Obama addresses Novak report at press conference (Transcript)

Obama addresses Novak report at press conference
By Mike Dorning

MARION, Iowa—A day after a tense exchange with rival Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton over a column reporting her campaign was spreading innuendo of an unspecified scandal involving Barack Obama, Obama essentially kept the story alive on Sunday, declaring at a press conference that he would respond forcefully to any allegations of wrongdoing on his part.

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A transcript of the relevant portion of the news conference follows:

Q. Senator, yesterday you had a very strong response to some innuendo that was out there. And I was kind of struck by your strong response. And I was wondering, have you picked up any other signs, other than this Novak column, that the Clinton camp may spreading this or other innuendo about you?

A. I think it is very important to send a clear message that whether it is coming from our party, the other party, third parties, 527s that our campaign will not tolerate this kind of slime politics. We just won't tolerate it. Now, Sen. Clinton's campaign, after 3 iterations of it said they do not engage in these practices and they don't have any information that is scandalous, as was referred to in the Novak column. And we take them at their word. But we don't want anybody to have any doubts that when it comes to these kinds of practices, I won't tolerate it. You know, I have lived for 46 years now and have been in politics for close to two decades and I really value my reputation and my character and my family. And in the era of the blogosphere, that we have seen what happened to John McCain in 2000, we have seen what happened with John Kerry in 2004. You know, if you don't get on this stuff quick, then it starts drifting around. And that's not something that I'm gonna accept, because that's exactly the kind of politics I think we need to change.

Q. But no independent, you haven't picked up any signs yourself that Clinton's spreading this?

A. I will take them at their word when they said that they weren't responsible.

Q. So you're not gonna say one way or the other on that?

A. Jeff.

Q. Senator, why would you give three paragraphs in a conservative column, you've obviously been reading Robert Novak a long time, why would you give that the credence that you gave it yesterday without any substantiality on his part?

A. Look, the Clinton campaign didn't come out and deny it initially. I mean it would have been great if we had just sat back and they had indicated it wasn't true. This is a syndicated columnist, who is carried in the Chicago Sun-Times among other newspapers. And, no, I wasn't indicating that Mike was with the Sun-Times. The point is that these kind of things get wide circulation. And we've seen how stuff starts and if you don't nip it at the bud, then it ends up growing. And we want to make sure that everybody understands I don't play this style, and I won't.

Q. Senator, what is your reaction to the Clinton campaign saying it shows you're inexperienced and you fell into a trap, a Republican trap?

A. Oh, I think that's silly. The fact of the matter is that we are letting Democratic voters know and we are letting Republican operatives know and we are letting other people know that we will respond swiftly and forcefully when there's untruths being floated out there. An as I said, you know, the political environment has changed. Something gets on the Internet and it's halfway around the world before you blink an eye. We think it's very important to be very clear about how we're not gonna tolerate it. Now, what we said in our statement originally was, if in fact, this is not something that is true, then all the Clinton Administration needs to do is, all the Clinton operation needed to do was just say it wasn't true. It took two, three times to get that answer.

Q. Sir, just one other point on this. Back in February when David Geffen said some disparaging things about Sen. Clinton printed in Maureen Dowd's column the Clinton campaign went nuts and called upon you to distance yourself from it. And you said why should I distance myself from something I didn't even say. I mean why should the Clinton campaign distance themselves from a blind item, with no evidence, nobody coming forward to say whose making these charges. Why should they distance themselves?

A. No, no, no, no. Wait. This is entirely different. You know, with respect to the Geffen incident, he's not, he doesn't work for my campaign, he's not associated with my campaign other than having done a fundraiser with us. I mean Clinton supporters have said disparaging things about me all the time, and I don't ask them to apologize. I don't ask the Clinton campaign to apologize for a statement that one of their supporters makes about me. This is different. There was a item that indicated that they were engaging in this activity. We asked that they deny that that, in fact,that was the case. When they finally did, we said we take your word for it. But we wanted to make sure that it was clear, on the record, that in fact it wasn't the case, right? There was no other way for us to make absolutely certain that people did not have any doubts that in fact this was not true.

Q In terms of how you found out they were distancing themselves, did you receive a phone call from the Clinton campaign or was this all through statements?

A. No. This was all done through statements. But this is my point, I mean, you know, if they wanted to let us know this wasn't true, they could have.

