Barack Obama Proves He Is Just Like The Rest Of Them

Last week Barack Obama’s campaign team released a memo and asked reporters not to identify their source. It was a memo criticizing Hillary Clinton for her close ties to India, and Indian-Americans. The title to the memo was, ‘HILLARY CLINTON (D-PUNJAB)’S PERSONAL FINANCIAL AND POLITICAL TIES TO INDIA.’ It even included a joke from a speech that Clinton gave to some Indian-Americas last year at a fundraiser. “I can certainly run for the Senate seat in Punjab and win easily,” she joked. This is called opposition research, which is stuff all campaigns produce about their rivals, and pass off to reporters and bloogers. Sometimes they don’t want to be identified as the source and other times they boldly produce it. It could be a past vote, business deals, or conflicting statements. The accuracy is up to reporters to sort out. Another good example of this is from last week when John McCain’s team released a video of a Mitt Romney news conference from 2005 proclaiming his commitment to upholding abortion rights laws as governor of Massachusetts. This was released just days before Romney was to speak before a large anti-abortion group. But Barack Obama said he wasn’t going to play politics as usual saying, “If you want a new kind of politics, it’s time to turn the page.” Obama’s camp had to acknowledge they were the source of the Hillary Punjab memo when Clinton got a copy of it, and turned it over the New York Times. The attack backfired on Obama, since it gave Clinton the opportunity to show that Obama is not above the other politicians like he claims. Obama also caught a lot of slack from the Indian-American community for promoting racial stereotypes about Indian-Americans. On Monday Obama apologized for the memo saying it was, “a dumb mistake on our campaign’s part and I made it clear to my staff in no uncertain terms that it was a mistake.” “It is not reflective of the long-standing relationship I have had with the Indian-American community,” he said, adding that outsourcing was a genuine issue “but to refer to one particular country was, I think, an error and I let all of us know that we’ve got to be more careful about how we communicate.” Instead of attacking his rivals in secret, with stabs at outsourcing maybe Obama should look at why companies outsource. He could talk about the tax breaks given to huge companies that outsource our labor. Or maybe even offer some solutions to outsourcing. Instead he stoops to the level he claims he wouldn’t, and proves he is just like the rest of them.
Alan Cosgrove