Obama's lies about not taking lobbyist money were my first tip off that he wasn't exactly the person he was selling out there on the campaign trail. He even has a new campaign ad up in PA claiming he doesn't take lobbyist money.
I know that his claim that he doesn't take lobbyist money isn't true. In fact, he has lobbyists bundling money for his presidential campaign instead of taking it directly from them. They work for his campaign free of charge, and he even solicits money from the spouses of lobbyists.
Now he has moved on to lying about his opponent. And most of those lies revolve around pretending she doesn't have the experience that he so obviously lacks.
The reason for his lies could be that he's just another politician who is honesty challenged; or it could be because he is a sexist that refuses to acknowledge the accomplishments of women in power. After all, it's well known that the "typical black male" can be very sexist:
''Perhaps it is not surprising that African American men, who were prohibited from exercising power in other public arenas, would be adamant about maintaining authority in the one institution they did manage to control, Black churches. Their embrace of patriarchy in Black churches was aided by passages in the Bible that support the subordination of women,'' write Betsch Cole and Guy-Sheftall.
One diary does not provide enough space to detail ALL of the lies Obama has told with the purpose of denigrating Clinton's experience, but here are a few of the more egregious ones:
FMLA
The Lie:
Obama campaign memo: There are no mentions of the Family and Medical Leave Act on Clinton’s schedule before bill signing it into law even though she gives herself credit for "helping to pass" the bill."
The Truth:
"Despite another round of consultations that Thursday brought President Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice President Al Gore to Capitol Hill on three separate lobbying missions, the Democrats couldn't win speedy enactment of a relatively simple bill that has overwhelming bipartisan support. Senate passage Thursday night of the Family and Medical Leave bill came only after three days of delaying tactics by the Republicans who succeeded in forcing reluctant Democrats to vote on whether to block Mr. Clinton from lifting the ban on homosexuals in the military... But Mr. Clinton, Mrs. Clinton, and Mr. Gore all demonstrated Thursday how concerned they are about keeping the Democratic troops in line with an extraordinary display of White House lobbying that kept the Secret Service motorcade crews busy all day." [Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 2/5/93]
Now I don't necessarily like to take the media's word for anything, so when the archives of Clinton's schedule became available I downloaded and read them. And lo and behold, in the those first few weeks we see meeting with democratic leaders such as George Mitchell and Richard Gephardt. Looks like she got right down to work.
Despite the fact that Obama claims Clinton's experience is null and void, the truth is that while she was working to provide assistance to tens of millions of families he had not yet been elected to any office. Of course team Obama, in its sexist view, would have us believe that the Democratic leaders stopped by to have tea parties with her.
Speaking of tea parties, Obama has made a second career of denigrating the foreign policy experience of the most politically involved first lady in history. According to him all the efforts she made toward foreign policy objectives amounted to having tea with diplomats:
"It's that experience, that understanding, not just of what world leaders I went and talked to in the ambassadors house I had tea with, but understanding the lives of the people like my grandmother who lives in a tiny hut in Africa," Obama, D-Ill., told a crowd of would-be voters in Coralville, Iowa, on Friday.
Like the "typical male" is prone to do, Obama seems to suggest that women should stay in their rightful place - having tea parties. And he is even willing to lie and rewrite history to support his sexist views.
But the truth is that fom Ireland, to Bosnia, Kosovo, and China, Clinton was extremely involved in the successful foreign policy initiatives of the Clinton White House. The truth is that while Clinton was gaining solid foreign policy experience, Obama was a newcomer to the state senate in Illinois voting "present" on difficult and politically risky issues.
Ireland:
John Hume, who won the Nobel Prize for Peace for his work on Northern Ireland:
I can state from firsthand experience that she played a positive role for over a decade in helping to bring peace to Northern Ireland... Anyone criticizing her foreign policy involvement should look at her very active and positive approach to Northern Ireland and speak with the people of Northern Ireland who have the highest regard for her and are very grateful for her very active support for our peace process.
George Mitchell, former Senator who led the peace effort:
She was helpful and supportive, very much involved in the issues, knew all of the delegates. She accompanied President Clinton on each visit he made to Northern Ireland, made several visits of her own. Her greatest focus was on encouraging women in Northern Ireland to get in and stay in the political process, the peace process. And I have said publicly many times and wrote in my book, the role of women in the peace process in Northern Ireland was significant. It did make a difference in the process, so as I said I think it was a helpful and supportive role.
