Obama’s Advisers: Less Progressive than Advertised?
By Damozel on March 23, 2008 at 11:36 PM in Austan Goolsbee, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., Tony McPeak
I blog at Buck Naked Politics.
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My, Barack Obama’s advisers and officials are contributing quite a little heap of embarrassments to his campaign, aren’t they?
First, there was Austan Goolsbee’s little chat with the Canadians about NAFTA (Obama didn’t mean it) that the bad Canadians totally misunderstood and twisted out of context. Then Samantha Power told a far right British paper that Hillary Clinton is a ‘monster‘ before remembering to add (too late, said the reporter) that it was "off the record." In all the outcry over the insult, Obama’s supporters seemed not to have noticed or to have cared that she also announced that his firm commitment to prompt troop withdrawals wasn’t nearly as firm as progressives assume.
Then intelligence adviser/former Bush Administration official John O. Brennan announced that he was afraid he just didn’t agree with Obama on telecom immunity. And I don’t even need to mention the Rev. Wright.
Then there’s this (via Memeorandum):
Last Thursday the Obama campaign was up in arms over the news that the Illinois senator’s passport information had been breached….Well, be careful what you wish for.
Turns out, one of the three people who accessed the candidate’s files works for… wait for it… Obama foreign policy advisor, John O. Brennan, president and CEO of the Analysis Corp. Brennan’s employee was the only one of the three who was not fired, merely disciplined and, CNN’s Zain Verjee reports, the unnamed employee also accessed John McCain’s files. In a separate breach, Hillary Clinton’s passport information was also breached. (Swampland)
None of this proves that Brennan was involved or even that the breach amounted to misfeasance by the employee. Still, there is an irony in the revelation after all the (usual) outrage by Obama’s supporters over the breach of his file.
I am merely mentioning this in passing as a further instance of ways in which Obama’s "brilliantly run campaign"—which I have heard people, people I thought were sensible, seriously argue is evidence that he is qualified to run the country—seems to be imploding.
Of more concern to Democrats should be right-wing blogger’s Ed Morissey’s report that Obama military adviser, Gen. Tony McPeak, has made statements concerning Iraq that appear to be completely in line with McCain’s and rather far from the views of the progressives who support Obama. McPeak is the same adviser who just compared Bill Clinton to Joseph McCarthy.
Morissey says:
In an interview with the Oregonian, posted here but confirmed by me through its purchase from the archives, McPeak essentially makes the exact same argument that John McCain makes about staying in Iraq — and which Obama ridicules:
Is Iraq the last country we confront in the Middle East?
Who wants to volunteer to get cross-ways with us? We’ll be there a century, hopefully. If it works right.
Isn’t this the exact argument McCain has made repeatedly, and which Obama derides as “a hundred-years war”? Of course it is….McCain and McPeak both argue for a big footprint in the Middle East for a very long time in order to protect American interests and to overawe the other nations there into behaving themselves.
This should raise some eyebrows on the Obama campaign’s willful deception on this point….He meant exactly the same thing as McCain. What’s more, he underestimates democracy. He wanted the Bush administration to install a military dictator with whom we could work in order to establish our Middle East footprint.. (Hot Air)
You can read the interview yourself, since the link is provided in the posting.
My question is this: If McPeak said all this, isn’t it further evidence that Obama has surrounded himself with advisers whose views are wildly opposed to those of the progressives who are pushing for his nomination and whose methods are far from consistent with the ‘New Politics’ for which they idealistically long?
I’d say that it was evidence.
As Larry Johnson said some time ago:
These people cannot be trusted to accurately represent their candidate’s public positions on key issues and Senator Obama wants the American people to trust his judgment in selecting folks to run the bureaucracies that he already admitted he can’t run? God save us.
Instead of recognizing that he is not exactly the candidate they imagine, they go on rationalizing on his behalf and making up explanations for him so he doesn’t have to. Bear in mind, these are intelligent, even brilliant people. I have said it before; I see the man’s appeal, and he’s incredibly attractive and of course an unparallelled maker of speeches, but isn’t this cause for concern?
I suspect that by the time they finally let this information in, it will be too late for them to do anything about it.
Memeorandum has commentary on the passport story.
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Dmozel..
You People are Good..Well Done..
I’ll Bet there are some GRAYS out there who are taking lessons..
See..BIG EYE…This is the way Analysis is done..and the BOSS keeps the Door Open..
Whoops don’t look now but The Magic Man appears to be running sans clothes or at least…..
Without coattails…..
Thanks for the link, I asked this to be a front page item by pasting a good bit of the intro and what it actually linked to.
Could passport-gate be an intentional distraction?
