Canada, NAFTA, Tony Rezko and Barack Obama: Time and Ways to Avoid Further Embarrassment
March 4, 2008
Category: The Situation Room
How and why the Canada/NAFTA/Obama impasse developed so easily and so fast into a harmful story with long legs is puzzling. The issue was so badly handled by the Obama campaign that it suggests the people around Barack Obama have begun to construct a bubble of illusion and aloofness from reality around the candidate. Mistakes such as the Canada/NAFTA debacle should never have been allowed to happen, and should never have happened. And the mishandling of such mistakes in the media can only fuel further acrimony, suspicion and controversy, and give more ammunition to a Clinton side so desperate for stories and scandals that could sink Barack Obama and lend some credibility to the Clintons’ contention that the whole Obama phenomenon is, in fact, a mere fairytale.
Not only is the way the whole matter was handled strikingly awkward and peevish by all standards, it is also incomprehensible how irresponsible it was for an Obama advisor with the name of Austan Goolsbee to put himself in a position that could potentially compromise the Obama campaign at such an early stage of the process, especially at a time when Obama is still struggling to secure the Democratic nomination, and Hillary Clinton poised to pounce mercilessly on every little rumor that comes her way. The rule of thumb in this type of close and nasty campaign should be to never allow anyone to meet anyone without the full consent and knowledge of Obama and his closest campaign managers. Secondly, there should be no meetings with outside or foreign entities or parties. Ever. Period.
Clearly, this whole mess could have been handled very differently if the Obama entourage had remained more in touch with reality. Between inexplicable overconfidence, misplaced cockiness and sheer stupidity, especially with the latest inexplicable move to avoid direct contact between Obama and media (media who have been real implicit allies of Obama so far), it looks as though because of bad advice and the doubts created around Obama, the media is turning against him and the Hillary campaign is active using this new trend to blow more flames over the Obama house. Yet, the media is there to be spinned, not by advisors and managers, but by Obama himself, on a daily basis, so that he can help to defray some of the rumors himself. It is suddenly starting to look like a suicide in the making for the Obama campaign, especially at this crucial juncture of the race.
If Obama loses Ohio and Texas, it will not be because Hillary Clinton grew stronger, it will be because the Obama campaign, relying solely on sheer momentum, stopped campaigning in Ohio and Texas with the same energy and determination. They also failed to respond aggressively to the latest Hillary ads with their own ads, exactly as they did with their immediate response to the “3AM” ad last week.
First of all, keeping Barack Obama in a bubble, away from the media is the biggest mistake of his campaign so far. I believe Obama should have been more out there in the last 72 hours preceding the Ohio and Texas vote. He should have been not only holding the types of large meetings that have contributed to his hyping the inevitability of his victory in past weeks, but also holding press conferences to defend himself in person against any sort of rumors and attacks. And he should have done so more aggressively, and met Hillary Clinton with the same degree of nastiness. The nice-boy, good-guy thing gives too much the impression to people that Obama is unable to fight back, and lends credence to the idea that Hillary Clinton can best win against McCain because she is a fighter. Elections, by nature, are nasty affairs. The notion that one can win an election playing nice is sheer stupidity. Yet, Obama has plenty of ammunition in his pocket. He has not even dared to use the immorality of the Bill Clinton years that led to his impeachment and a divided America, and the dreaded possibility of further distractions in the white house because of Bill Clinton.
What is going on in the Obama camp? Is someone trying to sabotage and sink from within a campaign that no one believed would have actually gone so far as to endanger the aura of inevitability that had, until about two months ago, surrounded the expected Hillary Clinton coronation?
For some strange reason, the intensity of Obama’s campaigning went down in the past three days and the Obama campaign allowed the Hillary people to fully own the airwaves and the offensive advantage.
Has someone decided to torpedo the whole Obama affair? It looks as though the drop in campaigning intensity by Obama and his people is beginning to look either as totally infantile cockiness and belief in the inevitability of his nomination, or as a gift to Hillary Clinton. There has not been a sense of real purpose in the Obama campaign in the past 72 hours, and that is strange, really strange.
