OK, now that I've vented, I'm going to outsource a more rational take on Sen. Clinton's comments about Obama and Rev. Wright to Josh Marshall. When you understand the full context of her remarks, I hope you will better see why I went ballistic. Josh:
As you know, earlier today Hillary Clinton tried to stoke the Jeremiah Wright controversy by telling an editorial board meeting in Pittsburgh that Jeremiah Wright "would not have been my pastor" and then going on to note that she had denounced Don Imus in contrast to Obama's allegedly more tolerant attitude toward hate speech.
Later in the afternoon she repeated the same comments at a press conference and when asked why she had chosen to engage Obama on the Wright controversy she seemed to suggest that rather than being intentional she was only providing an answer to a direct question. "Well I answered a question in an ed board today that was very specific about what i would have done," Clinton told the reporter, "And you know I'm just speaking for myself, and i was answering a question that was posed to me."Now obviously, Hillary's been in the political big leagues for a while. She knows how to deflect a question. But it's actually much richer than this. This afternoon Greg Sargent and I were talking this over and one of us realized that this wasn't just any Pittsburgh paper. It was the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the money-losing, vanity, fringe sheet of Richard Mellon Scaife, funder of the Arkansas Project, the American Spectator during its prime Clinton-hunting years and virtually every right-wing operation of note at one point or another over the last twenty years or more.
In fact, what I only discovered late this evening, when Eric Kleefeld sent me this link at National Review Online, is that not only was it Scaife's paper. Scaife himself was there sitting just to Clinton's right apparently taking part in the questioning.
This alone has to amount to some sort cosmic encounter like something out of a Wagner opera. Remember, this is the guy who spent millions of dollars puffing up wingnut fantasies about Hillary's having Vince Foster whacked and lots of other curdled and ugly nonsense. Scaife was the nerve center of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Those of us who spent years defending the Clintons from all that malarkey learned this point on day one.
But there's more.
Let's game this out. Hillary's saying this wasn't some planned thing. She just got hit with this question and she answered it. But here's my question. You think Richard Mellon Scaife might want to dig into the Jeremiah Wright story? This is sort of like, 'Hey, I go on Hannity and next thing you know he's asking me about Wright and Farrakhan. How was I supposed to see that coming?'
I don't know just how this went down. But the idea Sen. Clinton and her staff went into an editorial board meeting with Scaife and his lackey reporters without a clear sense that they were going to get at least one choice Jeremiah Wright question just somehow doesn't ring true to me.
Now as Josh mentioned, he literally spent years defending the Clintons from the attacks launched by this man. These attacks are, I suspect, one of the reasons Josh has so often leapt to Clinton's defense. And given the circumstances, I think Josh does a remarkable job of remaining composed and rational in is response, particularly in the way he compares Scaife to Hannity.
Scaife has been much, much more destructive to our political process than Hannity (And yes, that's the only time you're ever likely to see me write something nice about him). Hannity might be more famous, but Scaife's influence has been far more pernicious. This guy accused the Clintons of killing one of their best friends to cover up Whitewater, a scandal that we all know now wasn't even a scandal. And Hillary just happened to sit down with him, and he just happened to ask a question designed to dig up dirt on her opponent, and she just happened to give an of the cuff answer that played perfectly into the talking points Limbaugh and others are already using against Obama?
If you were being interviewed by a man who had worked for years to convince the public that you murdered one of your friends, would you be so naive? And giving you the benefit of the doubt that you are saying "no" as you read this, is it at all believable for her to suggest that she is so naive? And if she is actually that naive, what business does she have running for president?
Of course she knew what was going on. The man accused her of murdering one of her oldest friends. She knew who she was talking to. But she didn't expect that you'd ever know. And even if you did find out, she didn't think anyone else would. And in the age before the Internet, she would probably have been right. But the rules of the game have changed. What once flew under the radar is now there for everyone to see. This kind of ridiculousness is now totally transparent, whether Clinton understands that or not.
