Call It A Comeback
With all apologies to Eric Zorn:
“It’s not just talking tough, because the truth is nobody’s talked tougher than George Bush over the last six years. Being tough means, first of all, not having to talk about it all the time,” Obama said.
Back–a bit slow early.
Obama raised $6.9 million—more than a quarter of his total—over the Internet from more than 50,000 online donors, the Illinois Democrat’s campaign said from Chicago this morning.
Overall, Obama received contributions from more than 100,000 individuals, his campaign said. Clinton received donations from about 50,000 people, while Edwards took in money from about 37,000 donors.
Obama’s campaign said that at least $23.5 million of its first-quarter collection would be available for the primary campaign, an important distinction because candidates are able to raise money now for both the primary and general elections.
I believe this is called winning the news cycle.
I think Frank James does a very good analysis on the Pickler piece that won Daily Dolt below:
Again, it strikes me that this is what politicians do, or allow to have done in their names, even first-class ones. Abraham Lincoln did a stint of rail splitting before becoming an affluent railroad lawyer but he probably could have been accused today of allowing supporters to exaggerate that part of his biography in calling him the “rail splitter.”
But the larger point is that after being charged with creating the Obama phenomenon, the Washington press corps is now doing stories that I guarantee the Obama campaign will be hoping most people ignore. These stories are inescapably negative.
Whether Obama is the MSM’s Frankenstein monster is arguable. Millions of people voted for him in Illinois. The man certainly has the larger-than-life charisma needed to occupy the White House successfully. The John F. Kennedy is definitely not-far fetched in this regaed.
Obama really seems comfortable with the media glare and adoring crowds, making him a kind of anti-Nixon. Part of his success, so far, I believe is that people tend to like other people who are comfortable in their presence.
Americans also like politicians who speak to the better angels of their nature, which Obama certainly does with all of that Lincolnesque, high-toned language of his that, yes, at times comes across as platitudes. Come to think of it, Lincoln’s better-angel line is really a platitude, isn’t it?
My take is even more cynical in that I don’t think it matters what Obama does in terms of receiving criticism like this because the press is going to do it anyway. The measure of the campaign is can they take the criticism and react to it creating a net positive.
What’s most interesting about the Tribune and the Swamp is that despite being a part of the DC corps and being an influential paper, since it’s not East Coast or West Coast, they are somewhat distinct from the herd (Sun Times has a similar nature with Lynn Sweet). No news organization is perfect, but I often find the Trib and Sun-Times reporters to be far better than most of the beltway crowd. An interesting test case will be to analyze Jeff Zeleny’s work for the Trib and how he’s doing one year from now at the NY Times.
The worst thing that has happened to news coverage is probably the rise of the pundit class, but with them came the psychological profiling of candidates and the navel gazing about whether they have a story about their youth correct. I remember when Bill Clinton told the story of confronting his abusive stepfather when he was still a boy and the press tried desperately to knock down the story saying it wasn’t clear he was accurate and so it must be a sign of a major character flaw.
Of course, most of us have memories of our youth that are far more dramatic than reality was for sure. The crushing disappointment of being turned down for a date, really wasn’t that great. The fight with parents that seems like daily occurrences with four year olds, seems like a life changing event. The deep intellectual conversations with friends were,well silly.
All teenagers are drama queens and in our more objective moments we realize that. However, are memories make those very vivid and as such relevant to how we are formed as human beings. Bill Clinton standing up to his abusive father-in-law even if it was through tears and not nearly as dramatic as he might remember it is one of those events a young man learns from and recounting it in his mind is certainly vivid.
It’s not some great character flaw to recount those events as you remember them as people know that one’s memories as a kid are not entirely accurate. In Obama’s case, he even told you that in the introduction to the book admitting it and even changing characters to make the narrative easier to follow. IOW, trying to make it out as a big deal is silly hack journalism.
Finally, I hated high school and that’s not an exaggeration–I too laughed and posed for photos the day of my graduation even through a horrible hangover.
WASHINGTON – The voices are growing louder asking the question: Is Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) all style and little substance? The freshman Illinois senator began his campaign facing the perception that he lacks the experience to be president, especially compared to rivals with decades of work on foreign and domestic policy. So far, he’s done little to challenge it. He’s delivered no policy speeches and provided few details about how he would lead the country.
No policy speeches.
Are you kidding me?
Just from a quick look at his Senate web site.
