact, like most democracies, Canada does not have a president.
Do your homework. You’ve got your facts wrong again. The undated video you sent is from before the Texas primary, so prior to last Tuesday. The top link in the story above is from the largest newspaper in Canada, dated today, Sat. March 8, 2008.
The second link is from The Nation, a liberal magazine. The third link is Barack Obama himself admitting his campaign screwed up because his operative was — in his words — naive.
You’re so twisted by your rightwing-style hatred of Hillary that you’ve called Barack Obama a liar. That’s pretty funny.
The Globe and Mail article is from today. You can’t get much more current than that.
“So what” is that it had been reported that reps for both Obama and Clinton had secretly told the Canadians that they were lying to voters about their intent to change NAFTA. In fact, it was only Obama who lied.
It is true that, as with any politician, you have to parse Obama’s words to get his admission of guilt:
The “someone” who was naive has to be Goolsbee since he was the only one who had a conversation, casual or otherwise, with the Canadians. In any case, this directly contradicts the Obama campaign’s statement that “no message was passed to the Canadian government.” As Obama himself said, “It turns out yes,” a message was passed to the Canadian government. Oops.
Obama’s full answer doesn’t add anything. It’s just typical political BS from a typical politician trying to cover his typical ass after a typical screw up. They all do it. No big shock there. You choose to see it in the best possible light because of your apparent cult-like devotion to Dear Leader. Others might give him the benefit of a doubt because he’s new and inexperienced. Some will not.
George W. Bush did not need congressional approval to invade Iraq, any more than Pres. Truman needed Congress to okay starting the Korean War, or presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon needed congressional approval to send troops to Vietnam, or than Reagan did to invade Grenada, or Bush I did to start the Gulf War or Clinton did to send troops to Kosovo.
Bush Jr., like LBJ and Bush I, made Congress vote on support for the war in order to put his political enemies (in all three cases, the Democrats) on the spot. Bush’s plan (although it was likely dreamed up by Karl Rove) worked beautifully. It was a classic wedge issue. It separated the Democrats with presidential ambitions from their antiwar base and helped Bush win reelection in 2004. It is a gift from Rove to the Republican Party that keeps on giving, as evidenced by the ridiculous idea expressed above that because of Bush’s war-mongering, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards and the others voted for Rove’s bogus war resolution have “blood on their hands” — and in a small way by the fact that you and I are having this stupid debate six years later.
In 2002, the Democrats in the Senate looked back at the Gulf War, which was considered to be a strategic and public-relations success, when they decided how to vote on the Bush-Rove resolution. They may have looked particularly at the example of former Sen. Al Gore, who was one of 10 Democrats to vote in favor of authorizing the war. (The 1991 resolution passed 52 to 47.) If Gore had voted against the war, he would have had no chance of being reelected from Tennessee — or, as it happened instead, of being named VP by Clinton the next year. Based on that precedent, in 2002, senators Clinton, Kerry, Edwards and others voted to authorize the war, incorrectly assuming that Bush would not screw up in Iraq. In 2004, Kerry made a big show of apologizing for his mistake, and the Republicans played his flipfloppy statement in ads over and over and over. And Bush won again.
But even if the resolution had failed in 2002, Bush would have invaded anyway. You don’t like it. I don’t like it. But that is simply a fact.
If I could appoint the next president, I’d choose someone like my senator, Barbara Boxer, who, not for nothing, received the third highest number of votes of any candidate nationwide in 2004 (under Bush and Kerry). Unlike Obama, she has the experience: She worked as stockbroker, served on the board of supervisors in Marin County, served in the House for five terms and has been in the Senate since 1993.
But I don’t have the power to appoint the next president, and as much as admire Sen. Boxer, she wouldn’t stand a chance in hell of being elected president. Like Obama, she’s too liberal to win the general election.
At least Boxer has a backbone. Last week, Obama lived down to the worst fears about him in certain quarters. Instead of firing Samantha Power over the “monster” remark, he should have stuck his finger in Hillary’s eye and said, Fuck you — as Hillary did to him by not firing Wolfson after he compared Obama to Ken Starr. Instead, Obama did the full John Kerry: He folded.
Still, as previously noted, I’m predicting Obama will win the nomination and, barring a “macaca” type moment, that McCain will beat him in November with, best-case, 50+1 percent of the vote. If so, that will cut into Democratic gains in the House and the Senate. The occupation of Iraq will continue, the Supreme Court will be lost for another generation, and more of our government will be ceded to the corporations. That’s the reality we’re facing, as I see it.