How should Obama and his people have handled this whole Canada/NAFTA and Tony Rezko mess? And can he whole mess still be fixed?
Yes, because a scandal generally gets legs only when one tries to weave and deny the issue. Obama himself knows about this when Hillary Clinton pressured him into rejecting Louis Farrakhan‘s endorsement last week. He saved himself by acknowledging the mistake and categorically rejecting. In today’s media world, denying an issue outright can become the difference between political life or political death. Obama and his people should know better.
This situation can still be fixed, but Obama must act now. Here is how he should handle it (and how he should have handled it yesterday):
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1) Obama must call an executive meeting of all his advisors and campaign managers, and let it be known to the media and the public that he is calling the meeting so that the nation can witness him taking control over his campaign’s message and processes; by spinning it right, Obama would convey the impression that the latest controversy about NAFTA was not of his campaign’s direct doing, but rather an isolated incident independently caused by one of his advisors. As a result, he is simply making sure something like that does not repeat itself.
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2) Obama must come clean and clarify for everyone in his campaign as well as in the media and public what actually happened, so that everybody in his campaign can speak with the same voice, and the narrative regarding the Canada/NAFTA incident becomes his, not the one served out by the rumors and the contradictory statements of his advisors.
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3) Following this executive meeting, Obama himself needs to hold a one-hour press conference on the issues of Canada/NAFTA. He should read a 15-minute statement in which he would totally come clean with a story line that depicts things in his favor, and with the right kind of chronology: who called whom, when? Was the meeting before the last debate or after? Where? Was it authorized by the campaign or not? In what capacity was economic advisor Austan Goolsbee speaking to the said Canadian officials? What distortions occurred in Austan Goolsbee’s conversation with the Canadians, and the media reports? What contradictions occurred in the statements by campaign managers themselves in the confusion that ensued? Who met whom, who was there at the meeting? Basically, Obama should offer a candid, clear and straight enough version of the story to be convincing.
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4) And journalists should be allowed to ask him questions for the rest of the one-hour period. No more, no less. Obama has to retake the media advantage that he seems to have conceded to Hillary Clinton in the past few days.
On the specifically Tony Rezko issue, Barack Obama needs, as he has done so far, to tell and reiterate to the journalists what he has already told them. On the question journalists have been asking, arguing that Obama had not answered all the questions regarding his relationship with Tony Rezko, Obama should simply answer that he knows of no question that has been asked and that he has not been answered. Everything that is to be known about his ties to Rezko has been out there for a while now, and if, at some point, the justice system has questions for him, he will be happy to answer those questions and hold another press conference with the media to discuss those questions. But for now, he cannot answer questions that have not been posed by the justice system, and he has not been linked in one way or another with Tony Rezko beyond what is known already. And he should add that he understands the scrutiny the media is seeking to give him, but that does not mean that he has to answer any type of unsubstantiated allegation out there. When the media have more substantial questions based on substantiated facts, he will be happy to answer them. But trying to answer inferences, rumors, and allegations that have no basis is a futile and silly exercise that can only lead to further speculation. This is not the time to engage in a process of guilt by association and we must let the justice system take care of that. If we trust in our justice system for its efficacy, then we must let it do its job.
Furthermore, we should refrain from creating amalgamations. If we started to indict in the court of public opinion anyone who has ever had any ties with someone who was charged with a crime, then perhaps we should ask Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton to report to some jail right now. They have more bones in their closet than Barack Obama does. And by that same measure, we should ask half of Congress to resign right now. Our system of justice is better than that, and I trust in the dignity and decency of the American people. The notion that because Barack Obama was friendly with Rezko, he is necessarily guilty of any wrongdoing, is neither fair, nor logical. Next we are going to start indicting neighbors of criminals of crimes committed by their neighbors, fathers for crimes committed by their sons, daughters for crimes committed by their mothers. Where are we going to stop? Let us just get 200 million Americans in jail right now, while we are at it. We need to keep it cool and concentrate on the issues that matter in this election. Barack Obama is not going anywhere. The justice system is not going anywhere. If the justice systems finds that Barack Obama has any questions to answer, he will do so, but he cannot be held guilty by association at this juncture, and the media should not buy into the Hillary Clinton arguments and become instruments of her “kitchen sink” strategy. Barack Obama does not mind scrutiny, but the current scrutiny is certainly very misguided.