Iraq War Speeches
March 21st
March 13th
January 30th
January 19th
November 20th
Africa
Aids December 1
Zimbabwe March 15th
Kenya August 28th (In Kenya)
Latin America March 8th
Foreign Policy/Israel–March 2nd
Veterans March 22nd
January 8th Ethics Legislation
Bills/Actions Introduced:
Health Insurance Tax Breaks for Better Fuel Economy
Housing Summit on Foreclosures
Reform Troop Care–something he’s worked with Durbin on since entering the Senate
The entire article seems to be because Obama doesn’t have a detailed health care plan. It’s legitimate to say Edwards is ahead of him on the issue, but to say it signifies a lack of policy positions when he has a ton of substantive positions and has given a number of speeches on foreign policy in the just the last few months is ridiculous and could only happen in the DC press corps that cannot help itself, but to fit every candidate into their particular view–facts be damned.
This is going to be a huge story as the sub prime market is falling apart nationally.
OBAMA URGES BERNANKE, PAULSON TO FIGHT FORECLOSURES,
HOLD HOMEOWNERSHIP SUMMIT
WASHINGTON, DC — U.S. Senator Barack Obama today sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Paulson urging them to immediately convene a homeownership preservation summit with key stakeholders to fight foreclosures driven by growth in the subprime mortgage market.
The text of the letter is below:
Dear Chairman Bernanke and Secretary Paulson,
There is grave concern in low-income communities about a potential coming wave of foreclosures. Because regulators are partly responsible for creating the environment that is leading to rising rates of home foreclosure in the subprime mortgage market, I urge you immediately to convene a homeownership preservation summit with leading mortgage lenders, investors, loan servicing organizations, consumer advocates, federal regulators and housing-related agencies to assess options for private sector responses to the challenge.
We cannot sit on the sidelines while increasing numbers of American families face the risk of losing their homes. And while neither the government nor the private sector acting alone is capable of quickly balancing the important interests in widespread access to credit and responsible lending, both must act and act quickly.
Working together, the relevant private sector entities and regulators may be best positioned for quick and targeted responses to mitigate the danger. Rampant foreclosures are in nobody’s interest, and I believe this is a case where all responsible industry players can share the objective of eliminating deceptive or abusive practices, preserving homeownership, and stabilizing housing markets.
The summit should consider best practice loan marketing, underwriting, and origination practices consistent with the recent (and overdue) regulators’ Proposed Statement on Subprime Mortgage Lending. The summit participants should also evaluate options for independent loan counseling, voluntary loan restructuring, limited forbearance, and other possible workout strategies. I would also urge you to facilitate a serious conversation about the following:
· What standards investors should require of lenders, particularly with regard to verification of income and assets and the underwriting of borrowers based on fully indexed and fully amortized rates.
· How to facilitate and encourage appropriate intervention by loan servicing companies at the earliest signs of borrower difficulty.
· How to support independent community-based-organizations to provide counseling and work-out services to prevent foreclosure and preserve homeownership where practical.
· How to provide more effective information disclosure and financial education to ensure that borrowers are treated fairly and that deception is never a source of competitive advantage.
· How to adopt principles of fair competition that promote affordability, transparency, non-discrimination, genuine consumer value, and competitive returns.
· How to ensure adequate liquidity across all mortgage markets without exacerbating consumer and housing market vulnerability.
Of course, the adoption of voluntary industry reforms will not preempt government action to crack down on predatory lending practices, or to style new restrictions on subprime lending or short-term post-purchase interventions in certain cases. My colleagues on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs have held important hearings on mortgage market turmoil and I expect the Committee will develop legislation.
Nevertheless, a consortium of industry-related service providers and public interest advocates may be able to bring quick and efficient relief to millions of at-risk homeowners and neighborhoods, even before Congress has had an opportunity to act. There is an opportunity here to bring different interests together in the best interests of American homeowners and the American economy. Please don’t let this opportunity pass us by.
The NY Times.
From Skeptical Brother
Apparently Obama’s pastor wasn’t so upset after all.
March 11, 2007
Jodi Kantor
The New York Times
9 West 43rd Street
New York,
New York 10036-3959Dear Jodi:
Thank you for engaging in one of the biggest misrepresentations of the truth I have ever seen in sixty-five years. You sat and shared with me for two hours. You told me you were doing a “Spiritual Biography” of Senator Barack Obama. For two hours, I shared with you how I thought he was the most principled individual in public service that I have ever met.
For two hours, I talked with you about how idealistic he was. For two hours I shared with you what a genuine human being he was. I told you how incredible he was as a man who was an African American in public service, and as a man who refused to announce his candidacy for President until Carol Moseley Braun indicated one way or the other whether or not she was going to run.
