Knowing Which Way The Wind Blows

Ah, the downward spiral:

On the Clinton conference call this morning, Howard Wolfson--under rather aggressive questioning from Mother Jones' David Corn--said he didn't know how Hillary felt about her husbands pardons of two former Weathermen. But he drew a distinction by pointing out that no Weathermen ever held fundraisers for Hillary Clinton.

Wolfson's got a distinction drawn, alright, but doesn't it cut the other way -- I'd much rather vote for a politician who received favors from a bad person than a politician who's given favors to a bad person. This whole subject is, however, essentially BS when flying in either direction.

Comments

Of course it's BS when flying in either direction, but let's not get too "pox on both your houses" now. Obama wouldn't have brought it up in the first place if Clinton hadn't launched this attack. He's not claiming the pardons are a problem for her, just saying that if Ayers indicates something bad about him, then the pardons must indicate something worse about her. It's a defense, not an attack.

Posted by KCinDC | April 18, 2008 2:35 PM

Matt, how do you expect to get your own show on ABC with that kind of attitude? This issue is CRUCIAL to our country, much more so than Iraq, the economy, the credit crisis, healthcare, torture, etc. Just ask Charlie and George.

Posted by LFC | April 18, 2008 2:36 PM

It's not Obama bringing this up, it's David Corn, right? Or did the Obama campaign raise this already? So much crap flinging back and forth right now, it's hard to stay on top of it.

Posted by br | April 18, 2008 2:38 PM

Betamax repairmen have a more current skill set than Howard Wolfson. I'm happy to see the days of the tit-for-tat bullshit artist drawing to a close. Distractions, you're on notice!

We're close to the days when Chris LeHane, Howard Wolfson, and James Carville can all sit around a table playing whist and talk about the good ol' days of dominating a news cycle with bullshit spin. And then the damn internet came along and every Tom, Dick and Jane Hamsher had access to a record of the spin and could point out "That's not what you were saying yesterday, and it's not even accurate". Sic transit bullshit.

Posted by joejoejoe | April 18, 2008 2:39 PM

Does this mean that young whippersnapper Yglesias is actually familiar with a Bob Dylan song?

Maybe it was covered by a rapper or something.

Posted by neil | April 18, 2008 2:41 PM

Maybe it was covered by a rapper or something

It was covered by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Posted by blah | April 18, 2008 2:47 PM

You are comparing the pardons of two people who served jail time and expressed remorse for their crimes and mentoring from someone who escaped justice and brags that he wishes he did more and who continues to trade off his outlaw reputation to this day. See no evil, Speak no evil, Blame Hillary!

Posted by phg | April 18, 2008 2:52 PM

You are comparing the pardons of two people who served jail time and expressed remorse for their crimes and mentoring from someone who escaped justice and brags that he wishes he
did more and who continues to trade off his outlaw reputation to this day. See no evil, Speak no evil, Blame Hillary!

Posted by phg | April 18, 2008 2:54 PM

phg, no, we're comparing one politician who took a personal interest in the situation of a pair of former domestic terrorists and intervened on their behalf, and another politician who, it seems, may have been in a room at the same time with a former domestic terrorist who now has a similar professional job who also wrote something unpleasant recently.

Posted by Tyro | April 18, 2008 2:57 PM

Personally, I think this is a bullshit issue on both sides. As a number of people have noted, probably best at TNR's Open University blog, Ayers is a fixture of the Hyde Park community. Anyone involved in the civic life of Hyde Park would have some connection to Ayers.

As for Hillary Clinton, her husband issued those pardons and there's no evidence she had any input into that decision. It's certainly reasonable to expect her to have a position on those pardons, but I don't see any reason she should be held responsible for them.

Yes, yes -- I know. She's tried to blur the lines between what she did and what he did so she can take credit for the 90s. Fine - call her on that. It's still no reason to tar her with a decision that was clearly not hers and that there's no evidence she supported.

Posted by Jeff | April 18, 2008 2:58 PM

No one has made any argument, as far as I can tell, that Barack Obama is in favor either of blowing up buildings nor of appointing unrepentant bombers to public office.

