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A Hillary Supporter Considers Photogate*

Posted by DAMOZEL in Politics.
Feb 26th, 2008 | Comments

*Hey, someone’s bound to call it that of they haven’t already:  I am just getting the jump on the bandwagon.

I am genuinely bemused by the "outrage" (or display of it) in the media and elsewhere over the dressed-Obama photo and the current dearth of denials.  How on earth can the Clinton campaign deny it?  It’s certainly conceivable that some Hillary supporter, somewhere, circulated it. 

How could Hillary validly deny it unless she checked with every single person connected to her campaign?

If she did deny it, and it later developed that someone in the campaign had circulated the photo, she’d be accused of lying to cover up the campaign’s involvement.
 

I understand that the photo would get Drudge readers excited.  But I’m a Democrat, and all I could think was, "So?" 

First, I know Obama’s not a Muslim.  Second— and here’s controversial for you—-I wouldn’t care if he were, because I don’t believe all Muslims are terrorists or hate America.  I can’t imagine that any Democrat thinks this.

Consider Clinton campaign spokesperson Maggie Williams’ statement:

"Enough.

“If Barack Obama’s campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him [BELOW THE FOLD] wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed. Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely.

“This is nothing more than an obvious and transparent attempt to distract from the serious issues confronting our country today and to attempt to create the very divisions they claim to decry.

“We will not be distracted.” (Quoted in No Quarter)

Distraction is exactly what resulted.  In reality of course, the people who are now whipped into a froth of "outrage" couldn’t be more gleeful. 

The media hardly mentioned Clinton’s foreign policy speech (yesterday), despite the importance of foreign policy to the presidency.

Also yesterday, Clinton got an endorsement from Army Major General Antonio Taguba: now she has endorsements from 27 "flag rank military officers" (and 2000 veterans).  That sounds like news to me, but the Obama-besotted media barely covered it.

Back to the photo: here’s one possible reason why some Hillary supporter, somewhere—albeit, someone who hasn’t been paying close attention—might have decided that circulating the photograph would be a good thing.

In Texas, where there is an open primary, ‘Republicans for Obama‘ seems pretty intent on not having ‘another Clinton in the White House.’  Perhaps an overzealous Hillary supporter in Texas circulated the photograph on the theory that Republicans might be turned off by it.   It’s also possible that it came from attentive Republicans who are finally starting to worry about what an Obama presidency would mean or from the Obama camp.  Who the hell knows?

If it the photo did come from someone directly connected to the Clinton campaign, it was a stupid move. Anyone who hasbeen following the campaign and has a grain of media savvy would know in advance exactly how such a gesture would be construed: against Hillary.

After a perfectly benign statement about MLK got turned into a "racially insensitive" comment, no one directly connected with Hillary could possibly think that circulating the photograph would do anything but create a backlash among Democrats and give volume to the chorus of anti-Hillary cackling. 

And so I’m torn between my annoyance over the circulation of the photo and my annoyance at the input of Clinton-hating Republicans picking the Democratic nominee on the highly rational ground that he’s not Hillary Clinton.

Though no matter what her campaign or those connected to it might say or do, I am increasingly convinced she’d still make the better commander-in-chief.  And that’s one unshakable reason for me to support her.  There are a host of others, but that’s one that no one has so far successfully disputed. And the more time goes by, the more I’m at peace with my support for Hillary (which is only growing stronger with reports that her chances are gone).

Finally, shut up, Dana Milbank.  (See Memeorandum here).

Cross Posted at Buck Naked Politics.

  • Mike_P
    The only winner in "Photogate" was, of course, Drudge. It was silly. The Clinton camp wasted stupid time trying to decide whether or not to deny involvement or ignore it (it would have been simple to just say "no one at the top of our campaign has any knowledge of this photo"). The Obama camp was silly for playing the politics of outrage over it.

    As for Republicans deciding the Democratic nomination in Texas, what little of their support goes to Obama won't impact the bigger picture. I'd note that the Republicans for Obama Texas petition only has 31 signatures on it for starters. And in a primary season that has seen early Dem voting 800 percent over '04 numbers, it would take an awful lot of Republican votes to be statistically meaningful it seems to me.
  • Some of we "Obama supporters because he's the first viable black candidate and we're black and WOW this is the realization of a dream in the black community BUT are we doing the right thing" guys were talking about this issue in the barber shop this morning. We all agreed that this issue blew up WAY TOO FAST and WAY TOO BIG. But this is the silly season to the nth degree with a dose of American Idol thrown in. And nothing makes sense anymore.

    As far as who would make a better Commander-In-Chief, I would since my BBQ is so good that I could bring about World Peace with it!