I told you what a dreamer he was. I told you how idealistic he was. We talked about how refreshing it would be for someone who knew about Islam to be in the Oval Office. Your own question to me was, Didn’t I think it would be incredible to have somebody in the Oval Office who not only knew about Muslims, but had living and breathing Muslims in his own family? I told you how important it would be to have a man who not only knew the difference between Shiites and Sunnis prior to 9/11/01 in the Oval Office, but also how important it would be to have a man who knew what Sufism was; a man who understood that there were different branches of Judaism; a man who knew the difference between Hasidic Jews, Orthodox Jews, Conservative Jews and Reformed Jews; and a man who was a devout Christian, but who did not prejudge others because they believed something other than what he believed.
I talked about how rare it was to meet a man whose Christianity was not just “in word only.” I talked about Barack being a person who lived his faith and did not argue his faith. I talked about Barack as a person who did not draw doctrinal lines in the sand nor consign other people to hell if they did not believe what he believed.
Out of a two-hour conversation with you about Barack’s spiritual journey and my protesting to you that I had not shaped him nor formed him, that I had not mentored him or made him the man he was, even though I would love to take that credit, you did not print any of that. When I told you, using one of your own Jewish stories from the Hebrew Bible as to how God asked Moses, “What is that in your hand?,” that Barack was like that when I met him. Barack had it “in his hand.” Barack had in his grasp a uniqueness in terms of his spiritual development that one is hard put to find in the 21st century, and you did not print that.
As I was just starting to say a moment ago, Jodi, out of two hours of conversation I spent approximately five to seven minutes on Barack’s taking advice from one of his trusted campaign people and deeming it unwise to make me the media spotlight on the day of his announcing his candidacy for the Presidency and what do you print? You and your editor proceeded to present to the general public a snippet, a printed “sound byte” and a titillating and tantalizing article about his disinviting me to the Invocation on the day of his announcing his candidacy.
I have never been exposed to that kind of duplicitous behavior before, and I want to write you publicly to let you know that I do not approve of it and will not be party to any further smearing of the name, the reputation, the integrity or the character of perhaps this nation’s first (and maybe even only) honest candidate offering himself for public service as the person to occupy the Oval Office.
Your editor is a sensationalist. For you to even mention that makes me doubt your credibility, and I am looking forward to see how you are going to butcher what else I had to say concerning Senator Obama’s “Spiritual Biography.” Our Conference Minister, the Reverend Jane Fisler Hoffman, a white woman who belongs to a Black church that Hannity of “Hannity and Colmes” is trying to trash, set the record straight for you in terms of who I am and in terms of who we are as the church to which Barack has belonged for over twenty years.
The president of our denomination, the Reverend John Thomas, has offered to try to help you clarify in your confused head what Trinity Church is even though you spent the entire weekend with us setting me up to interview me for what turned out to be a smear of the Senator; and yet The New York Times continues to roll on making the truth what it wants to be the truth. I do not remember reading in your article that Barack had apologized for listening to that bad information and bad advice. Did I miss it? Or did your editor cut it out? Either way, you do not have to worry about hearing anything else from me for you to edit or “spin” because you are more interested in journalism than in truth.
Forgive me for having a momentary lapse. I forgot that The New York Times was leading the bandwagon in trumpeting why it is we should have gone into an illegal war. The New York Times became George Bush and the Republican Party’s national “blog.” The New York Times played a role in the outing of Valerie Plame. I do not know why I thought The New York Times had actually repented and was going to exhibit a different kind of behavior.
Maybe it was my faith in the Jewish Holy Day of Roshashana. Maybe it was my being caught up in the euphoria of the Season of Lent; but whatever it is or was, I was sadly mistaken. There is no repentance on the part of The New York Times. There is no integrity when it comes to The Times. You should do well with that paper, Jodi. You looked me straight in my face and told me a lie!
Sincerely and respectfully yours,
Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. ,
Senior Pastor
Trinity United Church of Christ
One of the interesting aspects of the campaign is that people keep claiming that Obama doesn’t have a record, but even in Illinois he worked on several decent proposals for tougher ethics in state government–one which many wish would have happened is public financing of judicial elections which he got through the Senate with Republican cosponsors only to be killed in–the Illinois House. Dan Vock did a really good run down on Obama in general and ethics in particular in last months Illinois Issues.
“Any time a politician at the federal level is willing to take a leadership role [on ethics], they undoubtedly open themselves up to charges of hypocrisy,” says Meredith McGehee, policy director of the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington, D.C.-based group that promotes stringent campaign finance and ethics laws.
