Michael J. Gaynor published a column today entitled "Inside the Obama Campaign" in which he excoriates Obama based on the unsubstantiated accusations of Susan O'Donnel, a woman who claims to have had a terrible experience working for the Obama campaign and claims that her experience is typical.
The idea that a committed supporter of the Democratic party, a woman who worked for John Kerry's campaign, loved Obama when she met him, and worked desperately to obtain a position working for his campaign, would choose to air her dirty laundry with a bottom-dwelling Republican smear columnist strains credulity.
Even assuming that her story is true, Gaynor's handling of it is nothing more than a smear and certainly nothing resembling reputable journalism.
Gaynor starts his column, "Obama supporters who email me usually are as crude and crazed as Obama’s spiritual mentor, Rev. Jeremiah A. 'God damn America' Wright, Jr.... Susan O’Donnel is an exception." Gaynor provides no examples of these "crude and crazed" letters -- we're just supposed to take his word for it. And even if he provided examples, we would of course have no way of knowing whether they are representative of the feedback he receives, because his site doesn't allow readers to post comments (it's always a bad sign when a blogger isn't willing to let people comment publicly on his writing). So Gaynor has led off with an unsubstantiated slur against Obama supporters (and by extension Obama) and the implicit idea that the only non-crude, non-crazed Obama supporter is a former Obama supporter like Susan O'Donnel.
Let's just assume for a moment that everything Susan O'Donnel wrote is true, that she really did work for the Obama campaign, that she really did have a terrible experience working for an oppressive Obama staffer, and that she really was an Obama supporter before her experience. Here's something else O'Donnel wrote, which Gaynor quoted in his column: "I just don't understand why the press takes his word for everything. You shouldn't take mine, you should research this the same way you should research things he says."
Did Gaynor do that? Did he contact the Obama campaign to confirm that O'Donnel had worked for it? Seems not. Did he confirm that the advance team leader whom O'Donnel claims abused her and others was and is a member of the campaign? Nope, there's no evidence of that. Did he attempt to corroborate her story by finding others who had experiences similar to hers? I don't think so. Did he try to find out how many other advance team leaders the campaign has, and whether the one for whom O'Donnel worked was typical? That would have been nice, but no. Did he attempt to find and interview other advance team members who had different experiences? I'm afraid not. Did he think it strange that a committed Democrat who liked Obama enough to desperately want to work for him would air her grips to a Republican columnist, seemingly without first even trying to air them to the campaign? Strange enough to perhaps be worth doing some fact checking before printing this anecdotal story? No, no, and no.
Gaynor isn't content to use an unsubstantiated, anecdotal story to attack the ambiance of Obama's campaign. Nope, he has to use it as an opportunity to rehash the Wright controversy (see above), the absurd claim that it's Obama's fault that Florida and Michigan didn't get to revote, and the offensive smear that's going around claiming that Obama supports killing babies.
Gaynor's column is rubbish. It's exactly the kind of gutter politics that Obama has so successfully transcended. Gaynor's smear won't touch him, any more than any of the other groundless smears lobbed at him by the Republicans and to a lesser extent by Clinton. Obama is turning conventional wisdom on its edge, proving that you can win without wallowing in the gutter. The increasingly desperate attacks by idealogues like Gaynor prove just how well he's succeeding.