Newsweek is running a cover story on Barack Obama and the upcoming campaign. The story concerns pre-emptive claims by the Obama camp that the Republican-leaning 527’s will “Swiftboat” him and that John McCain will play the race card and take up other scurrilous positions. The Newsweek story also states that McCain sent out a fundraising letter “suggesting that Obama was the candidate of Hamas.” It includes mention of John McCain’s comment that he would be Hamas’ “worst nightmare,” the Obama “smear” reaction, and then the McCain retort focusing on ageism. The piece neatly avoids mentioning that in fact Hamas did endorse Obama.
The McCain team has responded to Newsweek with another Mark Salter letter, once again too long to reprint in full. (Free advice: stop writing long complaint letters if you want reporters to quote you in full.) The gist: the Newsweek authors unfairly took the Obama camp’s point of view and attributed tactics and motives to McCain (e.g. using race and playing up Obama’s foreign image) which McCain has already renounced.
As to the Hamas issue, Salter writes:
The Senator has never said that Senator Obama shares Hamas’ goals or values or proposed a relationship with Hamas different than the one he would propose. On the contrary, he publicly acknowledged that he doesn’t believe Senator Obama. He did note that there must be something about Obama’s positions, particularly his repeated insistence that he would meet with the President of Iran (Hamas’s chief state sponsor), that was welcomed by Hamas. Imagine if a right wing death squad spokesman announced that they welcomed McCain’s election. Would [the authors] treat that as an illegitimate issue or would they examine which of McCain’s stated positions might have found favor with the terrorists? That seems obvious on its face to me. Rather than argue that his position on Iran is the right one and has no bearing on how Hamas views him, Senator Obama makes a false charge that we accused him of advocating a different relationship with Hamas than Senator McCain’s supports. His false characterization of Senator McCain’s statement was accepted uncritically by [the authors].
What to make of all this? As a stylistic and tactical matter, one wonders if ponderous letters from Salter complaining about all manner of press unfairness really move the ball down the field for McCain. Don’t these missives reach a point of diminishing returns and divert attention from the real matter at hand: Obama’s positions and words? And worse still, some may attribute Salter’s irate tone to his boss, worsening the perception that McCain is thin-skinned and easily angered.
As for the substance, the McCain camp should be more direct about the real issues. Why has Hamas endorsed Obama? Is this what comes from offering Iran the opportunity for direct presidential visits? And what, if anything, have Obama advisors communicated to Hamas about Obama’s views? You can ask all that in one paragraph.
