Hallelujah!

Great move, Barack.

Best, Terry

potentially sowing internal divisions.
===================================

This is funny. Are you trying to find controversary where there is none? I hope this won't be the mantra all Summer long. I applaud Senator Obama for his words and the way he handle this situation. If you want him to be like Bill Clinton, who always threw people under the bus it won't happen.

I remember Clinton's pick Lani Ganier, one of the most intelligent women in our Country. He wasted no time in cutting her loose.

Good for Sen. Obama. I hope he'll either clean house or take steps to ensure his staff gets the message loud and clear. These sorts of slimy attacks are real turnoffs.

"I thought it was stupid and caustic and not only didn't reflect my view of the complicated issue of outsourcing . . . "

In other words, "Hillary's raised a lot of dough from the outsourcing lobby, and I want to get some of that gravy, too. So I'd rather throw my own campaign staff under the train rather than be associated with any negative statements about shipping the jobs of U.S. workers overseas."

And some people still wonder by the polls are going south on the Democrats so quickly.

Quick observation. Bush would do anything to keep from holding staff accountable, for which has been roundly criticized especially from the left.

Obama apparently believes in holding staff accountable. So what's wrong with that?

Here we go again. Obama placed his staffers under the bus. He did it once already. Be a man, Barack accepts responsibility.

Don't expect Hillary to show the same restraint.

Obama did not take money from Repubs?

Doris Kearns Goodwin, on Meet the Press, 2-25-07, spoke of the campaign as follows:

MS. GOODWIN: Well, I think the fact that it’s going to be so long, and the fact that it’s going to be so heated means that temperament is going to be the determinate. I mean, how these people respond on the campaign trail to the ups and downs really will tell us something about them. I’ve always thought we should be looking at that even more than we look at their past stands on issues 30 years prior, 20, 10 years prior. Have they acknowledged mistakes when they made them? Have they a staff around them that’s loyal, that when something gets screwed up on the staff, they take responsibility or do they push it onto somebody else? There’s going to be all sorts of ways we’re going to look at this as we go along. And I think have they got a staff around them that tells them bad news? We can see a microcosm, from this two years that we’re going to be going through, the kind of leader they’re going to be. And that’s, in some ways, as important as experience. It’s temperament, it’s character. And those questions, and the way those people answered it, suggest that they’re looking at those qualities of temperament. And that’s key in my judgment.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/17277678/page/7/

I think that Obama has not passed this test, just like when he missed the NH Firefighters on 5-11-07.

Obama publicly scolds staff for scheduling decision

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, told New Hampshire firefighters Friday that he was frustrated his staff did not build into his travel schedule a personal appearance before their union meeting taking place in the coastal city of Portsmouth. Instead, the presidential hopeful had to address the IAFF and Federation of State and Provincial Firefighters Association this morning by telephone.

"I have to tell you, I wish I was there," Obama said over a speakerphone. "My staff had already scheduled some things and they couldn't wiggle out if it. They heard from me a little bit because I wasn't happy I couldn't be there personally."

Obama went on to say that "having a chance to talk to you guys is important. And I'm not going to let a thousand miles between us keep me from saying what I have to say."

http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2007/05/obama_throws_st.html

That's not what he is saying. You are the one oversimplifying now.

I don't see what's wrong with holding your staff accountable when they make a dumb mistake.

Polls aren't going south on Dems running for President either.

So you'll take Hillary b/c her staffers make fewer stupid meaningless mistakes, despite knowing that she won't be straight with America on Iraq?

Seems like a serious misalignment of priorities.

Campaign counsel thing about Libby pardon was stupid and totally unnecessary, and it should not have been said by a relatively high-level person, even as his personal opinion. STFU while you work for a candidate.

Campaign oppo research staff have a freer hand to try make things sound bad so that they get picked up by newspapers and generally this stuff never sees the light of day.

The BS thing is that the Times never would have published the memos if Hillary's team hadn't gotten them, but Hillary's team probably just got the memos from another reporter hoping to curry favor with them for the future. Then Hillary's team claimed that since they had them, the Times had to publish them and attribute them to Obama's campaign.

But that's not how the game is played by the MSM. Now they have lowered the standards for everyone, and things will be different in the future. Now, to be fair, if one of the other campaigns gets ahold of any of Hillary's oppo research, the Times basically has to run a story about it and link it to her.

