The splendid candidates
Gloria Steinem endorsed Senator Clinton:
“she actually enjoys conflict…being a secretary is the best way to learn your boss’s job and take it over…Suppose John McCain had been Joan McCain and Joan McCain had got captured, shot down and been a POW for eight years…‘What did you do wrong to get captured? What terrible things did you do while you were there as a captive for eight years?’…I mean, hello? This is supposed to be a qualification to be president? I don’t think so…I am so grateful that she hasn’t been trained to kill anybody. And she probably didn’t even play war games as a kid. It’s a great relief from Bush in his jump suit and from Kerry saluting…from George Washington to Jack Kennedy and PT-109 we have behaved as if killing people is a qualification for ruling people.”
Meanwhile, Obama has his first -Gate, namely NAFTA-Gate. Byron York:
Canada’s CTV television network reported that, in early February, a representative of the Obama campaign assured Canadian officials that they need not take Obama’s NAFTA threats seriously, that those threats were just political rhetoric intended to win Midwestern primaries. The campaign, and the Canadian government, initially denied everything. “The Canadian ambassador issued a statement saying that the story was absolutely false,” top Obama adviser Susan Rice said Thursday night on MSNBC. “There had been no such contact. There had been no discussions on NAFTA.” Obama himself, asked about the story the next day, said, “It did not happen.”
But it turned out that there had been contact, and something did indeed happen. Later news reports identified the Obama adviser as Austan Goolsbee, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago who serves as a senior adviser to the Obama campaign. Those reports said Goolsbee met with officials at the Canadian consulate in Chicago, where the NAFTA discussion allegedly took place.
The Clinton campaign picked up the story. “Has Austan Goolsbee had any contact with anyone in the Canadian government, in the Canadian embassy, or tried to send a message to individuals there to indicate that Senator Obama’s criticism of NAFTA was not sincere?” top Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson asked. “It’s a simple question.”
But it wasn’t one the Obama campaign was inclined to answer, and as the weekend began, the campaign continued to deny everything. On Friday, The New York Observer reached Goolsbee himself. “It is a totally inaccurate story,” Goolsbee said. “I did not call these people.”
Then a report from the Associated Press pulled the rug out from under Obama. The report cited a memo written as a record of the February 8 meeting between Goolsbee and a man named Georges Rioux, the Canadian consul general in Chicago. The document was written by Joseph DeMora, a consulate staffer who was in the meeting.
“Noting anxiety among many U.S. domestic audiences about the U.S. economic outlook, Goolsbee candidly acknowledged the protectionist sentiment that has emerged, particularly in the Midwest, during the primary campaign,” the memo said, according to AP. “He cautioned that this messaging should not be taken out of context and should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans.”
Final point: the campaigns deny or repudiate everything of course. The Clinton campaign immediately distanced itself from Steinem’s comments, and the Obama campaign entered deep spin mode (and not very competently), claiming that the meeting in Chicago was “essentially a tour” of the consulate, and that, in any event, Goolsbee wasn’t representing the candidate, and maybe had never even heard of him. (Meanwhile, Canada claims to know nothing about the whole matter.)
Forget all this talk about “change.” No matter who wins, from either party, the next eight years may be shaping up to be just as much fun, and as edifying, as the current eight years, or the eight years before that.
March 5th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
“from George Washington to Jack Kennedy and PT-109 we have behaved as if killing people is a qualification for ruling people.”
Err.. I think it has escaped Ms. Steinum’s attention but the US is a republic, so we don’t traditionally think of our presidents and congresscritters as “rulers”. That is the European tradition arising from serfdom and aristocracies.
Here in the US, our tradition has been that these are “public servants” who work for us.
Perhaps this is just an unintential indicator of the European path that the “progressives” wish to progress along? Goodbye to public servants, hello to our enlightened despots?