In fact, she notes, McCain survived a brush with a savings-and-loan scandal in the late 1980s. But the scare convinced McCain of the need for ethics reforms, a cause that’s raised his profile across the country.
Like McCain, Obama has made ethics reform a central part of his political career. Two years into his first term in the U.S. Senate, he has had limited opportunities to leave a mark at the federal level, especially as a member of the minority party. But he has worked with Republicans on new good-government laws. He co-sponsored one, signed in September, that will create a federal spending database so Web users can track all grants, loans and awards greater than $25,000. He also pushed to limit the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s authority to award open-ended, no-bid contracts in the wake of major disasters — a reaction to post-Katrina abuses.
More to the point, last year Senate Democrats tapped Obama as the chief negotiator for their caucus in talks over post-Abramoff ethics reforms, though those negotiations faltered.
Ethics reform was one of Obama’s signature issues in Springfield, as well. Beyond the Gift Ban Act, he helped push Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s 2003 ethics reforms. The gift ban law, the first broad ethics reform in Illinois since the Watergate era, prohibited politicians from using campaign funds for personal use, barred fundraising on state property, established ethics commissions, curtailed fundraisers in Springfield during legislative sessions and mandated online reporting of campaign finances. The 2003 ethics package created independent inspectors general with subpoena powers to look into abuses by legislators, statewide officeholders and their employees. It further clamped down on the types of gifts lawmakers can receive and prohibited lobbyists and their spouses from sitting on state boards and commissions.
Obama also touted publicly financed judicial campaigns, an idea that was approved by the Illinois Senate but languished in the House.
Given we’ve been treated to some rather lame stories on Obama’s parking tickets and stock purchases, Lynn Sweet offers the best critique of the way the campaign handles fundraisers.
This sort of selective release of information about even what city Obama is visiting on a certain day raises questions about the credibility of Obama’s claim that “we are going to transform the political process.” Obama putting the kibosh on reports of his fund-raising travels is politics-as-usual. Not wrong. But not different.
That’s a really good take on it.
She also has a good take on the stock situation and the parking tickets based on things like facts which have been lacking in many of the reports. It also provides an interesting glimpse into how the campaign is doing it’s own oppo on Obama-something all campaigns should do.
Meanwhile, Obama’s research team — aware that every part of his life is under a microscope — turned up unpaid parking tickets from his days as a Harvard law student. In January, an Obama representative paid $400 in fines and penalties, according to the Somerville News.
What’s fascinating about the trust issue is here:
The ‘quasi-blind’ trust: “Now obviously the thing didn’t work the way I wanted it to,” Obama said.
The Senate Ethics manual has detailed rules about blind trusts and qualified blind trusts. Obama did not want to sign on to either of those options because he did not want to wash his hands of the responsibility of investments made in his name, attorney Robert Bauer said.
Because the off-the-shelf trusts were not satisfactory, “We tried to see if we could jigger it to make it work better,” Obama said. He signed papers on May 31, 2005, for the custom trust designed to shield him from knowing how his money was invested — but let him respond to media inquiries about potential conflicts. Obama realized his system was not working when he received some sort of shareholder letter in fall 2005.
Katten Muchin Rosenman attorney Michael Hartz in Chicago drew up the papers for and was the trustee of the “Freedom Trust.” Bauer said this particular kind of trust did not require any clearance from the Senate Ethics Committee because he did not ask to be relieved from any reporting rule. Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, said that if any kind of blind trust was created, “you should have the Ethics Committee sign off on it.”
The trust was revoked on Dec. 31, 2005. Obama put his money in cash and mutual funds.
Essentially, Obama wanted to be held to higher standards of reporting and tried to develop a trust that required him to report everything he owned in terms of conflict-of-interest reporting, but kept him largely in the dark. On second though, I’m sure he sees the essential problem here, but for all of the gnashing of teeth, if had followed the rules as they allow, he wouldn’t have been as accountable. While I think the fact based story that pointed out his purchase was legitimate, the dark overtones are hardly warranted since he followed all of the Senate rules and stopped the trust when it didn’t work as well as he liked. That’s what we should want from our politicians.
Now, as a married man, I would have hated to explain to my wife that I owed $400 in unpaid parking tickets….
One of the interesting things about Jared Abbruzzese’s contributions isn’t so much that he gave primarily to Republicans (not solely as some reports suggested), but he donated $2000 to Renew America, Alan Keyes’ PAC. It was 1997, but still quite amusing. He gave money to other Dems including Ed Markey and Ernest Hollings.
New Clinton commercial:
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Obama on Public Affairs with Berkowitz in 2002.
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