Professor Obama

This is the single most absurd Time post I have ever seen on Swampland. Congratulations.

Iraq is in flames, the US economy is circling the drain, a semi-senile war monger is ahead in the Presidential polls - and you post this?

And U. of C. and U. of I. are not interchangeable (to the regret of many an Illini).

The University of Chicago is not the same as the University of Illinois.

This is an absurd story, but the Clinton folks have been circulating the claim that Obama was padding his resume as a statement of fact, so a rebuttal from the source is useful.

While I agree that there are many things in this world more worthy of discussion, there are no word limits or other space limiting issues on this site. Posting about one thing isn't (or shouldn't be) a zero-sum game. We can have fact-checking AND discussions about Iraq, the economy, McCain, etc. This blog is a floor wax and a desert topping, etc. . .

Jay,

One small correction: shouldn't your next to last line read "Not so, says the University of Chicago. . ."?

When one campaign tries to make it an issue for their opponent, it's important to clarify how they were wrong. Not everything on a blog post has to be earth-shattering, people - get over yourselves.

Posting about one thing isn't (or shouldn't be) a zero-sum game. We can have fact-checking AND discussions about Iraq, the economy, McCain, etc.

Not so. Junk posting by the Time writers drives more important threads down the front page, and into oblivion. It is a kind of stealthy jamming mechanism that undermines sustained discussion.

JNS, this is going to sound a bit snarky, but it's not meant in that spirit at all:

Clinton's campaign makes a false assertion about Obama. A neutral 3rd party slaps it down.

How is that "tit-for-tat"?

Answer: it's not. This is an example of seeking false-equivalence, which "many would argue" is one of the biggest problems in mainstream journalism today.

I confess that this tidbit of info is a relief from the deeply disturbing news coming out of Iraq, which I have not been able to bring myself to post on.

I can post on this. Different academic institutions classify faculty positions in different ways. It was stupid and petty for the Clinton campaign to push this. Despite the seeming insignificance of the point (I don't think it was getting much traction), it is a good sign that the media are finally running the steady stream of sewage from the Clinton campaign through the water treatment facility before dumping it back into the river.

Go away, Hillary. Just go away.

I happen to be a Maroon, too, JNS. . . .

In JNS's defense, I'd like to note that people screw up UC/UIC all the time. I think somewhere I have a regrettably snobbish t-shirt from my time in Hyde Park, referring to the misconception: "University of Chicago: Not a State School."

I was younger then.

Phil Singer, btw, would not have gotten this wrong -- and maybe he shouldn't have miffed the lecturer thing. Both he and Howard Wolfson are fellow Maroon alums.

It's kind of a strange place.

I agree with Paul. This is an absurd story, but it is absurd on the part of the Clinton campaign. They introduced it into the narrative, and it is utterly appropriate for Jay to use this space to correct it (accurately would be better).

Clinton has a big problem here, because she chose to pursue a campaign narrative of "foreign policy experience" that she, frankly, has to make stuff up to support. And she is making it up, and it's coming back to bite her. In the process, she has driven one-time supporters, like me, away. Obama, on the other hand, is more impressive every day.

Die hard Clinton supporter, and TPM contributor destor23, had this to say yesterday:

"This isn't a post I wanted to write. It's frankly a little embarassing given some of the things I've written on this site.

After Obama's race speech I decided that I'd stop calling Obama a wimp. I decided to only make affirmative statements about Hillary's toughness.
. . .
I've supported Hillary Clinton because I know how nasty the Republicans will be to our next president and because I assumed that like Bill, she'd be able to fight back against it. I actually assumed she'd do better than Bill because she's politically battle hardened and because the current crop of Republicans have nothing on Newt Gingrich.

This should have been obvious to the Clinton campaign. Everyone top to bottom should have understood that her supporters expected political smarts and toughness. When she said she was "experienced" she should have been talking about her political experience -- more about what she's seen and been through than what she's done. Instead she exagerates her Bosnia landing as if I ever cared whether or not she's taken sniper fire.

I can blame Mark Penn for this, but if she didn't stand up to him then she's not who I thought she was, or wanted her to be."
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/03/clintons-toughness.php

AMC:

You are right. Hyde Park is very weird. A lot of people with intense and esoteric interests. . . .

I guess the question for destor23, is does he want the Democratic candidate to be "tough" by fighting back with the blunderbuss attacks on trivialities that come back to bite her, the same way she's fought this contest? I guess that's "tough," but, ultimately, nonproductive.

I'd rather have a fighter like Obama, swatting at an occasional fly, with a smile on his face. I am more and more impressed with Obama. Stuff like the Wright BS simply makes me support him more.

Wow, now we get to call the Great Messiah Professor Barak Hussein Al-Obama, how wonderful!

