Obama Campaign: Old School Politics or Ignorance?
June 12th, 2008 at 03:28pm KMorrison
Susan Rice’s false statement about the Kennedy Khruschchev meeting leaves open two questions. Are Obama foreign policy advisors up to snuff to guide a candidate and potential president? Are Obama advisors making misleading or false statements in order to win votes? First, Dr. Susan Rice is a Rhodes Scholar, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute, and has worked on the Kerry and Dukakis campaigns. It seems hard to believe that she would have thought that the Kennedy Khruschchev meeting really resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis. If she did, it is a troubling gap in knowledge for such an accomplished international relations scholar.
Consequently, that raises the second question of whether this is a tactic to sway votes by misleading people. Was Susan Rice trying to cash in on the popularity of JFK by assuming most people would not know their history well enough to challenge her? This isn’t Rice’s first misstatement. She has been trying over the last few months to walk back Senator Obama’s statement that he would meet with dictators of rouge nations in the first year of his presidency without preconditions. The tactic being to confuse people with a debate between ‘precondition’ and ‘preparations’. Yet, Dr. Rice expressly stated, “Nobody said he would initiate contacts at the presidential level; that requires due preparation and advance work.” That is false, Senator Obama in a YouTube debate expressly stated he would meet with the leaders of Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela without preconditions, which drew criticism from people on both sides of the isle. This begs the question is this a bumbling foreign policy, or old school politics. A decission to say anything regardless of its veracity to put your candidate in office.
YouTube Clip of Senator Obama agreeing to meet without preconditions
First published at Purple People Vote
Entry Filed under: Barack Obama, Campaign Issues, John McCain, War on Terror
5 Comments
1. Christian Wright | June 13th, 2008 at 6:35 am
Supreme Court upheld habeas corpus in a 20+ page ruling that I just read. This is one more incident where McCain was wrong and Obama was correct.
Obama applauded the ruling, saying it was a repudiation of “yet another failed policy supported by John McCain.”
Although both senators have opposed the use of torture in military interrogations of detainees and advocated closing the Guantanamo Bay facility, they’ve taken different stances when it comes to detainees’ legal rights.
McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam who survived torture, helped shape the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It established a military-commission trial system as an alternative to civilian courts and said that federal courts couldn’t consider habeas corpus petitions of detainees at Guantanamo; that is, detainees couldn’t challenge in U.S. civilian courts the grounds on which they were being held.
McCain voted for it and Obama voted against it. …
One of Obama’s campaign-speech lines has been that if he’s elected president, “I will restore habeas corpus” to detainees.
Obama, who has a law degree and taught constitutional law, said Thursday’s opinion undercut President Bush’s views on executive power, raised questions about McCain’s judgment and was “an important step toward re-establishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus.”
“Our courts have employed habeas corpus with rigor and fairness for more than two centuries, and we must continue to do so as we defend the freedom that violent extremists seek to destroy,” he said. ..
2. KMorrison | June 13th, 2008 at 7:55 am
Not so sure the court got it right on this one. They decided to given citizens rights to non-citizens and enemy combatants. Bringing these detainees into U.S. courts creates numerous problems. However, I think the Bush administration has itself to blame for not immediately recognizing that just because people aren’t granted citizenship rights that they are still entitled to basic human rights, such as not being held endlessly without a trial. I can see both sides of this one, but I think technically McCain was right, a system of military tribunals not only makes more sense for legal and national security reasons, but it avoids the precedent just set that anyone is entitled to right of citizenship.
3. Joe | June 13th, 2008 at 8:20 am
I don’t know KM. I think they got it right.
Justice Kennedy:
I think that sums it up quite well.
4. KMorrison | June 13th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
I certainly agree to that sentiment, but Constitutional rights don’t apply to non-residents. They’re in an awkward position because the combattants are not affiliated with a country so the Geneva Conventions don’t apply to them either. So in several cases they have been treated as people without any rights, which is problematic (and wrong). However, I’m afraid the Supreme court opened up a set of other problems by granting non-citizens citizenship rights. Also, while I’m not fully opposed to them having trials in US courts, there are a number of logistical problems there too, and if there was accountability at the military tribunals that could have been good solution.
I certainly can’t fault anyone for seek human rights for detainees, I just think this may not have been the best way of granting them.
5. Kurt | June 14th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
This isnt the first time that Team Hope got their history wrong. They have been getting this wrong for about a month now.
One thing I have noticed separates conservatives and liberals is that conservatives know their history better. Susan Rice’s statement is proof of that, as well as Senator Obama’s historical errors.
It is becoming apparent that when it comes to understanding recent American history, Team Hope, led by Obama, are in WAY over their heads.