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 False claims on US websites that Obama is a Muslim
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Barack Obama, right, is dressed as a Somali elder by Sheikh Mahmed Hassan, left, during his visit to Wajir in northeastern Kenya, near the borders with Somalia and Ethiopia. Photograph: AP
guardian.co.uk, Monday February 25 2008
Barack Obama's campaign team today accused Hillary Clinton's beleaguered staff of mounting a desperate dirty tricks operation by circulating a picture of him in African dress, feeding into false claims on US websites that he is a Muslim
Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, described it as "the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we've seen from either party in this election". Obama has had to spend much of the campaign stressing he is a Christian not a Muslim and did not study at a madrassa
Aides for Mrs Clinton, who is fighting a last-ditch battle to keep her hopes of the White House alive, initially tried to brush off the furore, but later denied having anything to do with the distribution of the picture. "I just want to make it very clear that we were not aware of it, the campaign didn't sanction it and don't know anything about it," Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson told reporters. "None of us have seen the email in question."
Obama and Clinton go to the polls in the Texas and Ohio primaries next week. If Clinton loses either, her bid for the Democratic nomination could be over
The picture showing Obama in a turban during a visit to Kenya in 2006 first appeared on the Drudge Report website today
The site said it was circulated by Clinton's staffers and quoted one saying: "Wouldn't we be seeing this on the cover of every magazine if it were [Clinton]?"
The picture was taken when Obama went on a visit to Africa as a senator. Obama, whose father was Kenyan, visited Wajir in the Kenyan north-east, close to the Somali and Ethiopian borders, and was dressed by locals as a Somali elder
The Clinton team hit back at the criticism today, saying Obama's team had turned the picture into a row to distract attention from a foreign policy speech she gave today
The Obama campaign has repeatedly claimed it has been the target of dirty tricks by the Clinton team. A senior member of her staff, Bill Shaheen, had to resign last year after raising Obama's admitted use of marijuana and cocaine as a youth
A junior staffer resigned in December after forwarding an email suggesting Obama is a Muslim. In the South Carolina primary last month, Bill Clinton made race an issue
However, the tactics are widely believed to have contributed to a backlash against the Clintons among Democrat voters
Plouffe described circulation of the picture as part of "a disturbing pattern". "It's exactly the kind of divisive politics that turns away Americans of all parties," he said
Plouffe's comments suggest that the cordial relationship that existed between Obama and Clinton in last Thursday's televised debate in Texas was unlikely to carry into tomorrow night's debate in Cleveland, Ohio
The Obama team wheeled out Scott Gration, a retired air force general and Obama supporter, who was with the senator in Kenya, to explain the picture
He said: "Senator Obama was given an outfit and as the guest that he was, the great guest, he took this outfit and they encouraged him to try some of it on. It was a thing we all do."
Maggie Williams, campaign manager for Clinton, played down the significance of the picture. "If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him 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."
(عدل بواسطة Mohamed Omer on 02-26-2008, 00:05 AM)
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Re: False claims on US websites that Obama is a Muslim (Re: Mohamed Omer)
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Accentuate the positive
Michael Tomasky
The Guardian
February 25, 2008
Hillary Clinton should fire her top advisers and spend the week telling voters why she is the better choice for president
I'm really confused. Last Thursday night, you see, everyone was telling me that Hillary Clinton was throwing in the towel. MVE's - misty-eyed valedictory encomia - were pouring forth
But now, she's back on the attack. She mocked Barack Obama's message over the weekend in a speech in Rhode Island. Monday, her campaign evidently leaked - to the Drudge Report no less! - a photo of Obama in the garb of a Somali elder, which to the unschooled eye could look like a Taliban outfit. Suddenly everyone is bracing for a final throwdown, a nuclear option, a week of relentless blitzkrieg in what may be her last week of campaigning for president
So what happened? Personally, I thought at the time that the MVE's of last Thursday were premature. Sure enough, on the strength of a good night's sleep (or whatever sort of night's sleeps she's getting these days), Clinton gave an interview last Friday morning to the Texas Observer in which she vowed, in perhaps her strongest language yet, to fight hard to seat the disputed Florida and Michigan delegations
So all signs are she will go down fighting. She has no choice, right?
Actually, she does. Instead of the nuclear option, I think she ought to try detente. And not for Obama's sake or the party's, but for hers - it would represent her only chance of winning this thing
It's pretty clear by now that, unless her campaign is sitting on information that would show Obama to be unfit for office (I don't know what that would be, but I'd know it when I saw it), it's not going to take him out with negatives
A substantial majority of Democratic voters believe in him. They like him. In his youth and his mien of almost an artist's vulnerability, they are sort of protective of him. They've already decided this.
Once voters have made such a decision, it is very difficult for an opponent to make them change their minds. Much research on the brain shows this. When voters get negative information about a candidate they've decided they like, they usually just find ways to rationalize it away
Thus, President Bush: granted, he's down to about 25% of Americans defending him. But for those 25%, almost no information, short of an unfathomable bombshell (he's secretly been back on the hooch for four years, say), will pull them away from their man. They concluded long ago that he's a good man who shares their values and is doing his best, and that's that
In fact, not only do they defend their man, but they then tend to formulate more negative views of the attacker. So, for Bush: whatever has gone wrong in Iraq or Katrina or the economy isn't really his fault. It's the fault of his opponents, who have made it impossible for this decent man to enact his agenda
This is also, incidentally, how Bill Clinton survived the Monica Lewinsky affair. People had already decided that he was a good president, and they wanted him to stay on the job. While they accepted that he'd done wrong, they decided that such behavior was part of his unalterable nature, it wasn't that important, and his enemies were really to blame for the thing becoming such a firestorm
Democratic voters, not all of them but I'd say most of them, have already gone through this process with regard to Obama. Attacks against him by someone they don't like quite as well - generally, Democrats like Hillary Clinton, but not quite as much as they do Obama - are, I think, destined to have minimal impact
Now, it may be that minimal impact is enough. That is, attacking could mean the difference between a two-point loss in Texas and a two-point win. But it's still not a strategy that will give her the kind of momentum she needs to win the nomination
What will? Well, it's probably too late, but here it is (and for free, which is big of me considering those insane salaries she's paying)
Fire Mark Penn. From appearances, he's offered terrible advice virtually every step of the way. He's been leading the internal charge urging her toward blitzkrieg, while others have been counselling an approach that will preserve her reputation should she lose. But more than that he has badly misread this moment of history (as of course has she), giving her candidacy a series of poor arguments in its behalf that were, compared to Obama's arguments, hopelessly out of the step with the times
Then, having fired Penn, start saying something like: you know, some people want me to go negative. But I'm not. I've decided that I'm not going to behave that way toward a fellow Democrat. I'm just going to spend the week telling you why I think I'd be a better president. You may disagree, in which case you should vote for Barack. But I'm not going to be doing any attacking
She should, in other words, admit, even if only implicitly, error and vulnerability. It is the great paradox of Hillary Clinton's public life that she gains her greatest public sympathy when she seems the most vulnerable, but she herself finds it nearly impossible to show any hint of error or vulnerability
But on those rare occasions that she has, she's done well - the aftermath of the Lewinsky mess, and, this year, in New Hampshire
I do not understand why she and the people around her can't see that her only great upset victory of the entire primary season came not from being the attack candidate but from being just the opposite. Then again there's been a lot about her campaign that I don't understand. But this posture is her only hope
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Mohamed Omer
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