So this nonsense about it being a 'significant' issue is just that.

Posted by El Cid | April 18, 2008 2:59 PM

One thing about all this that I don't understand... if I'm missing something please explain it.

Did Hillary know that this was going to come up?

Obama gets the question, answers it, Hillary then goes on to add additional information about them serving on a board together. I think this is the "twisting the knife" part.

I mean, the explanation is what?

Hillary's staff, while doing opposition research, comes across this guy. They then tell her about it and she says "Hey... I'm not going to have any of my people bring this up or anything, but lets me prepare some talking points about it just in case ABC has unearthed the same thing and uses it as a gotcha in the debate." Or is it that in reality, team Hillary actually has a ton of dirt on Obama and that she personally has memorized all of it and they are just choosing not to fling some of it for some reason and that she just responded from the encyclopedia of Obama bashing she is carrying around?

The Rezko thing was different, Hillary brought it up first. In this case it honestly looked like the moderators teed the ball up for her or something. I suppose it's possible she knew and was staying quiet but why would she do that? Now is the perfect time to tie him to 60s lefty radicalism and there is no evidence of restraint on their part is there? Why keep quiet unless you had some reason to suspect ABC would spring it on him for you?

I'll admit it. This sounds a little to much like a conspiracy theory to me. I mean, a Clinton staffer e-mail to Stephanopoulos saying "ask him this dude!"? It seems unlikely. But otherwise, how did she know? And why didn't she bring it up earlier?

If I have the facts wrong please let me know. I may be mis-remembering and the youtube I saw was clipped down a bit.

Posted by Eamon | April 18, 2008 2:59 PM

Jeff, I can only imagine what the people in the Democratic Party Ward Committee that I used to be a member of may or may not have done in the late 60s. I guess I'll find out if I run for president!

Posted by Tyro | April 18, 2008 3:01 PM

Don't forgot that Clinton also commutted the sentences of 16 members of the Puerto Rican terrorist group, FALN.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB120277819085260827.html

Apparently to gain voites for Hillary in NY (but she did have to distance herself from the actions after the blew up in the Clintons' faces).

Posted by blah | April 18, 2008 3:05 PM

This is the non-issue of non-issues. But it is nice to see the Dems engaging in a casuistic discussion of the Weatherman on the week that Bush tells the nation that he approves of torture and that he engaged in systematic lying about the situation in Iraq.

Since, however, the issue is terrorism, how about the GOP's favorite terrorist groups? Orlando Bosch was pardoned, of course, and the Bush administration refused to extradite Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela, where he was convicted in the murder of 77 people, including the Cuban fencing team, who ranged in age from 16 to 23, by blowing up a Cuban jetliner on October 6, 1976. This is what Bush pardoned terrorist Orlando Bosch said after his pardon:

Reporter Juan Manuel Cao interviewed Bosch, who had been jailed for illegally entering the United States but was paroled in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush at the behest of his eldest son Jeb, then an aspiring Florida politician.

“Did you down that plane in 1976?” Cao asked Bosch.

“If I tell you that I was involved, I will be inculpating myself,” Bosch answered, “and if I tell you that I did not participate in that action, you would say that I am lying. I am therefore not going to answer one thing or the other.”

But when Cao asked Bosch to comment on the civilians who died when the plane crashed off the coast of Barbados, Bosch responded, “In a war such as us Cubans who love liberty wage against the tyrant [Fidel Castro], you have to down planes, you have to sink ships, you have to be prepared to attack anything that is within your reach.”

“But don’t you feel a little bit for those who were killed there, for their families?” Cao asked.

“Who was on board that plane?” Bosch responded. “Four members of the Communist Party, five North Koreans, five Guyanese.” [Officials tallies actually put the Guyanese dead at 11.]

Bosch added, “Four members of the Communist Party, chico! Who was there? Our enemies…”

“And the fencers?” Cao asked about Cuba’s amateur fencing team that had just won gold, silver and bronze medals at a youth fencing competition in Caracas. “The young people on board?”

Bosch replied, “I was in Caracas. I saw the young girls on television. There were six of them. After the end of the competition, the leader of the six dedicated their triumph to the tyrant. … She gave a speech filled with praise for the tyrant.

