Analysis:
Both of the mailers Clinton criticized have been around for a while. The most recent deals with Clinton's views on the North American Free Trade Agreement, and images of its four pages were posted Feb. 13 by Ohio blogger Jeff Coryell. We haven't previously commented on this one, but Clinton's statement prompted us to take a closer look...
We frankly find Clinton's past position on NAFTA to be ambivalent. Bloomberg News reported last year that Hillary "promoted her husband's trade agenda for years." Bloomberg quoted her at the 1998 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland as praising corporations for mounting "a very effective business effort in the U.S. on behalf of Nafta," and adding, "It is certainly clear that we have not by any means finished the job that has begun."
On the other hand, Clinton's biographer Sally Bedell Smith says Hillary privately argued against NAFTA inside the White House and was "not very much in favor of free trade."
I don't think Hillary has been "ambivalent" about NAFTA -- I think she's been carefully dodging the issue as much as possible, putting her in a position to either support it or oppose it depending on which way the political wind blows. Right now it's blowing against NAFTA, so she's trying to make the case that she's always been against it. It would have been just as easy for her to argue that she's been a long-time advocate. I'm not trying to come down too hard on her on this point because it may be true that this was an issue she and Bill disagreed on behind closed doors. But that's the problem with tying her experience with her husband's administration. Obama is correct to point out that if she wishes to take credit for her husband's accomplishments, she must also take the blame for his failures.
FactCheck.org continues:
We take no position here on whether NAFTA is a boon to the economy or a detriment, and note only that there are plenty of arguments on both sides. We do judge that the Obama campaign is wrong to quote Hillary as using words she never uttered, and has produced little evidence that she ever had strong praise of any sort for NAFTA's economic benefits.
I do agree that Obama is stretching things a bit here, and that this isn't exactly the break from politics-as-usual he's been promoting in his speeches. The healthcare mailing, however, isn't stretching things quite as much:
The second mailing that Clinton criticized is one we dealt with Feb 4, attacking a feature of Clinton's health plan that would require individuals to obtain coverage. We said the mailer "lacks context" and stretches the facts, but we can't agree that it is "false" as Clinton says.
The mailer says "Hillary's health care plan forces everyone to buy insurance, even if you can't afford it." But it fails to note that Clinton's plan, like Obama's, would subsidize the cost of insurance for many, making it more affordable.
We criticized the mailer for exaggerating the differences between Obama's plan and Clinton's. Since then both candidates have continued to strain the facts on this issue. Clinton keeps insisting that her plan will cover "everybody," which isn't quite true. It's true that her plan would include some sort of "mandate" to require individuals to obtain coverage. But as we reported Feb. 14, that would still leave perhaps a million persons without insurance, or more depending on how strong or weak her "mandate" turns out to be. She hasn't specified how she would enforce it or whether she would grant exemptions for hardship cases. Obama also has run ads claiming his plan would "cover everyone," but we quoted experts who estimated that 15 million or 26 million might be left without insurance unless required to obtain it; he too would have some kind of unspecified enforcement mechanism. And we noted that experts are skeptical of both Clinton's and Obama's claims of huge cost savings from their plans.
I think it's ironic that FactChek.org's chief complaint with both candidate's criticisms is not that either of them are lying about each other's plans, but that both candidates are failing to recognize that their plans are basically the same. This has been commented on by Robert Reich.
So should we be "outraged" over Obama's "Rovian" tactics? Hold your outrage:
In closing, we'd just note that Clinton is no innocent on sending out misleading mailers. We reported on Feb. 6 that a mailing by her campaign contained a "big distortion" of his position on Social Security taxes and falsely implied that he had "no plan" to address mortgage foreclosures. It also attacked him for voting for a "Dick Cheney" energy bill that gave "huge tax breaks to oil companies," when in fact the bill gave a net tax increase to oil companies.
Last night I couldn't for the life of me figure out what Hillary was up to, storming out there shaking her fist, after being so conciliatory just a couple of nights ago. She looked downright insane. After listening to the talking heads this morning, I agree that this was damage control from the appearance she was conceding during her now infamous "close." However you look at it, Obama has her playing defense, and she doesn't play defense very well.
Speaking of Robert Reich, his latest blog entry is worth a look:
It is easy for cynics to write off Obamania as a passing fad, as lofty rhetoric that can't and won't hold up on close inspection -- another bout of the kind of naive and romantic enthrallment that occasionally claims American voters until common sense sets in. This is surely what Hillary Clinton and my friend from forty years ago [Bill] are counting on. But if the Clintons stop to think back to what they felt and understood in those years leading up to 1968, they may come to a different conclusion, as have I.
Neither John F. Kennedy nor his brother Robert were idealists. They were realists who understood the importance of idealism in the service of realism. They grasped the central political fact that little can be achieved in Washington unless or until the public is energized and mobilized to push for it; the status quo is simply too powerful. The ideals they enunciated helped mobilized the nation politically. That mobilization contributed to the subsequent passage of civil rights and voting rights laws, Medicare, and environmental protection. For purposes of practical electoral strategy as well as high-minded moral aspiration, they never tired of reminding the nation of its founding principles -- most fundamentally, that all men are created equal.