    Seriously, I think both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama would do well. But the more I think about it and the more the silly season rolls on, I think Clinton/Obama or Obama/Clinton is the way to go. For a gaggle of reasons. One being to heal the damage caused by the "The Great Supporter Wars".
  • pacatrue
    Didn't follow the photogate story, so it might have been silly. No argument. It does sound about as silly as plagiarism-gate and Ohio-mailer-gate.

    As for Republicans choosing the Democratic nominee, when one points out this fact/trend/influence, one should also mention the large string of caucuses in particular, often restricted to Democrats only, that have voted rather convincingly for one of the candidates. It's certainly not as if Dem-only votes all swing to Clinton and Dem+Indy votes all go to Obama. As much as each candidate's supporters hate to admit it, many honest to good Democrats support Clinton and many honest to goodness Democrats support Obama. Many support both.
  • MaryL
    A number of people who are not kneejerk Clinton opponents found the two non-denial denials that emanated from her campaign that preceded Wolfram's final denial to be confusing, even troubling. Of course, the campaign couldn't absolutely declare that some rogue staffer didn't do it, but nothing was stopping them from saying something like, "If someone from our staff or one of our volunteers did anything like this, we find it reprehensible. Our campaign does not support such divisive ploys. If anyone associated with this campaign was responsible, they will be fired. We have requested that Drudge share the alleged email message and are checking our own mail servers. Give us time to investigate and let's not be distracted from the larger issues."

    But instead, the two non-denial denials repeated the talking point in the email: that Clinton would be treated worse than Obama if a similar photo of hers was released to the media. And that's nonsense. Clinton takes a lot of undeserved crap, based on both sexism and Billary disdain, but this specific issue -- the scary coloured man/stealth Muslim issue -- is Obama's area of vulnerability.

    The campaign response was self-pitying and inept in the way it stumbled badly on dealing with this huge, obvious difference in how the candidates are perceived. It was lousy spin. If Williams, Wolfram, and Penn himself (who somehow has kept his mouth shut throughout this mini-scandal, and that's probably a good thing for Clinton) are the representative of the kind of people Clinton hires and manages, it doesn't increase my confidence in her general judgment one bit.
  • tjproudamerican
    I love this Blog, and so I was surprised to see it written AS A FACT that Senator Clinton would be the "better Commander in Chief". I was disappointed to see the link was to Larry Johnson.

    Larry Johnson?!!! Why not link to Taylor Marsh or to Hillary's official website?

    I wonder how anyone could know before hand who the better C-i-C would be or will be. If THAT is the issue, doesn't Senator McCain have the edge?

    Please let me squeeze in one more observation. If Maggie Williams says: "We condemn any attempt to smear any candidate, especially on a day when Senator Clinton is making a Major Foreign Policy Speech. If this silly, non-issue came from us, we will fire the person just for taking the emphasis off the area where it should be: whose ideas are better articulated and thought out," is there an issue?

    Why cannot Hillary's campaign take the high road and stay on it?
  • djshay
    Do you really think Hillary would be better? Really? How do we really know beforehand how any candidate will be once they've won the presidency? We don't. And unless you link to a reliable NON-PARTISAN source for your commander in chief comment, you have no credibility.
  • MaryL sums up my opinions on the photo issue. If someone was trying to damage Obama, a photo of him in Somalia was a laughable way to do it that was bound to backfire. The photo is therefore a non-issue. At issue is the fact that all Clinton had to do to defuse the situation was issue a statement similar to what MaryL suggested. Had that happened, the story would have died immediately. The fact that it didn't happen is what raised some eyebrows.

    On a similar note, look at how McCain responded today when someone speaking at one of his events said some things about "Barack Hussein Obama" that went way over the line; the Clinton camp could learn something from this: "I regret any comments that may be made about these two individuals who are honorable Americans, we just have strong philosophical differences, so I want to disassociate myself from any disparaging remarks that may have been said about them,” he said, adding later that “I absolutely repudiate such comments, and again I will take responsibility it will never happen again. It will never happen again.”
  • MaryL
    (Ack! That should have been WolfSON, not WolfRAM -- twice! I started reading this book online last week and just made the mother of all intrusion errors.)
  • janinedm
    A constant meme is that Obama doesn't have the cojones or fortitude to handle the Republican attack machine like Hillary (My negatives are already factored in) Clinton. He has a consistent and relatively swift response strategy for these accusations? He was very clear on this in Cleveland:

    And our general view has been, that the internet is very difficult, because it is very low cost, it can just be churned out and you can’t trace it back to where it’s coming from. What we have tried to do is just make sure that we are flooding the internet with the accurate information and pushing back as much as possible. I don’t think that we are in an era anymore where you can just ignore these things and not dignify them. There was a time when they would be amplified as consequence of you calling attention to it. I don’t think that’s the case any more because of our media age. You know we saw what happened with the swiftboat situation back in 2004. All you have to do is run the ad once and then it gets repeated. And so what we’ve done is try to lift it up and actively debunk it and encourage stories about it.