You appear to believe that Republicans are going swoon over Obama the way Democrats have, and that Rove and his ilk won’t dare lie about Obama’s record, smear him, rig the voting machines, cage voters and the rest — despite ample evidence that they have repeatedly done this to other Democrats, white and black, in the past. (And the idea that I’m racist because I predict Republican 527 groups will run crypto-racist ads against Obama, and because I believe there are millions of American racists who will be so rankled at the thought of a black family in the White House that they’ll get up off the sofas on their porches to vote for McCain, is beneath contempt.)
If you don’t like my opinions, I would invite you to try trolling the comments section at the Free Republic. You’ll get no arguments about your irrational hatred of the Clintons from the knuckle-dragging mouth-breathing rightwingers over there.
I’m a 50 year old white woman, not college educated, not latte drinking, not a cultist, not a sexist — just an informed, life-long democrat.
I defended the Clintons tooth and nail in the nineties. Since then, I’ve done a lot more reading and researching. Hillary Clinton is bright and capable, but she’s not the person I would want as commander in chief (I would vote for Barbara Boxer in a heartbeat.) I believe there is a lack of integrity, a lack of transparency, and a lack of the ability to put the country, and not her political career, first.
Her war vote was wrong, but there are bigger problems with that blatant example of poor judgment. She didn’t read the intelligence report. She defended her bad decision for years. Her long-refusal to acknowledge the error of her vote, and her continued attempt to distort the logic of that decision, is offensive to me, and I find it disingenuous. Then last year, she voted for the Kyl-Lieberman version of the amendment to declare the Iranian Guard a terrorist organization, a version that, unlike the earlier version drafted by Obama, left the door open for keeping troops in Iraq. I agree with John Edwards, who said it was foolish to think the Bush administration wouldn’t use that as a blank check.
On Meet the Press this January, Clinton said she:
“thought it was a vote to put inspectors back in” so Saddam Hussein would not go unchecked. She said that she and others were “told by the White House personally” that this was the purpose of the resolution, and cited President Bush’s assurances to defend her position.
Talk about naïve?
Didn’t “I’m honored/Shame on you” and the head-snapping array of postures that followed give you cause for concern? Before you pull out the sexist label for me, I don’t think it had anything to do with mood swings. I think it had everything to do with political maneuvering and insincerity, neither qualities I look for in a commander in chief.
As far as Samantha Power leaving the campaign, since when did integrity become a political liability? Don’t confuse lying, mudslinging, and dirty-dealing with backbone. Obama said he was going to run a different kind of campaign and he had the backbone to stand by his word.
I believe policy-wise, there are not tremendous differences between Obama and Clinton. But I believe the difference between their ability to lead, to inspire, to get things done, is tremendous. You can be a fighter without leading with your fists: I think Hillary Clinton would pound a hole in the wall to get out of a room when the door is open.
On top of it all, Hillary Clinton will do more to energize the Republican party than anything Karl Rove could dream up. (All the right wing hype anointing her as the nominee, starting last year, might have been his handy-work.) Obama is the future of the Democratic party.
I’m voting for Barack Obama.
Three pages? That’s all you could handle? Do you know how to Google? Try different criteria.
We have an entire Iraq topic archive that includes every word written here by Trish, Buck and me on the subject:
http://www.pensitoreview.com/category/iraq/
You obviously want to nail me on this. Don’t worry. It’s not that hard. I’ve stated my opinion on the invasion and occupation of Iraq many times.
Your “sexiest” remark about Hillary? A little Freudian slip there?
But you are a troll, aren’t you? I see zero difference between you and the Bush-worshipers who come here to try to silence our criticism of their Dear Leader. You’re proud of your ignorance of history and current events, and while you claim to be a liberal, your M.O. is 100% rightwing jackboot authoritarianism.
As to the occupation, you are the accuser. My positions are out there. You have no trouble finding links on other sites. Go for it.
“That’s the reality we’re facing, as I see it.”
And as I see it, you see reality all screwed-up.
As I see it, the criticism of Obama from the left basically comes down to penis envy. They see the excitement he’s generating among ordinary, formerly alienated people, and they can only wish. Better douse that fire. Being a loser feels so much more righteous.
Interesting you should use Gore as an example on his war vote, since he was one of the first major figures to publicly come out against THIS war (even before Bill Clinton — LOL). But then, I suppose he already “knew” he was not going to run in 2004.
I have no doubt that the Republicans will try to haul every racist out from under every rock they can find. And you know what? I don’t care. I’m willing to bet that 50%+1 of the American people — at least — have had enough of that crap and are ready to move past it. If not now, when?
I don’t understand the loyalty the Clintons inspire in some people. They’ve never shown any to anybody else, least of all the Democratic party. I still like Chelsea, though. She may yet redeem the family name.
Obama/Gore ‘08