The End of Process Attacks
by Matt Stoller, Mon Jan 15, 2007 at 07:48:34 AM EST
Whenever I've worked in a political campaign, I've noticed a weird language that operatives use to attack another candidate in print. Here's a really good example:
"Silence is betrayal, and I believe it is a betrayal not to speak out against the escalation of the war in Iraq," Edwards told a crowd at Manhattan's Riverside Church, where Martin Luther King had declared his opposition to the Vietnam War."If you're in Congress and you know that this war is going in the wrong direction . . . it is no longer OK to study your options and keep your own private counsel," he said.
"Silence is betrayal. Speak out and stop this escalation now."
Edwards' hit on the front-runner for the Democratic nomination was not lost on the Clinton camp, which sees criticism from the Iraq war opponents as one of the major threats to her expected campaign for the presidential nomination.
"In 2004, John Edwards used to constantly brag about running a positive campaign. Today, he has unfortunately chosen to open his campaign with political attacks on Democrats who are fighting the Bush administration's Iraq policy," said Clinton adviser Howard Wolfson.
Wolfson isn't actually disputing the substantive argument that Edwards put out there, that politicians who don't act are as guilty as the people who perpetrate the war-mongering. What Wolfson is doing is mocking the tone and strategy of Edwards. The line boils down to 'Why is Edwards so mean as to bring morality into politics?' This tone is designed for the press, to craft a narrative about Edwards as no longer the sunny campaigner, as the angry Dean-like person.
The one substantive argument that Wolfson makes is that Edwards is essentially not telling the truth that Clinton is fighting Bush's Iraq policy, and making it look like she's overly cautious and not particularly helpful in opposing Bush, and therefore complicit. Maybe that is a misrepresentation of Hillary Clinton's position on Iraq, or maybe it's not. But saying to the press that you are fighting Bush's policy on Iraq is not the same as fighting Bush's policy on Iraq. Senators Clinton and Obama have the biggest microphones of anyone in the Democratic Party right now, and could at any point launch blistering critiques against Bush, and threaten him with defunding the war or other remedies. They could work aggressively to stop Bush, but they are as yet only making cautious steps in that direction. I respect those steps, but Edwards has a strong argument that clarity and resolution is necessary against a rogue President, and anything less than that is counterproductive.
Edwards is making the argument that priorities rather than the 'right' positions matter, that politicians ought to be judged based on the risks they are willing to take, and those they are not willing to take. Senator Clinton might or might not come around to the 'right' position on Iraq, but her timing on the issue is as revealing of her character and priorities as the position itself. Wolfson is speaking to the press and saying that Edwards is being too mean and not like his happy talk self in 2004. Journalists might care about such 'attacks', but they ring hollow out here, where Google has memory of Senator Clinton's complicity from 2002-2007. Her lack of action has allowed this war to go on as long as it has, and that's a sin she ought to acknowledge and work to make up for. She must step up aggressively (and I would encourage her to think in terms of Iran), these attacks on Edwards will ring hollow among liberal primary voters, and will only serve to highlight to these voters her own lack of accomplishment, her own lack of judgment, and and yes, her own complicity in what's happened.
Tags: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Howard Wolfsen, John Edwards (all tags)
-----------
myDD - skin
-----------
75 Comments