    It's a shame that Hillary got stuck in the muck, but why was her team so slow to react? Should Obama's team have let that sit on Drudge all day until late afternoon when HRC's camp finally roused itself to say a few sentences.

    Also, I know that campaigning and governing are two different things, but the HRC's campaign (which represents the largest organization she's ever managed) is horribly run. Some executive experience there...
  • G_Hendricks
    BIll Clinton wore a cape when he was visiting a foreign country. He must be working for Lex Luthor, huh?
  • DAMOZEL
    DSJHAY, you pain me.

    I'm sorry I have no credibility, but I am linking to the informed opinion of a blogger whose views I respect. That blogger is partisan precisely BECAUSE.he has personal information/experience leading to the view that Hillary would be immeasurably better. His opinions are backed by his own experience in the intelligence community. I find him credible.

    Partisan is not a synonym for 'wrong.' Taylor Marsh, Larry C. Johnson, and your humble correspondent all have grave reservations about Obama as president (and commander in chief). We are therefore partisan; we like her and we don't like him (at least not for president). It's silly to say 'Taylor Marsh' as though she were anything but a highly intelligent person who has an opinion that differs from your own.

    I am not sure what reliable 'non partisan source' I could link to that would support my point about her superior qualifications to be C-in-Chief..

    How about her endorsement by Taguba and other military officials? Or are they being partisan too?
  • aba23
    Umm, maybe I read it wrong, but were you suggesting that substantially no portion of Democratic voters are susceptible to the manipulation of their baser prejudices, in comparison to Republicans? This is the "Moderate Voice," you know; we try to avoid such wide brushstrokes. (You don't have to support Senator Obama to treat half of your fellow countrymen civilly.
  • Where to start. First, a defense of Damozel. Views here, especially about matters of opinion are not presented as facts. Speculation and opinion about who will be the better CIC can only be that, except in the case of an incumbent. Frankly, we don't know what kind of CIC McCain would be, either.

    The endorsement of men in uniform is not compelling to me. Both Hillary and Obama have endorsements. So what? Taguba may side with the candidate who is more likely to support a more aggressive policy, meaning more money for the military. Hillary went along with the fearmongering of the GOP on Iraq, Iran, wiretapping and torture (Military Commissions Act and Patriot Act). Now she's trying to rewrite that history. Not very encouraging for a CIC.

    And sorry, but I do dispute claims that Clinton would be a better CIC or that Larry's posts are in any way persuasive. But let's air out the record, OK?

    The claim that he should have held more hearings ("aggressive oversight") as chair of the European subcommittee is scuttled by the lack of anything useful coming out of hearings that were held. The Administration simply refuses to provide information or witnesses, even to the point of inviting contempt charges. Obama can be excused for not wasting his Committee's time. What have Clinton's hearings produced?

    I apologize for the lengthy post, but you've called the question. Anyone here is welcome to post about Hillary's foreign policy accomplishments.
    Obama pushed through legislation that condemned violence by the Zimbabwe government, for example. He helped raise awareness about Darfur and called on the administration to do more to reduce global poverty.

    In 2005, he traveled with Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., to Russian nuclear sites. In 2006, he visited the Middle East and Africa, where he and his wife publicly took HIV tests in Kenya to encourage citizens there to do the same.

    The young senator's approach to issues attracted the attention of Lugar, the committee's senior Republican. After their visit to former Soviet states, the two co-sponsored legislation aimed at making it easier to detect and destroy weapons stockpiles. More recently, Lugar signed on as co-sponsor of Obama's anti-poverty proposal.

    Obama's aides say it's not unusual for a Senate subcommittee to hold few hearings, with the majority of work being done by the full committee. They also defend Obama's work on the committee as extremely successful.

    "While his efforts on the committee don't always get headlines, he's worked across the aisle on critical issues like nuclear nonproliferation, pressing (then-U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay) Khalilzad for a commitment for no permanent bases in Iraq, stopping the genocide in Darfur, and bringing war criminals to justice," said Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor.

    Confronting claims he's light on foreign policy experience, the senator has surrounded himself with well-known foreign policy advisers, including several who served in the Clinton administration: former national security adviser Tony Lake, former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig and Susan Rice, who was assistant secretary of state for African affairs.

    Obama's chief foreign policy adviser on the campaign is Denis McDonough, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. McDonough took the job after Mark Lippert, a Navy reservist, was called to serve in Iraq.

    When not campaigning, the senator often used full committee hearings to express his opposition to the Iraq war or his concern about the Bush administration's policy toward Iran.