“We had already agreed in Santo Domingo, that everyone who comes from Cuba to glorify the tyrant had to run the same risks as those men and women that fight alongside the tyranny.” [The comment about Santo Domingo was an apparent reference to a strategy meeting by a right-wing terrorist organization, CORU, which took place in the Dominican Republic in 1976.]

“If you ran into the family members who were killed in that plane, wouldn’t you think it difficult?” Cao asked.

“No, because in the end those who were there had to know that they were cooperating with the tyranny in Cuba,” Bosch answered."

The excuse, by the way, for not extraditing Carriles to Venezuela is that he would be tortured there. There is no moral depth to which the Bushies will not sink, nor a hypocrisy that they won't tout. What a scourge on the American landscape.

Posted by roger | April 18, 2008 3:13 PM

This is a ridiculous issue. Sean Hannity cares about this. The voters do not.

How do I know? Because the median voter in this election is 44. They were somewhere between "not born" and 6 years old when the weather underground was making headlines. This means more than half the voters in this election think the Weather Underground is a website, or maybe a band.

Ask most voters about the worst acts of domestic terrorism, and it isn't the 60's. Overwhelmingly, they think of Oklahoma City where children were intentional right-wing targets. They think of school shootings, right-wingers taking shooting up secretaries in abortion clinics or bombs at the Atlanta Olympics. When they think of 60's radicals, it's a law and order episode of a soccer mom being arrested.

Really, we're supposed to believe that the American people care that Obama took $200 bucks from a college professor he met while doing charity work, who was once a member of an organization they've never heard of but who was so totally radical forty years ago that he never did any jail time after turning himself in. Let's be sane here. Look, I'm sure John McCain at some point in his career took money from a guy who flouted prohibition and maybe even ran a little organized crime (he's in a border state and his wife's in the beer business), but I'm even more sure the median voter doesn't give a crap about him taking money from that guy either. At a certain point, the present becomes more important than last generation's blood feuds, okay?

Sean Hannity and his friends, out of touch right-wing pundits who claim that middle-class families pull in more than $200,000 a year, care a lot about this issue. But that doesn't mean it matters.

Posted by anon | April 18, 2008 3:17 PM

"Does this mean that young whippersnapper Yglesias is actually familiar with a Bob Dylan song?"
I took it as a Quee reference and assumed Matt had seen Wayne's World.

Posted by Bob | April 18, 2008 3:52 PM

The sense I'm getting is that the superdelegates are going to end it soon.

Matt's long national blogging nightmare of a Democratic Primary is coming to a close.

DNC chair Howard Dean is saying it should end soon. Joe Klein said he hears through the grapevine that the 21st debate shenanigans was the last straw. They want to stop Hillary from doing the Republicans' work for them. Klein quotes fromm a NYTimes piece:

“That [debate] was the rollout of the Republican campaign against me in November. It happened just a little bit early, but that is what they will do,” Mr. Obama said. “They will try to focus on all these issues that don’t have anything to do with how you are paying your bills at the end of the month. There’s no doubt that I will have to respond sharply and crisply, then pivot to talk about what exactly are we going to do for the economy and what are we going to do about the war in Iraq.”

Until the nominating fight ends, Mr. Obama said, he is “trying to show some restraint.” He added, “I won’t have as much restraint with the Republicans."

------

The Clintons will be forever known for their Tonya Harding strategy. Stay classy Clintons! See ya, wouldn't want to be ya!

Posted by Peter K. | April 18, 2008 3:57 PM

So, the candidate is responsible for the actions of every person who holds a fundraiser for them?

That would make for some interesting questions for John McCain.

Posted by HeavyJ | April 18, 2008 4:02 PM

The sense I'm getting is that the superdelegates are going to end it soon.

Matt's long national blogging nightmare of a Democratic Primary is coming to a close.

