McCain Campaign Press Release - "In Case You Missed It": "Is His Campaign Dishonest Or Disorganized?"

"Obama's very bad June suggests two possibilities: He may be one of the more unprincipled politicians we've seen recently - remember, Obama once mocked the Clintons for their prevarications, saying 'They don't tell you what they mean.' Or perhaps his mistakes are honest - which would make the Obama campaign one of the more intellectually disorganized enterprises in recent presidential history. It's unclear which prospect is greater cause for concern." -- The Philadelphia Inquirer's Jonathan Last

Is His Campaign Dishonest Or Disorganized?

Jonathan Last

The Philadelphia Inquirer
July 4, 2008

There's nothing wrong with a politician changing his mind. They all do it, and constancy in the face of error can be as harmful as flip-flopping.

Yet the month of June saw Barack Obama abandoning positions at a clip so brisk it should give even his most stalwart supporters pause.

In the wake of last week's Supreme Court ruling overturning Washington's handgun ban, for instance, the Obama campaign disavowed a 2007 statement it had made about the constitutionality of gun laws as "inartful."

After claiming in May that he would debate John McCain "anytime, any place," Obama declined to participate in a series of 10 town hall-style meetings, which the McCain campaign proposed.

Early in the month, it became clear that the head of Obama's VP search committee, Jim Johnson, was compromised by his ties to the subprime lender Countrywide. Obama called the story "overblown and irrelevant." Two days later Johnson was cashiered.

Of course that's all just campaign mechanics. But Obama has been reversing himself on policy, too.

In October, the Obama campaign promised that the senator would support a filibuster of any FISA bill that would grant retroactive immunity for telecom companies who helped the government with wiretapping. Last week, Obama announced that he would not filibuster the new FISA bill (which contains wiretapping immunity), and that instead he planned to vote for it.

At a dinner of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby, Obama promised that "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided." Later, an Obama adviser clarified that Obama did not mean that Jerusalem should be literally "not divided."

Here's the campaign's confusing explanation: "So [Obama] used a word to represent what he did not want to see again, and then realized afterwards that that word is a code word in the Middle East." It remains unclear what situation Obama sees as preferable for Israel's capital.

Equally unclear is how Obama assesses the nature of Iran's threat to America.

In 2004 he said that Iran was more dangerous than the Soviet Union had been because the radicals in Tehran could not be deterred by traditional strategic means. In late May, he changed his mind, saying that Iran doesn't "pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us." Faced with criticism, Obama then pivoted again, declaring Iran to be a "grave threat" to America.

Mind you, this list of reversals excludes Obama's abandonment of his public financing pledge. It also excludes the more troubling missteps Obama committed last month.

For instance, Obama argued that America's existing legal system is adequate for dealing with terrorists. In the first attack against the World Trade Center, he said "we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated." Which isn't quite right: one of the terrorists involved in that attack, Abdul Rahman Yasin, fled afterwards to Iraq where he worked openly with Saddam Hussein's regime.

In a TV ad he debuted last month, Obama boasted of having "extended health care for wounded troops who had been neglected." The law to which he was referring is the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act, which passed the Senate 91 to 3. Obama was one of six senators not present to vote for it.

Finally, there is the strange case of Obama's phone call with Iraqi foreign minister Hoshay Zebari. After their discussion, Obama told reporters that Zebari never mentioned the candidate's plan to withdraw American troops from Iraq. Zebari told a very different story: "My message [to Obama] ... was very clear. ... Really, we are making progress. I hope any actions you will take will not endanger this progress." Zebari reported that Obama assured him he would "not take any irresponsible, reckless, sudden decisions or action to endanger your gains, your achievements, your stability or security." It's hard to square the differing accounts.

Obama's very bad June suggests two possibilities: He may be one of the more unprincipled politicians we've seen recently - remember, Obama once mocked the Clintons for their prevarications, saying "They don't tell you what they mean." Or perhaps his mistakes are honest - which would make the Obama campaign one of the more intellectually disorganized enterprises in recent presidential history.

It's unclear which prospect is greater cause for concern.

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