    In January 2007, he sharply questioned Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on why the U.S. wouldn't consider a drawing down U.S. troops if inaction by the Iraqi government continued. Later that month, he voted for a committee proposal to condemn President Bush's plans to increase troops strength in Iraq as "not in the national interest."

    "We are past the point where we can simply take it on good faith from the president that this will work," he said of the president's troop buildup.

    He proposed separate legislation that would have required troop withdrawals to begin that spring. Later that year, he introduced a measure intended to prevent a potential conflict with Iran. But like many of the anti-war proposals on Capitol Hill, neither measure received a vote.

    In another committee hearing, Obama voiced skepticism about Biden's suggestion that the Baghdad government could achieve peace by giving more autonomy to its provinces, which are divided along sectarian lines.

    Not bad at all for a freshman Senator. And that list of advisors (whom Hillary knows well) is a pretty good roster of endorsements in itself. They haven't just said "we're for him". They've signed on to be with him when he's Commander in Chief.
  • DAMOZEL
    ABA23 said: "Umm, maybe I read it wrong, but were you suggesting that substantially no portion of Democratic voters are susceptible to the manipulation of their baser prejudices, in comparison to Republicans? This is the "Moderate Voice," you know; we try to avoid such wide brushstrokes. (You don't have to support Senator Obama to treat half of your fellow countrymen civilly."

    To which I'd reply: I don't see where I've been uncivil. Where did I say what you said I said? I don't think it's 'base' to vote for Obama or McCain either; I like Obama all right (though not as the nominee) and I like McCain as well. I suspect I'm going to be stuck with them as choices, since I will never, ever vote for Nader. They're just not MY first choices.

    I DO think it's a irrational for Republicans to hate Hillary so much that they sign up just to vote for Obama on the grounds stated in that flyer. I stand by that.

    My post strikes you as uncivi or as too broad brush, I don't know what to say except "I apologize for offending you." I don't feel I'm being immoderate, but the adulation Obama is receiving in the media and in the blogosphere generally, and the relentless bashing of Hillary strike me as immoderate indeed. I am simply trying to state the alternative view.

    A blog is by definition an opinion. In my opinion, it's a FACT that Hillary will be the best CIC. But it's only a fact IN MY OPINION. That's what a blog is.

    I DID go back and edit my post to sort of tone down the tone. I hope at least that I've made it clear that I am simply delivering a strongly held opinion.

    I view Hillary as a centrist Democrat; therefore an appropriate candidate for a person blogging here to support----certainly as appropriate as either of the other two. I'm very sorry so many people who post or comment dislike her so intensely, but I can't pretend to agree when in fact, I don't agree.

    If this makes too immoderate for this blog, aba23, I don't know what I can do about it. I am doing the best I can to express strong opinions without giving offense. If I didn't succeed, I really am sorry.

    As to Green Dreams, thanks for understanding that I wasn't asserting that my opinions are fact.

    I'm sure if Obama gets elected---as he very well may---he will surround himself with knowledgeable people. My concerns about him as CIC have partly to do with my sense that his convictions aren't really all that solid and that he would have a hard time making decisions that might be unpopular but necessary. That too is an opinion and a perception.

    I remember the freshman Senator saying not that long ago that his position on Iraq wasn't that different from Bush's. His views have not been all that consistent; and I have an increasing perception that at any given time, Obama says whatever he believes will best serve his political ends. Hillary seems much more comfortable being unpopular. Well, she'd have to be to survive.

    I don't hate Obama. I always wanted him to be VP now and president later, after a few more years of preparation. The will of slightly more than half my party, and of Obama himself, appears to dictate otherwise.

    I'll adjust, and if Obama is the nominee, I'll try to support him, but I'm tired of being on the defensive about preferring Hillary and I'm unwilling to pretend that I don't have an increasingly strong sense that she's the better choice. I have my reasons and they go on looking pretty solid to me. And there are plenty of other Democrats who feel the same.
  • I see many instantly "believe" Drudge's "unnamed" sources and then blame the situation instantly on the Clinton campaign. The word "gleeful" applies and can make one wonder.

    Several sites have reported that a copy of that photo has apparently been on the web for a long time, on an African news site.

    I'm posting in a few forums today about the most likely sources for the timing of this photo. I looked for a more mischievous, well-timed copy of the photo and found one that was scanned on February 23 and posted to a proudly right-wing and very heavily-attended forum of activists, who are prone to mischief with online polls and other PR means. This was posted and commented on, at that popular conservative forum, two days before Drudge reported receiving an email about it.

    For details on this (who uploaded the scanned photo two days before Drudge's report and where), see http://andrys1.blogspot.com
  • (I deleted a duplicate inadvertently created.)
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