Journalist and Republican stake holders learned an invaluable tool more than a decade ago in tarnishing the reputation of any major Democratic personality: take a fairly innocuous financial situation involving the candidate, make it sound complicated, put a headline with a question mark over the story, and watch as the attack dogs rip him apart.
The result? In the instance of Whitewater it moved from an Arkansas land deal to the Clinton’s bedroom. If you got lost along the way, welcome to the club.
Now we’re seeing the same character assassination tool courtesy of the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
The headline itself sounds pretty damning: "Obama faces Questions on ’05 Investing". (Don't they mean "Land Deal"?)
That seems pretty bad, and the opening paragraph seems to imply he’s in cahoots with some nefarious figures:
"Less than two months after ascending to the United States Senate, Barack Obama bought more than $50,000 worth of stock in two speculative companies whose major investors included some of his biggest political donors."
Of course, you move down the page, and surprise, surprise, this huge story seems to have an actual, legitimate explanation:
"A spokesman for Mr. Obama, who is seeking his party’s presidential nomination in 2008, said yesterday that the senator did not know that he had invested in either company until fall 2005, when he learned of it and decided to sell the stocks. He sold them at a net loss of $13,000."
Oh, for the love of God. We’ve been down this road before, and we know all the turns and street signs.
Todd Gitlin does a good job of deconstructing the story at TPM:
http://www.tpmcafe.com/...
I hope this sort of story won't have any political fallout. What’s bothersome is the obvious arch here: they find a guy that’s popular, pretty new to the scene, and most troubling - charismatic. Time to turn up the war machine! Perhaps this is a story worth examining, but certainly not worth the attention of the front page of the NY Times’ website, and definitely not deserving the ominous portends alluded to in the lede paragraph.
It’s obvious that decrying a Democrat’s finances, no matter what, is now standard fair. The disturbing part about this, as seen with Bill Clinton, is that once you start sticking your nose into one aspect of a candidate’s personal life, then you gain access to rampage, carte blanche, through all aspects of that life. After the (go nowhere) stories questioning Harry Reed’s personal financial history from last year, we’re starting to see that this tactic is becoming a textbook way to attack high profile Democrats, even if it’s all sound, in the end signifying nothing.
Well, I’ve been a long time supporter for Barack Obama, albeit a little skeptical about the chances of his current run. Maybe this story proves the Senator turned Candidate is the real deal.