The Times deserves a pretty strong negative reaction from the Obama campaign and other journalists for falling for this sophistry.

That's just silly to suggest that it's some diabolically evil plan. Their joke was dumb, but not racist. You assume that no one thinks worse of the candidate for mistakes made by the staff, which is just not true. Those mistakes accrue to the candidate, not nameless, faceless staffers.

That was pretty clearly a combination of horrible decision-making by Edwards and atrocious political coverage by the MSM.

Hillary's and Barack's Iraq plans ultimately are little different. They both would leave what they call a "risidual force" of tens of thousands of troops. If you want to talk about appropriate priorities, you'll have a hard time distinguishing the two based on the most important facet of Iraq substance: what each would do next.

I still like Obama better overall on Iraq because he had the good judgment to oppose the war from the start, and that matters. Hillary won't even say it was really a mistake.

But that difference doesn't necessarily matter more than running a competent campaign that can win a general election.

No one forced the Boys and Girls Club of L.A. to pay $150,000 to have Bill Clinton speak. If anyone should be second-guessed, it is their Board of Directors or Executive Director or whoever made the decision to spend the money, not Clinton for accepting it.

Update II: A veteran Democratic campaigner emails us: "Since when is your research director NOT part of senior staff"?

Let me guess, couldn't be someone from the Clinton campaign?

Note to Mr. Obama:

Leaders are those who have the capacity to make complex ideas or situations easy to understand. Your response was perhaps inevitable, but it sounded a bit too "Hillary-like" ----similar to Hillary's own refusal to apologize for supporting the war. Americans are sick of the "non-denial" denial complex. We want to elect somebody strong enough to simply apologize for the clear and unequivocal mistake made on your behalf. You will have a much greater positive response if you can tell the truth without the complex posturings regarding which level of your staff knew what and when.

Is there a lot of difference between Obama's behavior in this instance and Edwards' behavior regarding two controversial bloggers serving in his campaign?  Not all that much, MHO.  And I think we have to recognize that campaigns are organized chaos at this stage.  We also have to realize that when everything runs like clockwork up comes the charge that the campaign is overly cautious and scripted.   Bumpy spots like this go with the territory, I think.

aMike

Or - think of the media outrage if John Edwards had omitted Israel as a key U.S. ally.
Brian Williams even bent over backwards giving Obama an opportunity to correct his mistake.

if this was all reversed and we were talking about the Clinton Campaign doing this to Obama and then her later disavowing knowledge of it and calling her staff to the floor -- we'd be hearing the old flip-flopper, ruthless machinator, opportunist, smear-artist, fibulator

How could that possible be when everybody knows Hillary's a bullheaded, stay-the-course, George Bush favor-seeking, chuckle=headed conservative trading on her family's bad reputation?

It is dastardly of you to even think of besmirching the honor of a lady of ill repute.

We are all ashamed of you.

Best, Terry

So let's see... the focus of the attacks were how Bill and Hillary's business relationships have hurt American workers.

And Obama responds by attacking his own employees.

Pretty shameless. And everyone's caught up with the race angle on this one when the real issue is Obama's hypocrisy and unwillingness to take responsibility for what happened.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

IloveDemsNReps, your troll rating of me above and of another user below was telling of your tolerance for dissenting views. Nice way to expose yourself.

PeterPrinciple is dead on right about this. An apology, something Edwards believes in and H. Clinton and G.W. Bush do not, is great. But it's disturbing that Senator Obama apparently is unconcerned about outsourcing, which I think generally has not excessively concerned the Clintons, either. It's as if the 2006 Congressional elections, with the triumph of Sherrod Brown and Jim Webb (both from states the Democratic Presidential nominee may be able to pick off in 2008) never occurred. But the DLC must be proud.
mainstreetliberal.blogspot.com

No, sorry, this is still not good. Much as I feel magnetically drawn to Sen. Obama, here he is again showing the world how inexperienced he is in "real" (by which I mean high stakes) national politics. The second response is the right one, and he should have issued it instantly. To throw his research team under the bus -- EVEN IF THEY DESERVE IT -- publicly is just bush-league stuff. It's first-time-run-for-office-hope-I-win-the-City-Council-race stuff. Obama has literally never been in a competitive general election. Never. He's showing it big time, and this is only a primary, running against (sort of) friends. Every time he veers even slightly away from his "happy face" rhetoric, he goes way off key and screws it up.

He better toughen up. And fast.