Election News and Features
Candidates Chewed Up in Campaign Rumor Mill
by
findingDulcinea Staff
Former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey praises Barack Obama’s rumored “Muslim heritage,” and then apologizes for his mistake, the latest in a number of election-related retractions. Are such “mistakes” typical of the subtle double-dealing that characterizes contemporary politics?
30-Second Summary
On Dec. 16, Kerrey officially endorsed Hillary Clinton as presidential nominee. Afterward, he told The Washington Post that he also liked Obama, partly because his “father was a Muslim and … his paternal grandmother is a Muslim.”
These false claims had been circulating as part of an Internet campaign that claimed Obama concealed his Muslim background.
Kerrey quickly apologized to Obama for any unintended harm he had caused by his comments, but blogger Joe Gandelman at the The Moderate Voice doubts Kerrey’s sincerity.
Although analysts can only speculate about whether Kerrey’s statements were, as ABC News’ Senior National Correspondent Jake Tapper ponders, an “attempt to raise an issue while pretending not to raise it,” this is not the first time such questions have emerged on the campaign trail.
In a December interview with New York Times Magazine writer Zev Chafets, Mike Huckabee asked whether Mormons believe Jesus and the Devil are brothers.
The question drew criticism from rival Mitt Romney, and Huckabee later apologized for the comment. However, Wall Street Journal writer Peggy Noonan thinks Huckabee is disingenuous.
Noonan writes that his apology “allowed him to elaborate on his graciousness and keep the story alive. He should have looked abashed. Instead he betrayed the purring pleasure of ‘a Christian with four aces,’ in Mark Twain’s words.”
Although mudslinging is as old as the election process itself, today’s political environment is a much more subtle and nuanced affair. One that makes Noonan “miss the old days of Gore Vidal’s ‘The Best Man,’ in which a candidate started a whispering campaign that his opponent’s wife was a thespian.”
These false claims had been circulating as part of an Internet campaign that claimed Obama concealed his Muslim background.
Kerrey quickly apologized to Obama for any unintended harm he had caused by his comments, but blogger Joe Gandelman at the The Moderate Voice doubts Kerrey’s sincerity.
Although analysts can only speculate about whether Kerrey’s statements were, as ABC News’ Senior National Correspondent Jake Tapper ponders, an “attempt to raise an issue while pretending not to raise it,” this is not the first time such questions have emerged on the campaign trail.
In a December interview with New York Times Magazine writer Zev Chafets, Mike Huckabee asked whether Mormons believe Jesus and the Devil are brothers.
The question drew criticism from rival Mitt Romney, and Huckabee later apologized for the comment. However, Wall Street Journal writer Peggy Noonan thinks Huckabee is disingenuous.
Noonan writes that his apology “allowed him to elaborate on his graciousness and keep the story alive. He should have looked abashed. Instead he betrayed the purring pleasure of ‘a Christian with four aces,’ in Mark Twain’s words.”
Although mudslinging is as old as the election process itself, today’s political environment is a much more subtle and nuanced affair. One that makes Noonan “miss the old days of Gore Vidal’s ‘The Best Man,’ in which a candidate started a whispering campaign that his opponent’s wife was a thespian.”
Headline Link: Kerrey apologizes to Obama
In his apology to Obama, Kerrey wrote that he had “answered a question about your qualifications to be president in a way that has been interpreted as a backhanded insult of you. I assure you I meant to do just the opposite.” Kerrey also told the Associated Press, “What I found myself getting into in Iowa and it was my own fault it was the wrong moment to do it and it was insulting … I meant no disrespect at all.” Obama’s campaign said they had accepted Kerrey’s apology.
Source: ABC News
Background: Kerrey’s, Huckabee’s and the Clinton campaign’s contentious comments
‘Bob Kerrey Goes for Clinton’
Kerrey’s comments followed his official endorsement of Hillary Clinton. Speaking with The Washington Post, Kerrey said that while he hopes Clinton wins the nomination, he thought Obama’s ability to reach out to black youth and Muslims should earn him a role in the presidency: “It's probably not something that appeals to him, but I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim. There's a billion people on the planet that are Muslims and I think that experience is a big deal.”