Q. Why didn't they call?

A. You'll have to ask them.

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2007/11/obama_addresses_novak_report_a.html

His wife, his mother? Anyone?

He should be sat down and given a good talking to by the grownups in his campaign.

Straight from Obama's mouth

*crickets*

Methinks the Clinton campaign doth protest too much.

Also, it's clear that Obama knows more than he's telling.

Checkmate. The Queen Is Dead.

The classy thing would have been to call the Obama campaign immediately and assure them they had nothing to do with it. Instead, Clinton Camp was content to just let the story ride until Obama was forced to take action.

he believes it? Come on, it's Novak for chrissakes--all O had to do was say, "Consider the source," and drop it. And, if indeed Hilary planted this, they got what they were looking for, knocking Obama down a peg, making him look like he gets upset over the least little thing. Who's advising this guy, anyway, or is he really that prickly?

See: John Kerry and the Swiftboaters.

they'd be calling him inexperienced for letting rumors fly, rolled over to the right, bla bla bla.

I expect politicians to play politics. It's sad when regular people do it and don't care about how poisonous it is to our country.

one column that is getting attention because he's commenting on it. Also, the swiftboat ads were specific, this is very general claim. Not at all the same.

Obama should have considered the source (Robert Novak the treasonous cretin who outed Plame) and acted accordingly. Instead he has shot himself in the foot. Surprise? No, not really.

Ughh... :puke:

You always assume that a RW idiot like Novak is up to no good, especially considering his recent history with the Valerie Plame. Even if you think differently in private, you say something like this in public:

"We do not believe that the Clinton campaign is behind this scurrilous rumor, but we would appreciate a swift confirmation of that."

Problem solved.

strongly and swiftly to attacks, now people are acuatlly suggesting Obama should let a rumor/innuendo linger and hope that it just goes away...he 's right, in the internet age, it doesn't just go away and things that are completely manufactured will be around the world and you can't convince anyone it's a lie...i'm sure that whoever was peddling this to Novak hoped that it would be ingored so that it could continue to be whispered and insinuated about and do damage without anyone having to actually produce any evidence of any scandal...Obama did EXACTLY what he needed to do and it confirms what people already suspect about the Clinton machine and keeps her from pretending like she doing something noble by 'protecting' a fellow dem and the party by withholding some supposedly 'scandalous' info...

would have been pretty good.

he should have gone after Novak first.

Imagine if the roles were reversed. Novak publishes that Obama has some unspecified dirt on Hillary. How long would it have taken him to correct the false story, either publicly or with a phone call? Would Obama have hit back with such a smarmy response like we got from team Hillary-Wolfson? Of course not.

This dust-up serves to highlight, once again, how Hillary represents the same old slimy "small politics" that people are sick to death of.

I thought about the word stupid before I used it, unfortunately it's the only one that fits.

Your "girl" Hillary has made mistakes, yet I've never called her stupid.

He's looking really bad on this one.

and online presence...a private phone call would have done nothing to prevent the public disemination of the innuendo...

We see how that worked out.

?

And they certianly have no obligation to jump when Obama says jump.


This whole episode made Obama look like he was taking the word of a right wing shill at face value, and getting bent out of shape about it, lashing out at Clinton with only some nutcase's word as justification. This would be a debacle in the general election. If some pos rw hack can pull the wool over his eyes, then how the hell is he going to handle unfriendly leaders of the world, much less the campaign of slime and trickery from the repukes next year.

And yes, he literally took right wing talking points and aimed them directly at the Clinton camp.


Not his best moment.

He was responsible for trashing wilson and plame. He must strike back quickly and I for one am glad that he did.

And if Clinton is playing dirty, she better stop because it will eventually come out and it will be to her campaigns detriment.

Every week she continues to illustrate that she is nothing more than more of the same.

Big difference.

I can imagine the hue and outcry if we accused Hillary of having a "Hissy Fit"
Luckily for her, you unthinking drones can do no damage here. All this ridiculous spinning to assuage your own guilt on the subject is transparent and immature.

As per usual

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

He seems to have a knack for turning little stories into big stories by explaining himself to death.

I empathize. I am like that. I don't want to be misunderstood or thought of as a bad person, and I am reluctant to just drop something. (As many here have probably noticed)

I would be a bad politician.

Obama would not be your first choice. Fair enough.

I knew Bill Clinton would win when I watched him on Arsinio (arsenio?)