On the Canada/NAFTA issue, and assuming the Obama campaign is innocent of the charges levied against it, Barack Obama should be candid and present the whole thing as follows:
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1) He should say: He is running the press conference to make sure no further misguided comments are made by his team or uninformed sources. He just held an executive meeting whose purpose was to clarify all the rumors and allegations that had occurred recently and he is now ready to report fully and thoroughly on what actually happened. Being that he has now been able to fully clarify what happened at the executive meeting with his advisors and managers, his version and timeline of the facts should be taken as the final storyline about the Canada/NAFTA controversy.
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2) He should say: Running a campaign does not mean one knows everything that one’s associates do at all times. When the news first broke, everybody was in a state of confusion because no one really had any idea who it was who may have gone to meet with the Canadian people, hence his preliminary answer that a meeting did not happen. He simply personally had no idea that anyone had met with the Canadians, and neither did most of the people around him. His first answer was thus a very honest one, because he knew nothing about it and no one had told him about it. Everybody was kind of taken aback by the news. On that front, it was an honest mistake to deny initially because no one really had an idea what was going on and his immediate advisors and campaign managers simply overreacted because they believed it was probably another rumor by the campaign’s opponents seeking to harm them at this crucial moment of the campaign. So, the initial answer was based on the fact that he knew personally that he did not send anyone to meet with any Canadian, and therefore could not have known about a meeting that happened in Chicago while he was on the campaign trail elsewhere in the country.
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3) He should disavow Austan Goolsbee and say: Because he did not know about the meeting, and did not authorize it, it was not an authorized meeting stemming from his campaign. While it is still unclear to him whether Austan Goolsbee spoke with the Canadians in Chicago in his capacity as an economy professor who happens to be an economic advisor to the Obama campaign, or as an official Obama campaign advisor, he, Obama, did not know about it and did not authorize it. As a result, he is forced to disavow whatever the advisor may have said during that meeting. If the Canadians want the official position of the Obama campaign on the issue of NAFTA, the campaign will be happy to send them a written statement about.
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4) He should say: While the advisor did, as it now appears, attend a meeting with Canadian officials, it was never, as reported, because it was asked for by the Obama campaign or because he, Obama, knew about it. No one in the campaign called the Canadian embassy to clarify Obama’s position on NAFTA, and the only call that seems to have been made was made from the Canadian officials who reportedly invited his advisor to an informal meeting at which the advisor was not, from what he Obama knew, speaking in the name of the campaign. An economic advisor not being a campaign manager or spokesperson, it is clear he cannot speak for the campaign nor convey campaign strategy. An economic advisor’s job is to speck to specific policies, and only to the advisee. People should pay more heed to the words that come out of his own mouth (Obama), and he will be responsible for those. He will not be responsible for the possible misrepresentations of his ideas that could come from his advisors or people that his advisors may have met in circumstances that he does or cannot control. So, while he takes responsibility over the whole mess and chaos, he wants to make sure that his word is the final word and that only what he says should be held against him and his campaign. He will make sure to communicate his ideas to the media in person more from now on, as opposed to letting surrogates do it for him most of the time. This position, of course, would reset Obama’s relationship to the press and give him the benefit of the doubt for both his candidness and straightforwardness.
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5) Obama should reassert his position on NAFTA in very unambiguous terms, and, this time around, go further into detail by stating it as a matter of policy. He should do this in a way that contradicts the Canadian memo and, thus, basically begin to lay out his presidential policy regarding NAFTA. This would reassure Americans that he has actually meant what he had said and would always do what he says, unlike others who have changed positions on so many issues that no one knows where they stand today.
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6) Obama should say: As a result of this Canada/NAFTA issue, the Obama campaign has taken the resolution to allow people to speak on behalf of the campaign only when they have been explicitly authorized to do so, and in a way that is clearly tracked and known by all.