Source: The Washington Post
‘Huck Camp Backtracks on Mormon Question’
Huckabee asked whether Mormons consider Jesus and the devil brothers during a New York Times Magazine interview, but the inquiry was quickly picked up by the country’s largest wire services. The Baptist minister later apologized to Romney for his comments at a debate in Des Moines, Iowa.
Source: Politico
‘Shaheen Steps Down From Clinton Campaign’
Bill Shaheen resigned from his position as Clinton’s national campaign co-chairman after saying that Obama’s admission of drug use could be a hindrance to his campaign in the general election: “It'll be, ‘When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?’ … There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome.” The Clinton campaign quickly distanced itself from the remarks, with Hillary Clinton offering a personal apology to her democratic rival.
Source: The Boston Globe
Opinion & Analysis: Parsing apologies
Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal believes that the apologies following the misstatements of Huckabee and Clinton’s former campaign co-chairman did more to perpetuate unfounded rumors than they did to end them: “Mr. Hucakbee of course announced that he apologizes to Mr. Romney, which allowed him to elaborate on his graciousness and keep the story alive.” According to Noonan, Clinton followed up Shaheen’s utterance about Obama and drug use with “apologies that will, as always, keep the story alive.” Noonan writes that all of these back-handed subtleties makes her miss “the old days of Gore Vidal’s ‘The Best Man,’ in which a candidate started a whispering campaign that his opponent’s wife was a thespian.”
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Reactions to Kerrey’s comments and apology
ABC News’ Senior National Correspondent Jake Tapper points out that many of Obama’s supporters see Kerrey’s statements “in the same light that they see Clinton strategist Mark Penn's remarks on MSNBC's ‘Hardball’ that, as far as former Clinton campaign co-chair Billy Shaheen's remarks about Obama's youthful drug use, ‘the issue related to cocaine use is not something that the campaign was in any way raising.’ Too clever by half, they think. A clear attempt to raise an issue while pretending not to raise it. Same thing with the ‘Hussein’ middle name?”
Source: ABC News blog, Political Punch
Blogger Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice questions whether Kerrey could have made those statements unintentionally: “If you take him at his word then Kerrey who has spent a lifetime in politics and knows how it works was naïve in saying what he did to The Washington Post, coming on the heels of another Clinton bigwig in New Hampshire trying to get press coverage of Obama's admitted youthful drug usage. If Kerrey is that naïve, the Democrats should thank their lucky stars he never got their party's Presidential nomination.”
Source: The Moderate Voice
M.J. Rosenberg of the political blog TPM Café believes that Kerrey’s apology is genuine, calling him a “mensch” that “would not intentionally engage in Muslim-baiting or anything like it … Is the letter sincere? It has to be. If it wasn’t, why would Kerrey essentially make an apology that Obama-backers can use as an endorsement and which Kerry indicates he would allow to be used that way. Kerrey says he didn’t mean his remarks as an insult. His letter proves it.”
Source: TPM Cafe
Historical Context: Mudslinging from 1796 to today
The Museum of the moving image provides a catalog of presidential campaign commercials from 1952 to 2004. Featured on the site is a 1964 Lyndon Johnson campaign commercial that, according to the museum, “uses a striking combination of images and sounds to imply that if elected, the Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, might start nuclear war.”
Source: The Museum of the Moving Image
Even before there was television there was political slander. Campaigns & Elections magazine highlights some of the most venomous election strategies from 1796 to 1884. The 1800 race between incumbent John Adams and Thomas Jefferson was particularly venomous, with the magazine noting that “Adams was called everything from a fool to a criminal. Claims were made that he wanted to marry off his son to the daughter of George III, creating an American dynasty under British rule.” In turn, Jefferson was accused “of being a cheat, a fraud, a coward and a robber.”