Is it possible that John Brennan knew about the breaches even though they hadn’t been reported to the State Dept yet?
It sure got rid of “granny-gate” and “granny explanation-gate” pretty nicely.
There definitely is something going on here. Take a look at what I found (and didn’t find) on the Obama campaign web site:
http://tinyurl.com/yuvzkb
Either he isn’t as progressive as he says, or he’s trying to not look it. Anyway you slice it, there’s something smarmy going on here.
The Magic One ranks 41st in the Senate according to Progressive Punch’s ‘The Chips are Down’ voting analysis.
Clinton ranks 24th.
These Senators are ranked more progressive than the Magic One:
Webb, Feinstein and Ben Nelson.
The idea that O Magical O-man is a ‘progressive’ would be laughable if so many, including The Committee of Three, did not ‘believe’ it.
Does any think Obama or his staff “vetted” McPeak’s positions?
Naw. Drip…Drip…Drip..
It’s like the Pink Panther in the basement looking for the lightbulb as the source of the Drip.
Dmozel, Interesting link on Emil Jones and Obama.
Medium rare on the steak ok?
Vetted his positions?
I can’t figure out why they hired a moron.
Did they think his rank was testimony to his intellect?
Remember the old joke from MASH?
Col Potter, speaking to Radar, says “Knew a man with an IQ smaller than his shoe size. Pentagon didn’t know what to do with him, so they made him a General.”
Or something of the sort…
I don’t actually think he is a progressive at all.
I think he is much more of a centrist than Hillary, in my opinion—look at how he attacked her health care plan.
He has substantial support from certain conservatives which in itself ought to make progressive Dems wary—only they don’t seem to notice.
http://www.slate.com//blogs/blogs/convictions/archive/2008/03/23/endorsing-obama.aspx
I just don’t understand why progressives got behind him. Or rather, I do, but I’m shocked that they are so credulous.
Speaking of embarrassments, Jeralyn at Talk Left just published a piece asking whether Obama paid Emil Jones for his political sponsorship in earmarks.
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/3/23/224059/069
Baubles…Bangles..Bight and Shiny Beads..
Thats one way to build a COALITION..
Its called BarackaBarter..Those Tokens Pay for the BUS RIDE..
In January, Paul Krugman compared the candidates’ economic plans and found that Obama was LESS progressive than Hillary and Edwards.
Krugman also found one of Obama’s advisers not so progressive. Here’s what Krugman said, in part:
“The Obama campaign’s initial response to the latest wave of bad economic news was, I’m sorry to say, disreputable: Mr. Obama’s top economic adviser claimed that the long-term tax-cut plan the candidate announced months ago is just what we need to keep the slump from ‘morphing into a drastic decline in consumer spending.’
“Hmm: claiming that the candidate is all-seeing, and that a tax cut originally proposed for other reasons is also a recession-fighting measure — doesn’t that sound familiar?”
Obama is an embarassment. His advisors are from grade school and have NO experience in the real world.
Dear God, it will be like Bush…all over again.
God Bless America…please!
http://susiemadrak.com/2008/02/17/10/07/heh-29/
She posts about Black Agenda Report’s look at Obama’s advisers on almost all levels.
I also found weeks ago a blog which looked at the libertarian/conservative bent of many of Obama’s economic and healthcare advisers (Chicago school very much in evidence). Does anyone recall such a post?
I’m too tired right now to look. Will try tomorrow.
What change? What will he do? What are his objectives? Just get the power and figure it out?
Yes, the views are opposed to the “progressives” pushing for Obama. But not of Obama himself. These “progressives” have made Obama into a ready made fantasy candidate. Any time he or one of his advisors says something that remotely disturbs this fantasy they explain it away. They are so caught up in the myth of Obama that they cannot see the reality of who the guy really is. And they are willing to suspend their ability to make a rational decision because they “believe” in his “message” of “hope.” But as all of us know that haven’t been bamboozled, Obama is a lightweight on experience that has extraordinary skills of manipulation and deception. He taps into what people think he is and uses it to advantage himself. He mentioned this well over a year ago, even bragged about it saying that people had always projected things on to him or about him most of his life. The danger is that he has found a way to use this to his ultimate advantage. I wish I could source the information but I am not sure where it originally came from. But I do remember reading about it on Taylor Marsh. And she sounded the alarm a long time ago.
And Blackwater, el al. BO makes no committment to have the US paid mercenaries leave Iraq. Hillary does.
The US Constitution forbids use of paid mercenaries. They aren’t just doing laundry, you know.
Not only remove mercenaries from Iraq, Hillary has stated that she will stop the government’s use of paid mercenaries such as Blackwater.