It's Time for Sen. Obama to Explain His Record

Cross-posted from the Pundits Blog at Hill.com

Memo to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.):

It's time for you to explain the inconsistencies of your positions and the way you describe your past record.

Your complaint that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is "attacking people" and "throwing mud" because she challenged the accuracy of your characterization of your own healthcare plan as "universal" appears hypocritical. It was you who voluntarily attacked Sen. Clinton for being "untruthful and misleading" several weeks ago in a voluntary sit-down with two New York Times reporters. That is clearly a direct attack on character -- the functional equivalent of calling Sen. Clinton a liar. And yet, at least according to the Times article, you offered no specific examples in that article to back up such a serious personal attack.

It's time for the public to know facts and inconsistencies in your positions and your record that, so far, much of the national press corps has allowed you to ignore.

1. Your healthcare program. Sen. Clinton is right and you are wrong. Her healthcare proposal provides for a universal mandate, and yours does not and leaves out millions of people. That is a fact. As Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist (and no Hillary fan) recently wrote, your plan would allow millions of healthy people to opt out and then opt in when they develop health problems. Under your plan, he wrote, "people who did the right thing when they were healthy would end up subsidizing those who didn't sign up for insurance until or unless they needed medical care." Mr. Krugman continued:

Mr. Obama is attacking his rivals and claiming that his plan is superior. It isn't -- and his attacks amount to cheap shots.

2. Your PAC's donations. Your political action committee (PAC) donated funds to state and local elected officials in the early primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire. Shortly after receiving those donations, some endorsed your candidacy. The Washington Post reported that these funds were directed to these individuals by officials in your presidential campaign. A federal election law expert told the Post reporter that if that was the case, this could be a violation of federal election law. Will you be fully transparent about who, what, when, where and why regarding these donations? And if this was "coordination" and "direction" from your presidential campaign, as the story documented, how could it not be a violation?

3. Your position on the Iraq war. You have criticized Sen. Clinton for supporting the October 2002 Iraq war resolution (just as the governor of your state, Rod R. Blagojevich, did when he was in the House of Representatives, as did former Sen. Max Cleland, who lost two arms and a leg in the Vietnam War, and 29 Democratic senators). You claim to have been opposed to that resolution before you became a U.S. senator.

Yet when you were asked (I believe for the first time) in the fall of 2004, as a candidate for the U.S. Senate, how you would have voted on that resolution had you been a U.S. senator, you were quoted in the Chicago Tribune answering, "I don't know."

Then in March 2007, your press secretary was quoted as refusing "eight times" to answer a New York Times reporter's question as to why you couldn't answer that question back in 2004. When pressed again, he said you refused to answer such a "hypothetical" question. So how can you accurately say that you opposed the war resolution when you said "I don't know" way back then and refused to explain that answer at least as recently as March 2007. And how is it fair to criticize Sen. Clinton's (and Gov. Blagojevich's) judgment for doing so at that time when she says today, "Had I known then what I know now [that there were no WMDs in Iraq], I would not have voted for that resolution"?

You also voted against Sen. John Kerry's (D-Mass.) amendment in the summer of 2006 to set a deadline on withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq (as did Sen. Clinton and most Senate Democrats). Yet I don't think you have ever reminded voters about that vote since you began your presidential campaign.

4. Your position on the Iran Resolution. You criticized Sen. Clinton's vote in September supporting a Senate resolution asking the U.S. government to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRG) as a "foreign terrorist organization," which could trigger economic sanctions. In an op-ed in the Manchester, N.H., Union Leader, you called that vote "reckless." Yet you failed to disclose that you had co-sponsored a Senate Resolution (S. 970) in March 2007 that used exactly the same language to designate the IRG a "foreign terrorist organization." And you failed to disclose that the senior senator from your own state of Illinois, Dick Durbin (D), also supported the September resolution and publicly disagreed with you that it could possibly provide a basis for intervening in Iran.

Are you prepared to charge Sen. Durbin, too, with a "reckless" vote on a resolution with the same IRG designation language as in the March resolution you co-sponsored?

5. Your commitment to visit five dictators in your first year as president. In one of the Democratic debates, you committed to visiting five dictators in Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran and North Korea, without preconditions, personally, in your first year as president. You later tried to revise what you actually said by stating you were referring only to the principle of the need to negotiate with "hostile governments." (But that is not what you said at the debate.) Then you criticized Sen. Clinton for not being willing to negotiate with hostile governments, which is false, and you knew it was false. In fact, you knew that Sen. Clinton had already endorsed the Hamilton-Kean task force recommendation for the U.S. to negotiate with Syria and Iran to assist in finding a regional solution to the Iraq war.

6. Your position on driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. After Sen. Clinton gave a garbled response to her position on this issue in the Philadelphia debate, she was intensely criticized by you, accusing her of intentionally obscuring her position, and by media commentators. (She subsequently admitted she had not given a clear answer.)

Yet in the very next debate in Las Vegas, both of you were asked whether you supported such driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. She gave a simple "no," and you gave a garbled and virtually incomprehensible answer. You were hardly criticized by the media -- certainly when compared to the two weeks of criticism of Sen. Clinton after her response. So what is your position?