Source: Campaigns & Elections
The educational Web site EyeWitness to History notes that the 1828 election between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson “was one of the foulest presidential campaigns in American history … Adams's supporters hurled charges of bigamy and adultery against Jackson and his wife Rachael who had been previously married. Jackson’s supporters retaliated with charges of adultery against Adams and his wife … Rachael Jackson recoiled at the allegations. Many thought the slanderous attack hastened her death just before Christmas. Jackson won the election, but his wife’s death threw him into mourning.”
Source: EyeWitness to History
Related Topics: The Washington Post takes heat for Obama rumor piece
Politicians are not the only ones coming under fire for apparently sustaining election-inspired hearsay. On Nov. 28, 2007, The Washington Post printed an article titled “Foes Use Obama’s Muslim Ties to Fuel Rumors About Him.” The piece was quickly branded as irresponsible for allegedly giving credence to the debunked rumor that Obama is in some way associated with Islam. Written by Perry Bacon Jr., the article begins as follows: “In his speeches and often on the Internet, the part of Sen. Barack Obama's biography that gets the most attention is not his race but his connections to the Muslim world.”
Source: The Washington Post
The Columbia Journalism Review issued a scathing rebuke of Bacon’s article, referring to it as perhaps “the single worst campaign ’08 piece to appear in any American newspaper so far this election cycle.” CJR Writer Paul McLeary writes that for him the worst part is the way Bacon treats the discredited rumor that Obama attended a madrassa in Indonesia: “While Bacon rightly refers the madrassa story a ‘rumor,’ he quotes enough sources to make it sound like maybe it’s more than that, and he never bothers to state unequivocally that it’s been proven false. This habit of reporters—perpetuating untruths by writing stories about the ‘phenomenon’ of those untruths—drives us nuts.”
Source: Columbia Journalism Review
Bacon’s story even garnered disapproval from within The Washington Post. “Ombudsman” columnist Deborah Howell wrote in a piece titled “Refuting, or Feeding, the Rumor Mill?” that her “problems with the story by National Desk political reporter Perry Bacon Jr. and the headline (‘Foes Use Obama's Muslim Ties to Fuel Rumors About Him’) were that Obama's connections to Islam are slender at best; that the rumors were old; and that convincing evidence of their falsity wasn't included in the story.” Howell notes that the article also prompted ire from Post editorial cartoonist Tom Toles, who “was ‘so upset’ that he took the unusual step of taking potshots at the story in an editorial page cartoon.”
Source: The Washington Post
Post Assistant Managing Editor Bill Hamilton, who edited Bacon’s article, told Politico that “he was ‘a little bit puzzled’ that readers didn’t see that the paper’s intention was to call into question rumors that Obama is secretly a Muslim … ‘I’m sorry it was misunderstood,’ Hamilton said. ‘It obviously makes me think about how I edited it.’ … The paper’s intention, Hamilton said, was ‘to write a story about the kind of rumors that are out there,’ and added that ‘saying something is a rumor is not saying it’s true. We didn’t say it was a false rumor,’ Hamilton added. ‘To me, a rumor is not true.’”
Source: Politico
Reference: Checking the facts
The Washington Post’s ‘Fact Checker’ examines the veracity of the now-debunked claim that Obama spent time at an Indonesian madrassa, and Huckabee’s statements about Mormonism. The article states that although Obama attended a public school in a middle-class district of Jakarta from 1967–1971, defining that institution as a madrassa as it is understood in the West is false: “What makes [it] false is the politically charged sentiment it evokes in contemporary America, complete with images of bearded fanatics spewing anti-Western hatred. Whether the intent is to attack Obama or to praise him, damage is done.” In regard to Huckabee’s statement about Mormonism’s fraternal coupling of Jesus and Satan, the article states that although it is “technically true that Mormons believe that Jesus and Satan are ‘spirit brothers’ … Mormons say that the statement does not reflect ‘the nuances of our belief.’”
Source: The Washington Post’s ‘The Fact Checker’
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