Now that we have put to rest his superb credentials, why don't we focus on his abilities to choose and make great judgement calls picking those he wants to be influencial with his decision making skills.

Let's talk about dear Barak's CHOICES as a potential President, shall we? I'm just dying here to get feedback from the Swamplanders on how they are going to explain away how someone who isn't able to judge character is going to be able to pick a Cabinet for his Presidency.

This little piggy went to market, this little piggy went home... Hmmm

This might be an appropriate place to note, for those otherwise unaware, that the U of C Law School is a top ten law school, noted for its conservative approach to jurisprudence -- the "Law and Economics" school.

Obama's position there, in fact, provides a lot more useful information about the alleged "radicalness" of Obama that any preacher's speech. U of C Law is not accustomed to inviting Black Panthers to join its faculty. His success there shows that he can indeed "play well with others."

"Adjunct Professor" was the term my college used for someone who taught a course but wasn't tenured or on track to become tenured.

As for SFBear's question to destor23, I think he/she agrees with your point. Destor23 is clearly horrified, as am I, that Clinton has been so willing to sink into the RW fever swamp approach as opposed to fighting aggressively with the truth. I've been a Hillary supporter for many many years, and simply can't reconcile the person that has emerged in this campaign with the smart, competent, progressive, moral person I used to see.

Obama, on the other hand, has totally won me over with his quality of thought, his courage and even temper, his willingness to challenge voters to think instead of pandering to them with platitudes, and with his stunningly effective campaign that amplifies the Dean 50-state strategy.

On another subject, I'm waiting and waiting for Swampland staff to engage on the McCain free ride from the press. I think AMC should go first, since she's on record saying that sure they gave him a free ride in 2000 but, boygeehowdy, they'd sure skeptify him all over this time. I'm waiting.

"Not so. Junk posting by the Time writers drives more important threads down the front page, and into oblivion. It is a kind of stealthy jamming mechanism that undermines sustained discussion."

You really need to find other things to do with your day, HH.

You really need to find other things to do with your day, HH.

I'm thinking about collecting and posting links to McCain propaganda videos.

Damn! Michael Scherer did it already.

JNS: Thanks for posting this - especially as you seem a source of either pro-Clinton or anti-Obama stories much of the time.

Ana and JNS: the issue is not that JNS got this wrong, so much as the fact that the kind of things you get wrong (such as, for example, thinking that HRC was charging that Obama wasn't covering 50 million in his insurance program, when it was 15 million) indicate that you aren't paying anywhere nearly as much attention to this stuff as the people you're writing to. I bet 90% of your commenters knew this was the University of Chicago.

Eric - didn't you find, though, that you were invited to call all varieties of professor "Professor," regardless of rank?

It would be sweet if this was corrected in all the places I've seen it originally charged that Obama was padding his resume, but alas, that won't happen.

RustyDog is "just dying here to get feedback from the Swamplanders on how they are going to explain away how someone who isn't able to judge character is going to be able to pick a Cabinet for his Presidency." Yeah, he has a real problem there. Picking people who have actually been right from the beginning about issues like foreign policy (such as Iraq), instead of the Very Serious People who have been consistently wrong.

Here is Spencer Ackerman on Obamas "most sweeping liberal foreign-policy critique we've heard from a serious presidential contender in decades." It includes a description of his foreign policy advisors, and opens with this paragraph:
When Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama met in California for the Jan. 31 debate, their back-and-forth resembled their many previous encounters, with the Democratic presidential hopefuls scrambling for the small policy yardage between them. And then Obama said something about the Iraq War that wasn't incremental at all. "I don't want to just end the war," he said, "but I want to end the mind-set that got us into war in the first place."
http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_obama_doctrine

Here's a letter Obama wrote to Chairman Bernanke and Secretary Paulson a year ago about the pending mortgage crisis:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/03/obamas-prescien.html

ON another topic, here's what Time's Ana Marie Cox told Howie Kurtz earlier this year: "The journalists who covered McCain in 2000 feel very self-conscious about the criticism that the press came under for apparently being so taken with John McCain. There's a sense that the first time was so fun and exciting, but this time we're really going to be sober and critical and the dispassionate observers we're supposed to be." A response would be nice, showing how you all are acting so differently this time around.

It would be refreshing to see reporters actually doing some reporting? (Remember that?)
Maybe you can do something radical, like talk about specific policy issues.

I guess the rabble outside DC (that's us) aren't sophisticated enough understand "complicated" positions on specific issues.(Or maybe the people covering the campaigns are sophisticated enough?)

I guess we will have to settle for a steady flow of horse race B.S. and regurgitation of tit for tat press releases from different camps.

Rustydog: Are you on large doses of medication, or just in high school? Just curious....

