by Mark Green
I've had it with gaffes becoming crimes, with candidates being forced to apologize for anything any of 1000 surrogates or supporters say or do.
This week on 7 Days in America (see excerpts and audio below), Jim Hightower, Arianna Huffington, Ron Regan and I discuss Geraldine Ferraro's racial foolishness... and Eliot Spitzer's gross misconduct.
Here's the way it works when someone in a campaign says or does something foolish, impolitic, un-PC -- whether it's Ferraro arguing that Obama's where he is because he's black or Biden saying Obama ws "articulate" or Samantha Powers calling Hillary a "monster" or Rev. Jerimiah Wright's anti-Amercan tirades or scores of other examples.
A tabloid journalist or cable talk show (or radio talk show, I'll confess) may wrench it out-of-context, give it as malign an interpretation as possible, offer up a hot headline or tease, and then talk it up...as the opposing campaign demands immediate repudiation, hoping to continue the story another day or two or three.
I've been there. Running for NYC Mayor in 2001, some asshole(s) (still don't know who) passed out flyers linking and mocking opponent Freddy Ferrer and his supporter Al Sharpton in ways that could easily be interpreted as racial. Boom, I'm a racist. I was about as responsible for the flyers as Obama was for drafting Rev.Wright's sermons or Hillary Clinton was for knowing in advance of Ferraro's views of affirmative action for presidential candidates. But no benefit of the doubt is given a candidate in these situations by journalists and rivals seeking sales and votes.
It should be obvious to any fair-minded person that Ferraro was foolish, ignorant, hapless, hopelessly out-of-touch -- Obama's where he is largely because in 2007 he out-strategized, out-organized, out-fund-raised, and out-themed Clinton -- but she's no racist. Neither are Bill Clinton or Ed Rendell, no matter how ardently people with axes to grind string together separate and questionable quotes. Yet some otherwise smart people, who've drunk the kool aide, have actually compared her to David Duke and Louis Farrakhan. Or talked darkly about a "pattern of veiled racism" because of other questionable comments from Clinton surrogates.
For those who have never been a candidate, here's the way it works: you spend all day speaking, performing, fund-raising...but not policing large numbers of over-stimulated devotees. And when people support you, you don't therefore support them..and all they say.
I went on Larry King Live this week and, asked about the Ferraro contretempts, urged that she voluntarily stop surrogating for Clinton (before she did so) because folks were confusing Ferraro's 1950s views of race in America with Clinton's today. But I also aspirationally suggested that the media, if they can't resist making mountains out of molehills, set aside say five minutes per hour or a box per daily newspaper to the subject of "Gaffegate" -- foolish comments that really don't bear on who should win and serve.
Is this King Canute shouting at the tides? Almost certainly. So instead, here's some rough standards for how campaigns or office-holders should conduct themselves when they're hit with stupid but essentially irrelevant words or acts that lead critics to engage in guilt-by-association and to demand penance:
*Don't bother responding if it's a gaffe by someone not in your employ (like unpaid advisors and Finance Committee members).."They don't speak for me. I do -- and here's what I think..." Unless the person is so identified with you that you have no realistic alternative, as with Sen. Obama and his mnister for 20 years and the man who married him.
*If a paid employee says something indefensible -- and I include Mark Penn this week explicitly saying that if Obama can't win one primary (conveniently Pennsylvania), therefore he can't win a general election -- the employer does have to say if she agrees or not.
*If an opponent says something that could be misconstrued as malign though everyone knows otherwise -- Biden on "articulate", the Obama campaign's memo chiding Clinton as the "Senator from Punjab", Hillary's 3am ad with a sleeping white girl -- the candidate should be sure to say he/she doesn't think the other is a racist. Why would a candidate let a rival off-the-hook? Because the next time he or she will on the hook...as Obama supporters discovered when Rev. Wright's comments were publicized right after they went overboard on Ferraro.
*If you've engaged in private misconduct that doesn't bear on your public performance -- like President Clinton with Lewinsky, Sen. Larry Craig, Gen. Grant's drinking -- don't quit! But if your misconduct arguably violates the criminal law, as obviously happened to Eliot Spitzer this past week, you will lack the public standing to continue public service.
Can't wait for the 21st Democratic debate on April 16. For at least that'll be about Clinton and Obama, comparing their records, policies, character and vision, and not about Samatha Powers, Gerry Ferraro, Jeremiah Wright, Billy Sheheen or Robert Johnson.
Listen to the whole show here.
Excerpts from the March 15th, 2008 7 Days in America
HIGHTOWER: Was Ferraro hapless or racist in her remarks about Obama? "I think she is foolish and she should just go back to Long Island or wherever it is she is from [Queens!] and spend the rest of the election staying very quiet. The more people like that talk the more they help the other side. The campaigns do what they can to reign them in, but, as is the case normally, the trouble in politics is always your friends not your opponents."
HIGHTOWER: Is the Democratic primary contest "tearing the party apart" as some cable shows would put it or about par for the course? "Yeah, it's par for the course. This isn't tiddlywinks we are playing here. This is for the presidency of the United States. People are going to be at each other a little bit." GREEN: "How did the supporters of each candidate get along in your Texas Caucus?" HIGHTOWER: "Nobody was mad at each other. We were teasing each other and playfully giving each other the finger and things like that. Everybody's ready, not only to get rid of Bush, but to move the country forward and they think either of these candidates can do it."
HIGHTOWER: How can Obama keep Clinton from replicating her Ohio blue collar coalition in Pennsylvania? "Be very aggressive on issues that are bothering the working class. Those are pocketbook, pothole issues, healthcare, good jobs at good wages and those sort of things. Being right in the face of the issues. I find that people want a president who will be on their side against the barons of Wall Street and the elites of Washington." GREEN: "He tried that in Ohio and didn't connect then. Why not?" HIGHTOWER: "Obama has not done an effective job of hammering those issues in a way that those constituencies can see it and right now they have not been seeing it visibly enough."REAGAN: "I don't know if Geraldine Ferraro was actually a racist and I don't want to call her that. I think most of the damage was done actually not with her initial statement, which could be artfully explained away and placed into a context where it wasn't offensive, but instead she decided to do a television tour in which she shoveled herself a deeper hole. That was one of the worst television performances I've ever seen."
HUFFINGTON: "What I was thinking is: she doesn't have any friends. Forget a PR advisor, doesn't she have anybody in who can shake her up and say, 'Geraldine, shut up! There is no winning here. You just said something that can not be defended. You can not defend a statement such as a man with the name Barack Hussein Obama, who is black, somehow has an advantage in becoming the President of the United States. So move on.'"
HUFFINGTON: How should Democratic candidates react to obviously divisive comments? "I think that Democrats are not as good as Republicans at being outraged by remarks like Rep Steve King's [that al Qaeda would be 'dancing in the streets' because a man named Hussein was president]that were obviously demanding some kind of censure. Just imagine if it had been the other way around. When Congressmen Pete Stark was talking about the President Bush liking to send troops to war to be blown up for his amusement and immediately there is a censure. Immediately his associates disassociated themselves from him. But here we are with a congressman like King who somehow is getting away with saying absolutely preposterous things."