I said, "This guy is so full of shit he's unstoppable."

Half the reason I oppose Obama is that he seems like a decent guy. Decent guys fare poorly in presidential politics.

I would MUCH rather spend time with Obama than Hillary Clinton, for instance.

You would rather not support a decent man or woman because he/she would get beat in the GE? But a slime bag we can live with? Is your name from Kurt Vonnegut and Hunter S.?

FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL: 1972 is a textbook on the hazards facing a decent guy running for president.

(Vonnegut is a brilliant instinctive anthropologist and sociologist, but not a shrewd student of politics... unlike Thompson, Vonnegut had no taste for it.)

TR was a master politician. So was FDR and LBJ.

Bad politicians like Adlai Stevenson, Walter Mondale and George McGovern, while they may be wonderful PEOPLE, are assigned to the also ran column in the history books.

TR and FDR were master deceivers as politicians and first class manipulators while in office. But you sure love those national parks, don't you, which you wouldn't have without TR. And we wouldn't have social security or much of a modern day economy without FDR.

You don't get anything done, if you're not first a good politician.

"Wes Clark is a man of whom you can ask a question, and he will look you directly in the eye, and give you the most truthful and complete answer you can imagine. You will know the absolute truth of the statement as well as the thought process behind the answer. You will have no doubt as to the intellect of the speaker and meaning of the answer to this question....So you can see, as a politician, he has a lot to learn." -Mario Cuomo

Good unanswered questions.

The clintonites are trying to have it both ways, Kerry sucks for not responding, Obama is inexperienced for responding. Too funny. Obama responded correctly and shut this down, if HRC does have some shit and leaks it through Novak she is screwed. It is a Put up or Shut up moment. They denied any involvement so it is done.

there is no getting around that bit of info.

Novak is a little prick! When you want to win you don't respond to the little gnats, you call out the big dog. If the big dog had nothing to do with it, you move on, if they truly are a big dog and have something then get ready for a fight then you take it. If they shut the hell up they either were not a part of it or are lame ass wussies. Regardless you shut it down and move on.

So Obama shouldn't respond to the person making the allegation because he's not "big" enough to bother with? Instead he should call out the person who had nothing to do with it(by Obamas own admission)because...why?

Sad that was even necessary ... but seems the Clinton "machine" was totally comfortable letting a gutter-style smear stand without correction, even if (?) they had nothing to do with starting it. Same old shitty politics. Haven't we had enough?!

out of political snafus?I don't think that is the way it works in any campaign.

Why wait for Obama to demand they clarify anyway. One would think the decent thing to do would be to set the record straight on their own. Shame on us for thinking she would be..."decent"..

It really is as simple as that.Do you imagine any campaign,including Obamas,is going to offer to fix the misstep of an opponent?This is an election. Obama made a mistake,he's on his own. That's the way it works.Do you have so little faith in your candidate that you believe his opponents unwillingness to fix his problems for him is "indecent"? He's an adult,running for President.

What "misstep"? What "mistake"? What "problems"?

You think Obama demanding a clarification was a mistake. Fine. My point is that Obama only stepped up and challenged the Clinton camp because they failed to correct the story on their own. They should have put an end to the "rumor" before his supposed "mistake."

for clarification before raising it publicly? No,they didn't. Apparently you think Clinton should have taken it upon herself to make everything alright for him without waiting for him to ask. What does that say about your confidence in your candidate when you expect someone else's campaign to work clean up duty to keep him out of trouble? I don't think it's me who is confused.

is not clear to everyone, it is no wonder the country is in such a mess.

has as much validity and relevance as my dog, Seven, weighing in, the difference being she is a nice dog and doesn't have an agenda.

As an Obama supporter, I stand and applaud Obama standing up and calling bullshit on dirty politics no matter which side of the aisle it comes from.

He got punked by some old rw hack. He blew up at the Clinton campaign instead of taking on the goon who wrote the bs. He took the bait and acted like a schoolkid. The Clinton campaign has no obligation to bow to Obama's demands. His actions reveal a distubingly ill-prepared candidate. And that's not Hillary's fault.

And you and the rest of the Clintonistas trying to frame this they way you do is expected but regarded as having as much validity and relevance as if my dog weighed in, the difference being she is a nice dog and doesn't have an agenda.

Kudos to Obama for stepping up and calling bullshit on these cheese, quickly and deftly, precisely as he should. He did a great job handling this.

