This time he didn’t mince words: Democratic Senator Barack Obama directly addressed chief 2008 Democratic nomination rival Senator Hillary Clinton’s charges recent charges against him — saying they smacked of the old politics and Republican tactics.
Obama’s language was clear, right to the point — and well “edited”. CBS News reports:
Barack Obama continued to go after Hillary Clinton this evening, accusing her of using “Republican tactics” against him.
“When in the midst of a campaign you decide to throw the kitchen sink at your opponent because you’re behind,” he said, “and your campaign starts leaking photographs of me when I’m traveling overseas wearing the native clothes of those folks to make people afraid, and then you run an ad talking about who’s going to answer the phone at three in the morning, an ad straight out of the Republican playbook, that’s not real change.”
Tonight’s comments were the most direct criticism from Obama regarding the distribution of the photo of him in traditional African garb. The Clinton campaign denied having anything to do with the photos when they were initially published, and the issue seemed to have faded until Obama brought it up tonight.
(One thing remains curious about the African garb photo: it surfaced around the time when the Clinton campaign told reporters they would be doing a “kitchen sink” campaign against Obama, to ensure he didn’t get a free pass any longer.)
And how will this play? By directly pointing to it, and not just taking the punches, Obama can help neutralize it so voters will remember his response if it’s used again.
“Everybody always asks ‘well, how come you haven’t already wrapped this up? Well, it’s because there are a lot of very powerful people who are doing very well under the existing system,” he said. “So they resist. They’ve got power and they’ve got money. But what we’ve got are the American people.”
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Will this kind of response be the kind many pundits has said would work — confronting what was said and done but still trying to remain above the fray by not answering with grandiose charges and being accused of being doing negative campaigning?
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.