Now to actual discussion - I'm actually a little surprised the Clinton camp would try to use this - it's such a small, trivial point - even if he wasn't on the University staff - and to chase after it without verifying seems pretty sloppy....

Buddhaback - I wonder if the issue is not so much the lecturer-professor thing, as the need to take him down about an area of expertise. When he talks about restoring consitutional balance to the executive branch, and says he knows what he's talking about because "I used to be a constitutional law professor," that sounds like serious cred.

KathyR --

Well, then, let Clinton challenge him on an actual misstatement he's made in the area of Constitutional Law. I think Obama has a much better sense of the current imbalance in DC than Clinton does.

Clinton engages on very bad points. It says very bad things about her judgment. That she persists when the polls show the attacks are backfiring, is devastating.

More Barak Obama race-baiting politics...

Senator Obama Responds to the Indian American Community

Monday, June 18, 2007

On Monday, June 18, Senator Barack Obama issued the following statement in response to the concerns expressed by the Indian American community regarding the Hillary Clinton opposition research memo. Senator Obama personally requested that we distribute this letter to the entire SAFO community:

I wanted to respond personally to the concerns you expressed regarding the recent research memo that our campaign put into circulation.

I believe that your concerns with the memo are justified. To begin with, the memo did not reflect my own views on the importance of America’s relationship with India. I have long believed that the best way to promote U.S. economic growth and opportunity for American workers is to continually improve the skills of our own workforce and invest in our own scientific research, technological capacity and infrastructure, rather than to try to insulate ourselves from the global economy.

More importantly, the memo’s caustic tone, and its focus on contributions by Indian-Americans to the Clinton campaign, was potentially hurtful, and as such, unacceptable. The memo also ignored my own long-standing relationship to – and support from – the Indian-American community.

In sum, our campaign made a mistake. Although I was not aware of the contents of the memo prior to its distribution, I consider the entire campaign – and in particular myself – responsible for the mistake. We have taken appropriate action to prevent errors like this from happening in the future.

Please feel free to share this letter with other members of your organization or leaders in the Indian-American community. I look forward to our continued friendship and exchange of ideas – during the course of this campaign, and beyond.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

"Punjab"??? Hmmmmmmm
Controversial, NO I SAY!!! Elect this man for your President, YES YES YES. Superior intelligence, comparable to Abraham Lincoln in stature and rhetoric. Undeniably the most supreme potential leader this country has EVER witnessed....Blah Blah Blah

KathyR -

If Jones was an "adjunct professor" without a doctorate, then we would write on the exam cover, "Professor Jones."

KathyR: You make a good point, but as much of this race (the Democratic race, at least) as I've followed, I've seldom heard Obama use his ConLaw background as proof of his credibility - he seems to want to rely on the power of his logic itself (with seemingly mixed results).

I just tend to think that in the minds of a vast majority of Americans "Professor" and "University Lecturer" would be interchangeable, whereas the downside for Clinton would be to be seen as pedantic and shallow.

Gosh! You mean the Clinton campaign is total rubbish when it comes to fact-checking?!?!

Oh wait - we noticed this before.

I could make a snarky joke about Team Clinton not being able to pick up that 3 am red phone to call the U of C and ask a simple, obvious question - but that would be a simple, obvious snark attack.

This is yet another example of why I trust Team Obama over Team Clinton to be in charge.

Go U of C!!!

Buddhaback - I've seen him say this in a stump speech or two on the teevee.

SFBear - this is an interesting point ("let Clinton challenge him on an actual misstatement he's made"). Clinton often seems to prefer the glancing blow to the on-point attack. I suppose it's because she can't then be accused of attacking the thing she's really attacking. I wonder if this is calculated or reflexive. Whichever, it seems to have missed its mark. I'm really surprised that her negatives are as high as they are. It would seem that people who aren't paying a lot of attention nonetheless get it that Hillary's petty.

Speaking of "getting it" Peggy Noonan has a great column this morning in the WSJ:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120663639483768965.html?mod=todays_columnists
I liked this especially:
"Her fictions about dodging bullets on the tarmac -- and we have to hope they were lies, because if they weren't, if she thought what she was saying was true, we are in worse trouble than we thought -- either confirmed what you already knew (she lies as a matter of strategy, or, as William Safire said in 1996, by nature) or revealed in an unforgettable way (videotape! Smiling girl in pigtails offering flowers!) what you feared (that she lies more than is humanly usual, even politically usual)."

Clinton's campaign makes a false assertion about Obama. A neutral 3rd party slaps it down.

How is that "tit-for-tat"?

