I mentioned this briefly earlier, but it seems to be the big political story of the day, so let’s flesh this out a bit.
In her column today, the NYT’s Maureen Dowd quoted entertainment mogul David Geffen, who was a loyal Clinton supporter in the 1990s, saying all kinds of critical things about Hillary, while explaining why he’s supporting Barack Obama.
“Obama is inspirational, and he’s not from the Bush royal family or the Clinton royal family. Americans are dying every day in Iraq. And I’m tired of hearing James Carville on television.” […]
“I don’t think anybody believes that in the last six years, all of a sudden Bill Clinton has become a different person,” Mr. Geffen says, adding that if Republicans are digging up dirt, they’ll wait until Hillary’s the nominee to use it. “I think they believe she’s the easiest to defeat.”
She is overproduced and overscripted. “It’s not a very big thing to say, ‘I made a mistake’ on the war, and typical of Hillary Clinton that she can’t,” Mr. Geffen says.
Geffen went on to say that the Clintons “lie” with “such ease, it’s troubling.”
Clearly, Geffen’s comments were extremely harsh, especially from one Democrat to another. It didn’t take much time before Clinton’s rapid-response team fired back, criticizing Obama and accusing Geffen is a finance chairman of his campaign*. “If Senator Obama is indeed sincere about his repeated claims to change the tone of our politics, he should immediately denounce these remarks, remove Mr. Geffen from his campaign and return his money,” Clinton spokesperson Howard Wolfson said.
This led Obama’s rapid-response team to return fire.
“We aren’t going to get in the middle of a disagreement between the Clintons and someone who was once one of their biggest supporters,” Obama communications director Robert Gibbs said. “It is ironic that the Clintons had no problem with David Geffen when was raising them $18 million and sleeping at their invitation in the Lincoln bedroom. It is also ironic that Senator Clinton lavished praise on Monday and is fully willing to accept today the support of South Carolina State Sen. Robert Ford, who said if Barack Obama were to win the nomination, he would drag down the rest of the Democratic Party because he’s black.”
Which, in turn, led Clinton’s team to lob another one in Obama’s direction.
“By refusing to disavow the personal attacks from his biggest fundraiser against Senator Clinton and President Clinton, Senator Obama has called into serious question whether he really believes his own rhetoric,” Wolfson said. “How can Senator Obama denounce the politics of slash & burn yesterday while his own campaign is espousing the politics of trash today?
“When one of Senator Clinton’s supporters made an inappropriate statement, her campaign disavowed it immediately and the supporter apologized for his words. Why won’t Senator Obama do the same?”
I have no interest in taking sides here, but I have to say how discouraged I am by all of this. As Kevin Drum put it, “It’s one thing for campaigns to descend into mudslinging for a couple of hectic final months during the actual primaries, but it’s another for the mudslinging to last for over a year. At the least, it makes it a lot harder to kiss and make up at the convention. By September these people are going to hate each other’s guts.” I’m not looking forward to it.
For what’s it’s worth, neither side of this comes out looking good from all of this. For Obama, if Geffen is his campaign finance chair, what he tells the New York Times matters and can’t be shrugged off. If Geffen is going to take some seriously harsh shots at Obama’s principal rival, it necessarily undermines his effort to take the high road and keep a positive campaign.
For Clinton, today’s responses may have defeated the purpose. Hillary has some of the best, smartest people in the business working for her, and I appreciate the fact that this team doesn’t let anything get by them. But there are sometimes unintended consequences to being aggressive like this — all of a sudden, David Geffen’s comments, which may have been largely ignored in a column behind the NYT pay-to-read wall, are the talk of the political world. Would they have gotten this much attention if the campaign hadn’t raised such a fuss?
Less of this, please.
* Update: It turns out, Geffen isn’t a finance chair for Obama, as the Clinton team had asserted. Given the importance of tying Geffen’s comments to the Obama campaign, it’s a relevant detail.