Kosovo:
Richard Holbrooke, the architect of the Dayton Accords:
It was dire in May 1999 when Hillary Clinton arrived in Macedonia. The government of Macedonia had slowed the flow of refugees from Kosovo to a trickle. After visiting refugees and gaining a first-hand assessment of the situation, the First Lady had intense talks with President Gligorov and Prime Minister Georgievski. In these talks, one in the Presidential Palace, another in the residence of the American Ambassador, Christopher Hill, Mrs. Clinton pressed the Macedonian government to fully open the border so that Kosovar Albanian refugees could flee the war zone to safety. She also committed herself to work with the government and people of Macedonia who also faced an emergency because of the threat to their own safety and stability. Hillary Clinton promised to take action to help the Macedonian economy. Returning to Washington, she pressed hard in the administration for action to support the Macedonians. She even contacted American business executives to ensure that American textile contracts in Macedonia were not canceled. There is no doubt in my mind, nor in the minds of those people I worked with in the Balkans at the time – that her intense efforts resulted in easing a crisis of significant dimensions and contributed to saving many lives.
Bosnia:
The Obama camp belittles her work as a simple USO tour. But that is not how it was reported at the time...
At a second outpost, Camp Bedrock, Mrs. Clinton visited a M.A.S.H. unit, the only full-service U.S. Army hospital in Bosnia. The three-hour tour of the frontlines of the international peacekeeping mission were filled with the gritty reality of a military operation, a far cry from traditional first lady photo opportunities, and Mrs. Clinton seemed more than comfortable with that. [CNN, 3/25/99]
The Charleston Gazette reported that "Protected by sharpshooters, Hillary Rodham Clinton swooped into a military zone by Black Hawk helicopter Monday...This trip to Bosnia marks the first time since Roosevelt that a first lady has voyaged to a potential combat zone..."
China:
Obama also belittles her work in China to open doors for women, and her historic speech at the U.N. conference in Beijing. Perhaps Obama simply doesn't see the need for such work. Maybe he thinks such efforts were and are unnecessary. But he cannot deny the impact Clinton had....
Brazil has promised free cancer-screening exams for women. The United States is spending $ 1.6 billion to try to end domestic violence. South African President Nelson Mandela is setting up a unit in his office to monitor the status of women. A year after 189 states pledged to make equality of the sexes a reality in the 21st century, many governments are crediting the conference for their latest steps to help women.
'The momentum is on - and this momentum is not only by women but even by governments and by men,' said Gertrude Mongella, secretary-general of the Fourth World Conference on Women that adopted a 150-page plan to achieve women's equality. Inspired by last September's U.N. conference in Beijing, five Mongolian women ran for parliament in June and won, bringing the total number of female legislators to seven out of 76. Women's groups in Zaire joined forces to try to change laws that bar women from traveling or opening bank accounts without their husbands' permission. [AP, 8/25/96]
NAFTA
The Lie:
Clinton tells Ohio voters that she has "been a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning." Yet her own schedules show that as First Lady she attended at least four meetings to advocate for its original passage.
This is perhaps the most pernicious and sexist of all Obama's lies -- that a woman MUST believe exactly as her husband does, because of course women are incapable of thinking for themselves. Perhaps that describes Michelle Obama, but it does not describe Hillary Clinton.
Do they have evidence at all that she advocated for NAFTA at those meetings? No, not from a single reliable source that isn't related to the Obama campaign. What does an honest broker like David Gergen have to say on the subject?
The Truth:
I was actually there in the Clinton White House during the NAFTA fight and I must tell you Hillary Clinton was extremely unenthusiastic about NAFTA. And I think that’s putting it mildly. I’m not sure she objected to all the provisions of it but she just didn’t see why her husband and that White House had to go and do that fight. She was very unhappy about it and wanted to move on to health care. So I do think there’s some justification for her camp saying, you know, she’s never been a great backer for NAFTA. [David Gergen, Anderson Cooper 360, 2/25/08]
Let's cue the videotape, shall we:
Now is Obama just ignorant of all these facts? Hardly. He either chooses to lie about Clinton, or more likely, he truly doesn't think a First Lady is capable of being a political force. His inherent sexism leads him to dimiss her and all of her accomplishments, even though they are considerably more substantial than his own -- maybe especially because they are much more substantial than his own. In any case, he has built a campaign on lies and sexism, and for that, he will never get my vote.
Comments are closed on this story.