In other words, Barack Obama must, in person, confront the rumors and the journalists for an hour, present a clear storyline that should be made to stand as the only, cleaned-up storyline, and, thus offer a rationale for what may have appeared to some as lies and attempts to spin, and which, in reality, were simply due to the initial ignorance and mishandling of the information.
Now, what for possible similar crises in the future?
The rule of thumb for the Obama team should always be:
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1) When a potentially harmful story breaks out, never deny it out front. Simply tell journalists that you are not in the know about the story and that you would be asking your people to know more. Promise them a press conference the next day to keep them in check. This way, you give yourself some breathing room, and because you have not denied the story, you buy yourself some time to plan a real spin strategy around facts that cannot be defeated easily, but that espouse the contour of your position;
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2) Secondly, do hold an executive meeting that would allow your team to brainstorm and inform all those who serve as spokespersons abut the issue at hand. Everybody with an important responsibility must know exactly what is going on, so that all can have the same answer come question time with the journalists;
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3) Never allow anyone to answer questions that they were not authorized to answer. Always have one or two well-prepared people to answer controversial questions. Better yet, Obama himself should always answer controversial questions in front of a panel of journalists to ensure that the media will not conclude that he is shying away from the truth by avoiding the journalists;
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4) Disavow any advisor who may have said something the wrong way or conveyed the wrong impression. Better to disavow an advisor than cause more turmoil by trying to fix an unfixable controversy. It is better to acknowledge a mistake and, instead, offer an answer that could help salvage the impression of honesty. And you do this by disavowing the advisors who may have misrepresented your ideas. Warn journalists about the potential of distortion and that the only candidate here is Obama, and as long as he himself has not said something wrong or controversial, things that his campaign people say should always be taken with caution. While advisors and managers are great people, they may at times distort a candidate’s message and it is the candidate’s responsibility, therefore, to redress the tort caused.
If the Obama campaign team can avoid the “bubble” mistake and the euphoria that stems from overconfidence, they might still be able to pull it off and undo the negative perceptions and unwanted counter-momentum that could result from an Hillary win in Texas and Ohio tonight.
I believe the Obama camp committed too many mistakes ahead of Ohio and Texas. They have basically squandered the advantage and momentum that Barack Obama had enjoyed thus far. Tomorrow, Clinton’s campaign will get a new life after wins in Ohio and Texas, and the whole thing will be reset.
But the Obama team will now be well served if it kept tighter control over its campaign message, avoided overconfidence, opened up more to the media to keep its message in the air, and decided to go on the attack, even if this means going nasty. Going nasty is the easy part: it would suffice to simply respond to any mud attack by throwing mud right back at Hillary Clinton each time her campaign throws some. This type of counter-attack worked nicely with the “3AM” ad last week. It needs to be repeated more consistently. Because Hillary Clinton is desperate to catch-up and too eager to win, and at all costs, her side is bound to make mistakes and create a suicidal impression of desire to win at all costs. All the Obama people have to do, then, is set themselves ready to respond to mud with mud, blood with blood. After that, all they have to do is wrap Hillary Clinton into an image of desperation, a person who will stop at nothing to win, even if that means winning immorally and losing her soul while doing it.
The Obama campaign motto should now be: there will be blood. No more “Mister Nice Guy”. No more letting Hillary Clinton occupy and own the air waves unopposed. It is now a matter of political life or political death. Only the most able will survive. Hillary Clinton began the “kitchen sink” battle. Obama must finish it. Crushingly.
You have more things to add to this list of recommendations?
Submit your suggestions to Obama on how to avoid losing face and credibility in the face of controversy. Post your advice in the comment form below or submit an analysis for publication on this site.
Dr. Daniel Mengara
The author is an Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Montclair State University (New Jersey). He is also the leader of Bongo Doit Partir (Bongo Must Go), a movement of expatriated Gabonese citizens opposed and seeking an end to the 40-year-old dictatorial regime of Omar Bongo in Gabon.
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