I know you've been here a long time. So have I. I don't want to offend you. I personally don't have a "pick" in the race, but I can't ignore clumsy and ill-concieved political moves - I am a political junkie - and I can't pretend I didn't see what I just saw. In my view, Obama's response to this whole Novak episode is stunninly terrible. It appears petty and reactionary and no where near approaching classy, or capable, or presidental.


I don't have to be a Hillary supporter to recognize a debacle when I see one.

Obama did precisely what was expected of him. He put the kibosh on the BS right out of the box. We've seen the work of political operatives like Chris Lehane and Mark Penn, and to purposely dismiss history is naive.

What you see as a "debacle" I see as a strong fearless move on his part, a warning shot across the bow of anyone concerned that his campaign isn't going to roll over for this kind of crap.

If you subsituted the name Hillary for Obama and Obama for Hillary in this whole Novak thing, would you still hold the same view?

In my view, Obama would've done the decent thing and discredited the story as soon as it hit the wires. I wonder why Hillary's people saw fit to let this "unsubstantiated lie" (if that's what it is) seep into the news stream for so long... Hmmmm....

of the other?


I think this whole thing took place in less than 24 hrs, maybe 48.


Do you not think this could have been handled better by the Obama camp?

So, the answer to your question is yes. I want the candidates to win or lose on their merits, not by being blindsided with this kind of crap. Unfortunately there is a historical record of the over-exuberance of political operatives creating these nasty whisper campaigns in the primary season. Regardless of where this cheese emanated, Obama did the right thing by knocking it down right out of the gate. You view that as a debacle, I wholeheartedly applaud Obama for his quick and deft response.

and they aren't quite sure how to pull things back together.

Exposed.

particularly coming from people that claim to be seasoned in politics. Obama fired a warning shot that he isn't going to tolerate this crap. He absolutely did the right thing, and I would expect no less from him.

“…And at a campaign event in Iowa, one of Obama’s aides plopped down next to me and spoke even more bluntly. He wanted to know when reporters would begin to look into Bill Clinton’s postpresidential sex life,” Ambinder writes.

Regarding the unidentified aide wondering about Bill Clinton, LaBolt said, "In no way, shape, or form would anyone who would say such a thing be representing our campaign."

Ambinder, told of the Obama campaign comment said, “I stand by my reporting and the article speaks for itself.”

http://www.suntimes.com/news/sweet/641088,sweet110708A.article

Ambinder's piece only reinforces this truth. Thanks for the article.

Ambinder, told of the Obama campaign comment said, “I stand by my reporting and the article speaks for itself.”

And I stand by what I said above.

They have proven they are classless scum enough times for me to never ever trust a word that comes out of either of their mouths. They are trying to sink the Democratic Party and we've had to play defense ever sits Bill couldn't keep control of his goddamn zipper. Why didn't Gore want him anywhere near him in 2000. Because he's poison. Add her whining shrill voice laced with lies and half-truths with her cheating husband smiling for the cameras while campaigning and it's a wonder people aren't vomiting at her rallies.

Bring it, Barack.

“…And at a campaign event in Iowa, one of Obama’s aides plopped down next to me and spoke even more bluntly. He wanted to know when reporters would begin to look into Bill Clinton’s postpresidential sex life,” Ambinder writes.

Regarding the unidentified aide wondering about Bill Clinton, LaBolt said, "In no way, shape, or form would anyone who would say such a thing be representing our campaign."

Ambinder, told of the Obama campaign comment said, “I stand by my reporting and the article speaks for itself.”

http://www.suntimes.com/news/sweet/641088,sweet110708A.article

The Clinton campaign, after Obama's strongly worded press release responded saying at the end that they rejected Novak's report completely. That was in their first respone to Obama so he can't argue it took them three press releases before denying it. The "Politics of Paranoia" is about right...

more than one news cycle. He obviously wants to talk about the article and to drive the blame toward Hillary.

My guess - there is a story out there about Obama and the campaign knows it will surface at some point. The Obama campaign wants it out now instead of 5-7 days before Iowa.

What Obama is doing today is setting up the situation so that he can blame the Clinton campaign when it does surface. His point being to have someone to blame in order to diffuse the story and draw attention to a different issue and off subject.

I can't think of another reason why Obama has elevated the ravings of a rw fool. Obama is green but he is not that green - they are up to something. I think it is to try and manage the message around an upcoming event.