7. Social Security reform. You say you favor increasing FICA taxes by raising the income ceilings above approximately $91,000/year of income. This would amount to over a trillion-dollar tax increase. You also say you want a bipartisan approach to governing. Do you really think congressional Republicans will ever agree to a Social Security solution that just involves raising taxes this much?

Sen. Clinton prefers to do what President Reagan and the late Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan did in the 1980s--appoint a bipartisan commission whose recommendations were broadly accepted on both sides of the aisle. Yet you accuse her of refusing to take a position. Would you have accused Sen. Moynihan of that? Truthfully, who has the more bipartisan approach on this important issue, you or Sen. Clinton?

*****

Sen. Obama: you are a fine and decent young man and you have been an excellent presidential candidate. However, the problem with a seemingly sanctimonious campaign theme that implies that you are the superior candidate of reform, change, and candor is that you are judged more harshly when you don't apply to yourself the high standards that you insist others have to meet.

It's time, Sen. Obama, for you to explain your inconsistent record and your apparent double standard.

It's time for you to come out behind the rhetoric of "turning the page" and read the page accurately to voters concerning your past record, your current positions and Sen. Clinton's.

And it's time for the political media to give greater scrutiny to the facts concerning your record.

* * * * *

Mr. Davis, a Washington attorney and former Special Counsel to President Clinton, is a supporter and fundraiser for the presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

Comments

[feelfree]

I have noticed that Obama doesn't have a position on anything. He doesn't have an ideological core. He stands for nothing.

[ZinZen]

And here is another HRC supporting blogger trying to raise political issues with Obama, in an objective fashion. Hey, we see through you HRC supporters already. Enough said.

[PaulLoeb]

Nothing is more damning for Hillary than her priorities in the 2006 election, when she raised over $52 million, the second most in any Senate campaign ever to beat a token opponent. This at a time when the Democrats were desperately scraping for resources to take advantage of the new electoral opportunities.


See
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-loeb/hillary-clinton-and-the-g_b_75327.html

[SamanthaJaneSalem]

This isn't a call for Obama to explain his record. It's a laundry list of uncomfortable moments in Obama's campaign. There really isn't any explaining them. They don't look good-- period

I would have more respect for Lanny Davis's post if he simply said "this is why I can't support Obama." Not "these are are all the bad things I can think of about his stance on health care and the Iraq War and other issues, but I'm going to pose them as questions" (a paraphrase of the above if one reads between the lines).

Honestly, if Obama *could* explain them he would be a better politician-- as opposed to statesman-- than I want him to be. I've lived with his flaws up until now. Personally, I think he has the fewest flaws of any Democratic candidate. Certainly fewer than Hillary Clinton.

I'm not going to ask Hillary to explain her vote to authorize war against Iraq-- she either couldn't do it, or if she did, it would just be the fancy way politicians use to get around a sticky subject.

Sorry, Lanny-- those aren't actual questions for Obama from a neutral observer. They are legitimate reasons to support someone other than Obama-- from someone who already supports Hillary and just wants to hit Obama hard.

[Kane]

Memo to Hillary Clinton:

It's time for you to explain the inconsistencies of your positions and the way you describe your past record.

[SeanGardner]

So now that Massachusetts Govenor Deval Patrick, Robert Reich and Frederico Pena and other former Clinton supporters and appointees have either endorsed Obama for his vision and record or attacked Hillary for the mean-spirited tone of her campaign, Hillary figures she can get the few supporters she has left to attack Obama's record.

Ok Lanny.

I don't even believe an extended response to your piece is warranted.

[Mrrar]

::walk into chamber::

echo echo echo echo..

[wldnswmmr]

Wow, Hill and Bill are calling out the big guns. It's hilarious that Hillary Clinton is now going on the offensive about who's more "authentic­." This is probably not her long suit. Anyway, shes probably trying to figure out whether the IRG should or should not be given driver's licenses, or if asking her whether she would constitutes a "gotcha" question. Good luck with this quest, Mr. Davis. Your team obviously has a high mountain to climb. One serious question for you, however: the polls are pretty definitive that Hillary cannot be elected by the general public. Are you sure you want 4+ more years of what we've just had? Maybe setting aside the extreme partisanship would be advisable. The personal ambitions of the Clintons could lead to very serious consequences.

[cloudy]

This column at first seems like it's raising some reasonable questions. But as you read on, it becomes obvious that these are basically HRC talking points, cast in the harshest light possible vis-a-vis Obama, parroting without evidencing such talking points as the $1 trillion figure that HRC tried to pin on Obama in one of the TV debates.

Where in particular is that trillion dollar figure itemized, and by whom?

Then comes the proverbial piece-de-r­esistance. Like a number of other anti-Obama columnists you refer to him as a "young" man; he's the same age as Bill Clinton was at this point in the 92 election.

The idea of posing serious questions for Obama, including some of the topics touched upoon here, but in a more fair-minded way, is not such a bad idea. But presenting them this way, in toto, is simply an insult.

[snruB]

He's already explained all of this stuff. You fail