Daily Tidbits: March 24, 2008

• Signs of order unraveling in Iraq as al Sadr flexes muscle and violence increases.
• Rest Easy Knowing Osama bin Laden, McCain and Petraeus Are in Agreement. Here’s McCain: “For the first time, I have seen Osama bin Laden and General Petraeus in agreement, and, that is, a central battleground in the battle against al-Qaida is in Iraq today. And that’s what bin Laden was saying and that’s what General Petraeus is saying and that’s what I’m saying, my friends.” Did they work this out over tea and cucumber sandwiches? Can Petraeus pick first this time? OBL went first last time and it really, really sucked.
• “I Took Her Stuff.” Tonight, Hillary gives lengthy, rambling explanation for her “mistatements” about her Bosnia trip.
• Pew Research shows material decline in Republican party identification, rise in Democratic party identification, particularly in critical swing states.
• Another conservative endorses Obama because the author believes the neocons have distorted the GOP.
• Mispokes Were Made. Hillary spokesman Wolfson tells press that Hillary “may have mispoken” about her trip to Bosnia. Wolfson focuses on a tiny detail rather than the clearly broader revisionist effort by Hillary. She carefully repeated the mischaracterization at different events in a deliberate manner to exaggerate her qualifications as commander in chief. Wolfson just made this worse.
• McCain breaks public spending limits. (cricket… cricket…) Did you hear me, I said Mr. Campaign Finance Reform just broke the public spending limits! (”And we’ll be back with more video of Rev. Wright, after the break…”).
• Senator Evan Bayh introduces a new metric to measure Hillary’s campaign success: states should be valued by their general election electoral votes. Of course, the nomination contests are completely different from the general election battle against McCain. After all, did Huckabee’s victory in Iowa mean McCain has no chance in that state Bush won in 2004? Romney won Michigan — should McCain not bother to campaign there? This is a variant of Hillaryland’s ongoing argument that the states Hillary won are more “significant” than the states Obama won. The suggestion is that because Hillary won California, New Jersey and New York, Obama has no chance of winning those deeply blue states in November. By the same bizarre logic, Hillary is a lock to beat McCain in the deeply red states of Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas that she won. Fat chance.
• Interesting article about Obama’s home base, the South Side of Chicago, written by a South Side native.
• State GOP parties reeling; still recovering financially and otherwise from 2006 losses and damage to “brand” during Bush administration.
• New Lobbying Story on McCain. When the NY Times ran the story about McCain’s relationship with lobbyists, including his close relationship with a 32-year old telecom lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, his campaign successfully spun it as a hit job that unfairly implied an extramarital affair without proof. This sensationalist aspect diverted attention from the article’s main focus: his questionable ties to lobbyists and his actions on their behalf as Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. The hypocrisy of St. John reverting to his Keating Five ethical conduct was buried, and McCain’s favorability rating has since climbed to an all time high. When he chaired this committee, he had jurisdiction over all radio, TV, satellite and cable media and the telecommunications industry, which just happens to be the sector represented by Vicki Iseman. Today, in a return to the original focus of the NYT story, USA Today reports that McCain’s campaign has received $765K from telecom lobbyists. It also notes that of the 66 lobbyists actively supporting McCain’s campaign, more than a third are telecom lobbyists. That’s obscene, particularly from a man who with almost Spitzer-like self-righteousness holds himself out as a maverick reformist above reproach. These lobbyists are not candy stripers — they donate because it makes good business sense for their careers. The paper also reports in a related story that McCain pushed a telecom tax ban that was favored by the telecommunications industry. Coincidence, or a good return on investment?
• A conservative GOP constitutional scholar endorses Obama, here.
• Milestone of 4,000 U.S. military deaths achieved amidst rising violence in Iraq
  
• WaPo hit job on Obama on Page A1. The article implies both Obama and Hillary embellish their senate accomplishments, but focuses almost entirely on Obama. To support its allegations against Obama, the reporters apparently only interviewed Republican senator Arlen Specter about Obama’s achievements. Specter implies Obama is a limelight hog (as if Specter ever met a camera he didn’t love). It also offers a quote from Senator Chris Dodd about senators generally who embellish, which is then used to support an allegation that Obama has been excessive in claiming credit, even by the senate’s standards.

Given that Dodd endorsed Obama, it is highly unlikely that Dodd intended his quote to be used by WaPo to attack Obama. The article also implies that Obama took undue credit for an FHA reform bill, but can’t substantiate the claim except by vaguely referring to “Obama [making] another assertion that was greeted with disbelief in some corners of Capitol Hill.” (Emphasis added). A related quote from Dodd fails to support the anonymous disbelievers’ allegation.

Finally, it gets to a discussion of Hillary’s record at the end of the article, and largely skips her senate record (including her sparse record of achievement on the Armed Services Committee, a role she frequently cites as experience that makes her ready to be commander in chief on day one). Instead, it largely focuses on her tenure as first lady by making a few passing references to her taking credit for helping the Northern Ireland peace process and her description of her trip to Bosnia, and then spends a couple of closing paragraphs on SCHIP (although even there, it suggests she played an important role in SCHIP but kept a low profile). It makes a passing reference to the 11,000 pages of her schedule but implies the article’s authors have not reviewed them.

Apparently the reporters made no effort to corroborate Hillary’s statements about her “private dissent” on NAFTA’s senate approval (which is contradicted by the newly released documents, which show her attending lobbying events backing NAFTA). Having brought up her first lady tenure, it makes no reference to her current claim of credit for helping to pass the Family and Medical Leave Act (something I’m sure Dodd, the author of FMLA, would have disputed if asked by the reporters).

It makes no reference to the video that emerged late Friday of her arrival in Bosnia which completely contradicts her dramatic description of it as being under sniper fire.

It’s really too much — here we have numerous examples of Hillary taking enormous liberties with her own record, as documented by former President Clinton counsel Greg Craig, and as recently reported by the Washington Post here and here, and yet in this article, WaPo is essentially ignoring those facts to essentially do to Obama what the GOP did to Gore in 2000: unfairly treat him as a serial exaggerator. If Karl Rove had been given editorial privileges, he wouldn’t have changed a word.