Russert tries to sneak and mislead with Obama interview on Meet The Press

I thought Barack Obama did well on the Meet The Press interview (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608/), but as usual, Russert tried to fire away a number of quotes lumped together to try to slip up Obama on the war. And as I saw at the time and as Media Matters does the analysis, Russert cherry-picked and edited the full quote of Obama's to try to stick it to him. It didn't work.



The New York Times original article:


As should be no surprise to anyone paying attention, Bill Clinton had tried to lie about Obama's possible support of the Iraq War Resolution recently. I personally put both Russert and Bill Clinton in the same level of trustworthy behavior ...which isn't much.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/clinton-obama-war-feud-spills-into-forum/

Well done! :thumbsup:

that don't accurately portray what was said.

Unfortunately, that's what we pick up and run with. "Well Obama said he didn't know how he'd vote for the war."

We're fortunate we have resources to root out the entire story. But those of us who don't or can't are being deceived.

Obama did really well.

:puke:

in his speech he said that running for president was not a long-held ambition....uh huh Well I can cite several newspaper interviews with Obama's teachers who said he wrote that he wanted to be president.

Now you cannot have someone trying to be holier then thou speaking on one side of his mouth and on the other side speaking lies. That will not fly....I'm sorry but when you act as though you can walk on water you better be in water only a 1/2 inch deep.

Ben David

Russert was simply pointing out that Obama can't really say what he would have done and he was using Sen. Obama's own words to establish this point. Obama said that he wasn't privy to the intelligence data that the Senate received and so he really can't say for sure what he would have done. I appreciate that honesty in Obama, and I don't say that lightly. The honesty builds my trust better than his attempt to position himself as being against the invasion when most federal legislators, at the very least, allowed it to happen. But Russert was pulling out the facts, which is his job. Obama isn't in a strong position to criticize those who voted for giving Bush the authority to invade Iraq when a.)it's easy for him to say because he had nothing on the line, i.e., no political pressure, and b.)by his own words he admits that he isn't sure how he would have voted. It should be kept in mind that at the time, this being only a short time after 9/11, Republicans, including Bush, were publicly accusing Democrats of being unAmerican and unpatriotic when they publically questioned Bush about the wisdom of the invasion, and it was resonating with the public! That is why I admire Obama for saying that he can't say for sure how he would have voted, but my trust in him is undermined when he conveniently suggests that he'd have voted against it. The bottom line is that he can't say for sure how he would have voted and he should stick with that. That difficult honesty is admirable.

Perhaps Obama's greatest strength is his integrity, something that American's are longing for in their leaders. It only hurts that perception when he repositions the facts in an advantageous way that gives him credit that hasn't been earned. He did the same thing with the Kyl/Lieberman bill. He doesn't bother to show up to vote on it, Hillary does, Hillary votes in favor of it, and then Obama criticizes her for it. As far as I'm concerned, when Obama failed to show up for the vote he lost his right to criticize anyone on their vote.

Obama has a well-earned reputation for his integrity. It behooves him to resist the political temptations that risks doing harm to that reputation.

Just because Hillary botched the answer doesn't mean you should criticize Russert for asking the question. It was a legitimate question.

When it's Clinton, it's OK

Not easy ones. And they may have been misleading ones, but if a candidate can't answer Russert's questions without appearing tripped up, then he or she will be in trouble during the GE campaigning.

thanks again for posting this