Mar 30 2008
Obama fails Politics 101
This, in my mind, is so trivial that I was not even going to mention it unless someone made a big deal about it. Ed Morrissey and Jeralyn have attempted to make a big deal about it, so I’ll mention it. Somehow they think that Barack Obama being mistaken about something that happened two years before his birth is the equivalent of Hillary Clinton blatantly lying about something that happened when she was 48 years old. (It isn’t.)
One of the first lessons taught in Politics 101 is that if you are going to run for public office, you thoroughly research every word you plan to say, then you have somebody else research it and then somebody after them. If what you are going to say does not pass all three levels of research without any doubt whatsoever as to its veracity, you do not say it. The reason for this is that every word you say is going to be thoroughly researched by your opposition after you say it, so it is better for you to have researched it before you say it.
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain all appear to have been absent from class on the day that lesson was taught. Senator Obama got caught today. He did not do the research on something that he believed to have happened two years before his birth…
Obama Overstates Kennedys’ Role in Helping His Father
Addressing civil rights activists in Selma, Ala., a year ago, Sen. Barack Obama traced his “very existence” to the generosity of the Kennedy family, which he said paid for his Kenyan father to travel to America on a student scholarship and thus meet his Kansan mother.
The Camelot connection has become part of the mythology surrounding Obama’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. After Caroline Kennedy endorsed his candidacy in January, Newsweek commentator Jonathan Alter reported that she had been struck by the extraordinary way in which “history replays itself” and by how “two generations of two families — separated by distance, culture and wealth — can intersect in strange and wonderful ways.”
It is a touching story — but the key details are either untrue or grossly oversimplified.
Contrary to Obama’s claims in speeches in January at American University and in Selma last year, the Kennedy family did not provide the funding for a September 1959 airlift of 81 Kenyan students to the United States that included Obama’s father. According to historical records and interviews with participants, the Kennedys were first approached for support for the program nearly a year later, in July 1960. The family responded with a $100,000 donation, most of which went to pay for a second airlift in September 1960.
Obama spokesman Bill Burton acknowledged yesterday that the senator from Illinois had erred in crediting the Kennedy family with a role in his father’s arrival in the United States. He said the Kennedy involvement in the Kenya student program apparently “started 48 years ago, not 49 years ago as Obama has mistakenly suggested in the past.”
Back to Politics 101.