I agree. The pattern here is starting to annoy me. Clinton campaign makes outrageous statement -- say that Hillary won a Silver Star for shielding Sinbad from sniper fire at a diner in Bosnia -- then footage and eye witness testimony contradicts the Clinton campaign statements, and it's called tit-for-tat.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to describe this as "Clinton campaign caught lying"?

Thank Fudd… now that we've hashed, rehashed, debated and resolved that critical issue we all know who'd be the best President of the freakin' United States of America.

Excellent change of subject by HRC, and excellent job by the media going for it in lieu of substantive reporting on actual issues.

It goes without saying that this story is bad news for Democrats. Very bad news.

. . . and great news, fabulous news, for Republicans.

Agreed this is a new low. Before you guys confuse it any more, just so you know, there is also a University of Illinois at Chicago. Obama had nothing to do with the University of Illinois (not that there's anything wrong with it), he was a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago. Is it really that hard? It's kind of like screwing up NYU and Columbia.

The Clinton campaign, not that they care, just lost the vote of every professor, professor's family, person in Illinois, and college student's vote. Brilliant. Way to go.

More like screwing up NYU and CCNY. . . .

KathyR: Me too. I'm considering those as "seldom". ;)

The price difference between U of I and U of Chicago is about $30K. That's one helluva spread. It's like comparing Brown University to the Brown College of Court Reporting.

Sounds to me like this is tat-for-tat -- HRC's crew barfing up on thing after another after another which turns out to be not quite true, and Obama having to set her straight. I understand that they're getting desperate over there, but this is becoming disgusting.

My wife went to U of C Law School, which produced the likes of Bjork, Ashcroft and Tony Snow, and this is hilarious. No one ever thought Barack was anything but a professor. What's more, he was extremely popular among the ultra-conservative, trust-fund baby student body. They use the Socratic method there, and earned the admiration of a lot of future conservative leaders.

This is rediculous.

My wife went to U of C Law School, which produced the likes of Bjork

I remember seeing the Sugarcubes perform in bars in Hyde Park in the late 80s.

KathyR: I wonder if the issue is not so much the lecturer-professor thing, as the need to take him down about an area of expertise.

Nope. It's an attempt by the Clinton campaign to catch Obama in a lie like Clinton was caught over her scripted 'memory lapses' about being under sniper fire in Bosnia when there was video and eyewitnesses that told something different.

I guess the Clinton campaign feels that the only way to beat Obama is to try and say there's no difference between them character-wise.

The issue has been finally put to rest. What else does HRC have on her sleeves? Go after his manhood.

This has to be a joke.

Nobody who took their profession and craft seriously would post this expository on banality unless they were trying to make a point about how ridiculous the other idiots and cranks in the press corps were.

Thanks for the humor, Jay Newton-Small.

The man taught as an adjunct professor. That is not, as observed, tenure track. It is intended for those who do not wish to make academia their permanent home.

He seems to have the bona fides. Hillary Clinton was ducking imaginary incoming and she really, really oughtn't question someone's academic credentials. She ought to question her own veracity.

Camp Clinton, just because Hillary has a "truth" problem, which is finally catching up to her, does not make everyone a liar. She caught got telling that tall tale, "the Bosnian Sniper Fire" story and now everyone knows her true character and the depths she will go to embellish her own persona. Andrea Mithcell went on that trip with her, however, she never reporter that there was no Sniper fire until it became public knowledge, though Hillary had told that story three (3) times. However, Andrea is compelled to dig up old sermons of Rev. Wright and expose them to the public. However, we are not electing a Pastor but a President, and those are Rev. Wright's words NOT Barack's as in the Sniper Fire Story are Hillary's and Hillary's alone. Then there is the statements she likes to make "that she would never meet with her enimies", than why did she meet and sit down with her Arch Enemy, Richard Mellon Scaife, to re-introduce the Rev. Wright matter. This is the same Richard Scaife, who accused Hillary and Bill of Vince Foster's murder and another 60 more in all. In her desire to make Barack look unelectable instead, the Chickens are Coming Home to Roost.

Obama is not a professor, but a lecturer. According to an article by Lynn Sweet of the Sun Times, the University of Chicago said that Obama "did NOT hold the title" of professor, but that he "served as a professor". There's the difference; we're jumping to conclusions.

"Iraq is a sovereign state, or so we claim. Why would U.S. forces assist the sovereign Iraqi government and Iraqi Army in their attempts to squash internal, anti-government insurgents?

We don't have a horse in this race. Wouldn't it be in our national interest to allow Iraq to settle it's own internal power struggles."

http://swimmingfreestyle.typepad.com

Oh this is too funny. So, since I perform surgery, I have "served" as the Surgeon General of the United States. Very sad that all these lies from the Obama campaign keep getting swept under the rug. Aren't journalists supposed to be trying to get to the truth instead of propagandizing for particular political candidates?