DNC chair Howard Dean is saying it should end soon. Joe Klein said he hears through the grapevine that the 21st debate shenanigans was the last straw. They want to stop Hillary from doing the Republicans' work for them. Klein quotes fromm a NYTimes piece:

“That [debate] was the rollout of the Republican campaign against me in November. It happened just a little bit early, but that is what they will do,” Mr. Obama said. “They will try to focus on all these issues that don’t have anything to do with how you are paying your bills at the end of the month. There’s no doubt that I will have to respond sharply and crisply, then pivot to talk about what exactly are we going to do for the economy and what are we going to do about the war in Iraq.”

Until the nominating fight ends, Mr. Obama said, he is “trying to show some restraint.” He added, “I won’t have as much restraint with the Republicans."

------

The Clintons will be forever known for their Tonya Harding strategy. Stay classy Clintons! See ya, wouldn't want to be ya!

Posted by Peter K. | April 18, 2008 4:04 PM

The sense I'm getting is that the superdelegates are going to end it soon.

Matt's long national blogging nightmare of a Democratic Primary is coming to a close.

DNC chair Howard Dean is saying it should end soon. Joe Klein said he hears through the grapevine that the 21st debate shenanigans was the last straw. They want to stop Hillary from doing the Republicans' work for them. Klein quotes from a NYTimes piece:

“That [debate] was the rollout of the Republican campaign against me in November. It happened just a little bit early, but that is what they will do,” Mr. Obama said. “They will try to focus on all these issues that don’t have anything to do with how you are paying your bills at the end of the month. There’s no doubt that I will have to respond sharply and crisply, then pivot to talk about what exactly are we going to do for the economy and what are we going to do about the war in Iraq.”

Until the nominating fight ends, Mr. Obama said, he is “trying to show some restraint.” He added, “I won’t have as much restraint with the Republicans."

------

The Clintons will be forever known for their Tonya Harding strategy. Stay classy Clintons! See ya, wouldn't want to be ya!

Posted by Peter K. | April 18, 2008 4:22 PM

Well you could actually go by the results of the Venezuelan courts, who had acquitted both Bosch & Posada, or the Richard "Monkey" Morales affidavit in the Tick Tock case, which indicated he, not Bosch or Posada had done; Morales, a snitch per excellance with half a dozen agencies; was given
a deeply biased hearing by future King biographer and Clinton pal Taylor Branch; as well as Miami
Herald reporter John Rothschild he died not long after giving that affidavit, in a manner befitting the Miami Vice characters he would inspire. Consortium's still looking for the "October Surprise" huh.

Now Posada was a member of the security services in Venezuela (DISIP)and as such he hunted Marxist
guerillas like the MIR and the Red Banner; of which Chavez would later join, ten years before the coup. These guerillas were the counterparts to Bill Ayers, and the predecessors of the FARC
in their onslaughts.

Now Mr. Dunham, has little record as a community organizer he can credibly cite; he voted present
precisely to avoid taking a position when he was
in the State legislature. He was practically installed as US Senator in 2002. So frankly his
associations with terrorists like Ayers, Black Liberation theologists like Wright, real estate
entrepreneurs like Rezko, his investor like expatriate Baathist Auchi, have more weight in this instance.

Posted by narciso | April 18, 2008 6:13 PM

"Well you could actually go by the results of the Venezuelan courts, who had acquitted both Bosch & Posada..."

Sure, Venezuela requested Posada's extradition because they had acquitted him. Hmm, you think the right can't get stupider. But they can!

Our Bushie terrorist was on a retrial in a civil court, after being acquitted in a military court, when he fled Venezuela. Didn't think his chances were very good in a civil court. This is from the Miami Herald, Feb. 26, 2008:

Luis Posada Carriles, the anti-Castro Cuban militant, celebrated his 80th birthday this month at an undisclosed location in Miami, but many serious legal and political questions about his alleged crimes as a younger man still loom as large as ever.

In New Jersey, Posada is the "target" of a federal grand jury investigation into the series of 1997 tourist-site bombings in Havana, his attorney Arturo Hernandez confirmed to The Miami Herald. Posada has denied any involvement in the bombings.

In Washington, Posada's alleged role in the bombing of a 1976 Cuban airliner that killed 73 people is being revisited by a Democratic lawmaker from Massachusetts who plans to hold congressional hearings on the matter in the spring.

