It turns out that, after raising the issue of Senator Barack Obama “borrowing” someone else’s campaign rhetoric, the Clinton campaign reportedly not only says it can’t guarantee that it never did the same thing — but it also now suggests that if even if it did, it would not be a big deal if it involved Hillary Clinton.
So we not only have two campaigns…apparently two sets of standards for campaigns. ABC’s Political Punch:
In a conference call just now the Clinton campaign would not guarantee that Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, has never used someone else’s rhetoric without crediting them.
I asked Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson and Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass, if they could assure the public that neither Clinton nor McGovern has ever done what Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, did when he used the rhetoric of Gov. Deval Patrick without footnoting him.
They would not.
In fact, Wolfson seemed to say it wouldn’t be as big a deal if it were discovered that Clinton had “lifted” such language.
“Sen. Clinton is not running on the strength of her rhetoric,” Wolfson said.
Hmmmm.
Basically, the Clinton campaign is arguing that Obama’s only strength is his rhetoric – not the ideas behind the rhetoric. This will come as big news to many of his supporters.
But there are several troubling things here:
(1) The Clinton campaign raised the issue which became big news on Drudge Report and has been the subject of angry, denunciation-filled blog posts on some weblogs.
(2) The Obama campaign then countered by saying Clinton had borrowed from Obama. Obama later then conceded that, in retrospect, he should have credited the source.
(3) But now the Clinton campaign is suggesting that the ethical rules they insisted be applied to Obama — using as a standard Joe Biden’s lifting of passages from a speech — don’t apply to Mrs. Clinton because she isn’t running on rhetoric.
The fallout is likely to be as follows:
–If the Clintons thought they had a bad press before, they ought to get ready for what could follow. Editors and reporters generally don’t like verbal gyrations such as this and pay special attention to politicos who virtually beg that their every word be scrutinized and tested. The Clinton campaign is virtually begging.
–A continued loss of support from independent voters if this aspect of this story gets a lot of coverage…and it might not. Most voters really are more concerned with the high cost of gas, the war in Iraq (whether they support it or don’t), the economy, whether they’ll lose their homes, and illegal immigration (sympathetic or unsympathetic to it).
–A problem facing the Bush White House: a credibility problem. You can’t do a full-court press on this issue and then come up with a reason why it doesn’t apply to you and not generate distrust about what you allege in the future.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.