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June 15, 2007, 10:19 am
The Backstory on Obama-Clinton Attack Memos
By Adam Nagourney
There was an interesting behind-the-scenes drama playing out yesterday as the Clinton campaign announced that Bill and Hillary Clinton were liquidating their blind trust, converting stocks into cash.
Some of Mrs. Clinton’s rivals, including the campaign of Senator Barack Obama, went through the list of the Clinton’s financial holdings that Mrs. Clinton filed with the Senate and released a very detailed and critical analysis about where the Clinton’s had gotten and invested their money.
[b]Mr. Obama’s aides circulated its memorandum to news organizations on the condition that news organizations not say where they obtained the information.[/q]
There is nothing unusual – and, most reporters and ethics experts will say, unethical – about this practice. Most of the major presidential campaigns this year have repeatedly sought to circulate information – typically, a record of past votes, public statements, campaign contributions or biographical information on campaign contributors – designed to undercut opponents. (In the vernacular, these are known as “quotes and votes.”)
Campaign aides try to persuade news organization to accept the information on a not-for-attribution basis. A news organization can refuse the condition or accept it. A reporter who gets such information culled by a campaign’s opposition research operations – which in these days of newspaper cutbacks dwarfs the internal research operations of most newspapers — use it only as a starting point; they confirm whatever they find and do reporting to expand upon it.
This turned into a bit of a dust-up because by all appearances, the Obama campaign got a little sloppy in circulating what turned out to be two critical memos. They ended up in the hands of the Clinton campaign.
And the Clinton campaign promptly sought to circulate copies of what it found to news organizations, including The New York Times, which asked that it be allowed to say where it obtained the document.
Why would the Clinton campaign want to circulate documents attacking its candidate? Mrs. Clinton’s aides declined comment. But the Clintons have been seeking to undercut the effort by Mr. Obama to present himself as the face of a new-kind-of-politics that eschews these kind of attacks.
These documents – with their bold type and grabby headlines, including one that referred to Mrs. Clinton as (D-Punjab) – are text-book examples of old-school opposition research practices. Second, the documents include what could be construed as attacks on Mr. Clinton, who is probably the most popular person among Democrats these days.
Mr. Obama’s press secretary, Bill Burton, defended the documents, noting that they were simply a compilation of public quotations and information available to anyone with access to the Internet. “I don’t know why anybody would take umbrage with us putting out publicly available information.”
Mr. Burton would not comment when asked why, if that were the case, the campaign would not simply distribute the information under its name.
The Backstory on Obama-Clinton Attack Memos
By Adam Nagourney
There was an interesting behind-the-scenes drama playing out yesterday as the Clinton campaign announced that Bill and Hillary Clinton were liquidating their blind trust, converting stocks into cash.
Some of Mrs. Clinton’s rivals, including the campaign of Senator Barack Obama, went through the list of the Clinton’s financial holdings that Mrs. Clinton filed with the Senate and released a very detailed and critical analysis about where the Clinton’s had gotten and invested their money.
[b]Mr. Obama’s aides circulated its memorandum to news organizations on the condition that news organizations not say where they obtained the information.[/q]
There is nothing unusual – and, most reporters and ethics experts will say, unethical – about this practice. Most of the major presidential campaigns this year have repeatedly sought to circulate information – typically, a record of past votes, public statements, campaign contributions or biographical information on campaign contributors – designed to undercut opponents. (In the vernacular, these are known as “quotes and votes.”)
Campaign aides try to persuade news organization to accept the information on a not-for-attribution basis. A news organization can refuse the condition or accept it. A reporter who gets such information culled by a campaign’s opposition research operations – which in these days of newspaper cutbacks dwarfs the internal research operations of most newspapers — use it only as a starting point; they confirm whatever they find and do reporting to expand upon it.
This turned into a bit of a dust-up because by all appearances, the Obama campaign got a little sloppy in circulating what turned out to be two critical memos. They ended up in the hands of the Clinton campaign.
And the Clinton campaign promptly sought to circulate copies of what it found to news organizations, including The New York Times, which asked that it be allowed to say where it obtained the document.
Why would the Clinton campaign want to circulate documents attacking its candidate? Mrs. Clinton’s aides declined comment. But the Clintons have been seeking to undercut the effort by Mr. Obama to present himself as the face of a new-kind-of-politics that eschews these kind of attacks.
These documents – with their bold type and grabby headlines, including one that referred to Mrs. Clinton as (D-Punjab) – are text-book examples of old-school opposition research practices. Second, the documents include what could be construed as attacks on Mr. Clinton, who is probably the most popular person among Democrats these days.
Mr. Obama’s press secretary, Bill Burton, defended the documents, noting that they were simply a compilation of public quotations and information available to anyone with access to the Internet. “I don’t know why anybody would take umbrage with us putting out publicly available information.”
Mr. Burton would not comment when asked why, if that were the case, the campaign would not simply distribute the information under its name.
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