And Posada's immigration status remains an issue with the Justice Deparment, which is pressing its appeal of a Texas judge's decision to dismiss an indictment that charged the Cuban with lying about his 2005 entry into the United States.

Indeed, everyone seems to have something to say about the former CIA-trained explosives expert who remains a freedom fighter in the minds of some and an international terrorist in the eyes of others.

Posada isn't talking to the media, but his attorney says the octogenarian is an innocent man in poor health who wants to spend the rest of his life in Miami among family, friends and exiles.

Perhaps Posada's most serious legal challenge is in Newark, N.J., where a federal grand jury, now in its third year, is weighing whether to indict Posada on conspiracy charges for the killing of an Italian tourist in a 1997 hotel bombing in Havana.

Justice officials won't comment, but they have a fax and other documents showing that Posada allegedly coordinated $3,200 in wire transfers from Cuban exiles in New Jersey to co-conspirators in Central America for the bombing campaign. Also, FBI agents have questioned jailed bombing recruits in Cuba and key witnesses in the United States and Central America familiar with Posada's alleged mission to disrupt the Cuban tourism industry.

One potential witness -- a notable writer who coauthored a 1998 New York Times series on Posada's history of violent activities against former Cuban leader Fidel Castro -- said she received grand jury subpoenas but has not testified before the New Jersey panel.

The series was based on her six-hour interview, most of it tape-recorded, with Posada in which he admitted to masterminding the Havana tourist-site bombings.

"They do not need me," author Ann Louise Bardach said.

Rep. William Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat, is more than willing to enter the political fray.

But Delahunt's interest has nothing to do with the 1997 bombings. He's interested in Posada's alleged role in the bombing of a 1976 Cuban airliner that killed 73 people, including members of the Cuban national fencing team.

Posada was acquitted by a Venezuelan military tribunal. While awaiting a retrial by a civil court in Venezuela, Posada escaped from prison in 1985.

Delahunt, annoyed by the government's lack of response to Venezuela's extradition request to try Posada, has drafted a resolution calling on the administration to urge the United Nations to create an ad hoc tribunal to prosecute him. He also plans to hold more public hearings on Capitol Hill.

"You cannot talk about a war on terror while Posada is still running around [South] Florida," said Caleb Rossiter, one of Delahunt's top aides.

But Posada has supporters in Washington, mainly Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican from California.

In defending Posada, Rohrabacher points out that a 1977 taped interview by a New York-based journalist reveals that he never admitted to planting the airliner bomb.

In a Jan. 30 letter to a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, Rohrabacher said testimony by journalist Blake Fleetwood was inconsistent with the reporter's own tapes.

Fleetwood said Rohrabacher has distorted his statements. In an e-mail to The Miami Herald, Fleetwood wrote: "There is no doubt in my mind, from what Posada told me during my interview, that Posada was deeply involved in the conspiracy that culminated in the planting of the bomb and the deaths of 73 innocent civilians."

Hernandez denied that his client was involved in any way and dismissed allegations of terrorism.

"He's not a terrorist. He's never been a terrorist."

Let's face it, the right wing is for two things: torture and terrorism. The pretense that Ayres even comes close to these primo members of the anti-Castro mafia in Miami is laughable. But ... no ABC reporter will ever ask Bush about it. They will never make a peep in any interview with McCain about it. Because the rules are obviously set, at the moment, by Fox News. Hmmm, gonna change though when the Dems are in power, able to pore over the ample documentation of Bush crimes. Ought to be sweet.

Posted by roger | April 18, 2008 7:40 PM

Here's the simple answer that's beyond Matt's grasp: it's bad for Obama to have befriended an unrepentant terrorist like Ayers, and it's bad for Hillary to be associated in any way with those pardons.

It's not "BS", as Matt would like to airily dismiss it. This is what we like to call a character problem for both of them.

Posted by James Robertson | April 18, 2008 8:29 PM

very very very good point, Matt, that nobody else has made.

Posted by Phoebe | April 18, 2008 10:23 PM

"Here's the simple answer that's beyond Matt's grasp: it's bad for Obama to have befriended an unrepentant terrorist like Ayers, and it's bad for Hillary to be associated in any way with those pardons."