Our political system need not function like this. We can - and yes, we must - do better than this.
UPDATE: And its not just me and Josh. In a post entitled "Hell Has Officially Frozen Over," National Review's Byron York looks on in amazement as Hillary sits down with Scaife. He's even heard talk of "a rapprochement" between the two. The man accused her of murdering her friend, but apparently that's all just water under the bridge. Or something...
UPDATE II: Forget "reports of." The rapprochement is official. Because before Scafie owned the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the site of Clinton's remarks today, he ran the American Spectator. It was in the pages of the Spectator that he spearheaded the conservative campaign against the Clintons.
And today? Read for yourself:
The Clinton campaign is distributing an article in the American Spectator (!) about Obama foreign policy adviser Merrill McPeak and his penchant for.. well, the article accuses him of being an anti-Semite and a drunk. Principally, the author takes McPeak to task for supporting a Middle East map that would require Israel to withdraw to its pre-1967 border. It also makes the case that McPeak supports the Walt-Mearsheimer view of the influence of the Israeli lobby on foreign policy.The author's sudden conclusion: "Obama has a Jewish problem and McPeak's bigoted views are emblematic of what they are. Obama can issue all the boilerplate statements supporting Israel's right to defend itself he wants. But until he accepts responsibility for allowing people like McPeak so close to his quest for the presidency, Obama's sincerity and judgment will remain open questions."
As one keen observer pointed out to me, if advocating the pre '67 border map makes one an anti-Semite, just about every iteration of the U.S. government since 1967 would qualify. Tony McPeak's verbal gymnastics do not make a "Jewish problem" for Obama.
The Spectator spent a decade trying to destroy the Clintons. They went so far that at times even Ann Coulter distanced herself from them. But hey... the Clintons have an election to win, so no matter. That was yesterday and this is today.
The man spent years trying to convince anyone who would listen that Hillary and Bill murdered their good friend Vince Foster. And now she is working with him to destroy Barack Obama.
UPDATE III: Kevin Drum, another longtime Clinton defender, is now officially done with her.
In the age of the Internet, these sorts of things will backfire. It amazes me that a woman as smart as Clinton does not know that.
UPDATE IV: Last point. This is how you gracefully answer this question "off the cuff":
UPDATE V: OK, one more for good measure. James Fallows checks in from China:
Watching from 12 time zones away, I've tried to stay out of campaign blow-by-blow.
But if, as I assume is true based on Marc Ambinder's report, the Hillary Clinton campaign is circulating a hit job from the American Spectator, this is simply disgusting. (Marc has just confirmed to me that indeed the article came in an on-the-record email from Phil Singer, the Clinton campaign spokesman.)That the Clinton family would dignify the American Spectator, of all publications, is astonishing to anyone who was alive in the 1990s.
That they would bless this attempt to paint Merrill McPeak as an anti-Semite is grotesque.
I doubt that the author of the hit job ever bothered to speak with or interview McPeak. I have done so many times, during and after his days as Air Force chief of staff (which he was during the first Gulf War). People can agree or disagree with McPeak's foreign policy or his record at the Pentagon -- but that's not what we're talking about here. Any attempt to fish out a quote that will banish him as a bigot is exactly as fair and accurate as depicting Bill Clinton as being personally a racist based on his "fairy tale" and "Jesse Jackson" comments around the time of the South Carolina primary. I say this having heard McPeak lay out his views, starting while the Gulf War was underway 17 years ago, about how to maintain general stability, US interests, and Israeli security in the Middle East.
McPeak may have gone too far in saying that Bill Clinton's earlier comments (that it would be "a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country" -- namely, Hillary Clinton and John McCain) amounted to "McCarthyism." But that's a pretty fair description of this latest round. I don't like attempts to stifle argument when they occur in China, and I don't like this in the United States.
I can easily believe that the Spectator would publish such an article. That the Clinton team would circulate it I'm still trying to deal with.
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