From a press release by Senator Clinton’s campaign, debunking claims by Senator Obama that he had not been spending his whole life plotting and scheming to be president, no matter what it took:

In third grade, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled ‘I Want To Be a President.’ His third grade teacher: Fermina Katarina Sinaga “asked her class to write an essay titled ‘My dream: What I want to be in the future.’ Senator Obama wrote ‘I want to be a President,’ she said.” [The Los Angeles Times, 3/15/07]

In kindergarten, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled ‘I Want to Become President.’ “Iis Darmawan, 63, Senator Obama’s kindergarten teacher, remembers him as an exceptionally tall and curly haired child who quickly picked up the local language and had sharp math skills. He wrote an essay titled, ‘I Want To Become President,’ the teacher said.” [AP, 1/25/07]

Of course this looks ridiculous and pathetic on the part of Clinton. Is the Clinton campaign so heavy handed and utterly lacking in self awareness that it doesn’t know it looks like some goon squad? Or is the message one of warning to Obama himself — that no rebuttable or embarrassing detail of Obama’s life, no matter how far back or how obscure, is beyond being known and revealed by the Clinton KGB?

Final point on having problems with the concept of truth: can kindergarten children really “write essays”?

UPDATE

It turns out there are other problems with the truth in the accusation against Senator Obama. Anyone surprised?

UPDATE II

John Edwards, little quoted here, joins the mockery. AP:

Edwards mocked the Clinton campaign for sniping at Obama about his presidential ambitions. “It’s like, boy, you can tell you’re getting close to the caucuses,” said Edwards in Waterloo. “I want to confess to all of you right now,” Edwards said. “In third grade I wanted to be two things: I wanted to be a cowboy and I wanted to be Superman.“

Odd. That has a ring of truth to it.

UPDATE III

A very personal letter regarding all of this from someone special’s Rapid Response team:

john –

When I decided to run for president, I accepted that my opponents would dig through my record looking for something to attack.

I didn’t realize they’d go all the way back to kindergarten.

I’ll respond to each of the Clinton campaign’s desperate attacks directly and honestly. But when I respond to each attack, I want to be able to say that I am not alone.

I want to be able to say that 10,000 people responded with me in the first 48 hours. And we’re almost there.

Respond now with your donation of $25, and show our opponents that this kind of negativity will only make us stronger in our determination to bring about the change America needs:

DONATE

It’s going to take all of us to change this game once and for all.

Thank you,

Barack

What a swell fellow. He even makes the phrase “desperate attacks” sound all warm and fuzzy.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 3rd, 2007 at 2:49 pm and is filed under Democrats, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.