Is there any evidence that Obama actually befriended Ayers or that Hillary was involved in the decision to pardon members of the WU? Not that I know of.

Some of the ignorance of people out there of how Chicago works is rather amazing. If you do anything in Chicago politically, you are going to meet some rather bad and crooked people. You can stay clean by being high and mighty and not doing anything for anybody or you can get some dirt on your hands. The board that Obama and Ayers were both on was a board for helping underprivileged children in Chicago. Should Obama have acted holier than thou and not sought to help the kids just so that he wouldn't have a blemish on his political prospects?

Posted by Reality Man | April 19, 2008 3:38 AM

Also, you would be surprised how much social distance there can be between politicians and their major fundraisers. I know of one major fundraiser for Kerry's run in 2004 who had dinner at the Kerry household on more than one occasion and raised a lot of money for Kerry. However, Kerry never could remember his name and kept on calling him by the wrong name. He probably raised a lot more money for Kerry than Ayers did for Obama.

Posted by Reality Man | April 19, 2008 3:51 AM

Prediction: Hillary will lose PA or win by less than eight points. Obama will wipe out her delegate win (which will be less than ten delegates) two weeks later.

After which, Gore and Carter will demand she bow out, and/or endorse Obama.

Clinton is toast.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 19, 2008 4:20 AM

James, when you leave the basement and go out into the real world, especially the world of power and politics, you will find yourself associating with characters who were unsavory, are thought to be unsavory and who may become unsavory. These are not reflections of your personal support of them or of your character failings by association. If we were to get stuck in that cycle of stupidity, we'd elect Rapunzel.

Posted by z_adura | April 19, 2008 11:50 AM

"...no Weathermen ever held fundraisers for Hillary Clinton."

In my line, that's called a bug, not a feature.

Posted by Hedley Lamarr | April 19, 2008 1:38 PM

To get Isabella, i had to lie a lot; that was the only way i could get her.
To get merica, ruling class had to lie a lot to amers; and, it got it.

Posted by bozhidar balkas | April 19, 2008 4:58 PM

You wrote: "Wolfson's got a distinction drawn, alright, but doesn't it cut the other way -- I'd much rather vote for a politician who received favors from a bad person than a politician who's given favors to a bad person."

Of course she's done both. Like having a fundraiser thrown for her by a known racist.
From the NYT:

Clinton Accepts Aid From a Divisive Figure
NEW ORLEANS, May 19 — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who has cast herself as an ally of African-Americans in rebuilding this city, this weekend accepted fund-raising assistance from a family friend who is controversial with many black and white victims of Hurricane Katrina.
The friend, Sheriff Harry Lee of Jefferson Parish, has been close to former President Bill Clinton for many years, and he is popular among some Democrats here. But Sheriff Lee has a long history of making divisive and derogatory remarks, sometimes aimed at residents of neighboring New Orleans, which is predominantly black, and his relationship with many black political leaders is turbulent.
Sheriff Lee drew notoriety shortly after the hurricane when some of his deputies helped prevent hurricane evacuees, most of them black, from crossing the Crescent City Connection bridge into Jefferson Parish. Sheriff Lee defended the move, saying his office had “a duty to protect our people.”
Sheriff Lee was a host committee member for a fund-raiser here Friday night for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign. The event, which the senator attended, was closed to the news media. A Clinton campaign spokeswoman declined to comment on Mrs. Clinton’s views of Sheriff Lee’s actions in 2005 or on his fund-raising support.
Phone messages left for Sheriff Lee were not returned. A Clinton adviser declined to discuss his role, citing the personal nature of his relationship with both Clintons.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/us/politics/20commence.html?_r=2&scp=2&sq=Milestones%3A+Hillary+Clinton&st=nyt&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
It is truly disgusting what this sheriff did to people. See the footage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSsgwajStCo&feature=related

Of course Obama will not go there because he does not want to inject racism into his campaign. I however have no qualms pointing out the hypocracy.

Posted by mageduley | April 20, 2008 12:55 PM