RECENT POSTS
- White House State Dinner Party Crashers
- Obama to Lay Out Emissions Goals in Copenhagen
- Free Bird
- The "Good" War
- The Presidential Planner
- Under the Stars, Obama Toasts India’s Prime Minister
- White House State Dinner – Who Made the Exclusive Guest List?
- Admiral Mike Mullen To Geneva for START Talks
- VP Biden to Indian Prime Minister: “You’re the Hottest Ticket in Town”
- FLOTUS on the State Dinner: Like a Swan, "Calm and Serene Above Water, But We're Paddling Like Mad, Going Crazy Underneath"
MONTHLY ARCHIVES
« Previous | Main | Next »
Axelrod on Ayers, Keating, and John McCain: ‘The Bigger the Challenges We Face, the Smaller Their Campaign Gets’
October 07, 2008 3:13 PM
David Axelrod, the senior adviser to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., came back on the campaign plane this morning -- O Force One -- to chat about the debate and to set expectations (low for his boss, high for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.)
Axelrod said Obama is prepared for McCain -- who's been attacking Obama's character very directly this week, calling Obama a liar and a hypocrite, his running mate saying Obama is "palling around with terrorists" -- to keep that tone at tonight's town hall meeting.
McCain has "signaled to his supporters that he’s going to be very aggressive," Axelrod said, "that he’s going to take the gloves off.”
Obama wants to talk to Americans about the economy, said the adviser.
"We’re going to talk about that, we’re going to talk about the issues that are important to the American people. But we’re prepared for a very aggressive debate.”
Is Obama prepared to talk about his relationship with former Weather Underground member/current education professor William Ayers, the previously mentioned "terrorist" that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has been attacking Obama for knowing?
“The senator is going to be prepared to speak to whatever comes up if Sen. McCain or anyone else chooses to bring that up," Axelrod said. "If that comes up he’ll be ready to discuss that, but one hopes that the focus of this debate will be the issues that touch on the lives of the American people.”
Palin has been attacking Obama for comments Axelrod made that ran on CNN yesterday suggesting that when Obama first met with Ayers at his home in 1995, he didn't know the professor's history. The Alaska governor has been blurring what Axelrod said to make it seem as though Obama was claiming that he didn't know about Ayers' history until recently, which is not what Axelrod said. Not that there's been any clear explanation of this relationship forthcoming from the Obama campaign.
So, when did Obama find out that Ayers had been a member of an organization the FBI called a "domestic terrorist" group, and had been, for years, a fugitive from the law?
“I don’t know," Axelrod said. "I mean it was sometime after their first meetings. And you know, he became aware of it. I don’t know the exact moment.”
He wasn't aware of who "Ayers" was?
"Yeah," Axelrod said, "I mean, the fact is that like a lot of people who, you know, didn’t live through that era -- particularly those who didn’t live though that era in Chicago -- It just wasn’t. I mean, when he came to Chicago, Ayers was advising Mayor Daley on school reform issues, and that was his profile, was that he was an expert on education."
So, did he know who Ayers was when he went to his home in 1995?
“My understanding is that when he went there, he did not," Axelrod said.
Reporters noticed that clause -- "my understanding is" -- and pressed further. Did Axelrod ask Obama if he knew Ayers' history when he first met with him?
"Yes," Axelrod said.
And he did not know?
"Yes," Axelrod said. "That’s what I’ve said –- I answered the question when I was asked the other day. But no one’s suggesting that he never knew. I mean that’s not -- we weren’t offering that. I wasn’t offering it -– I was asked a question that you just asked me and just answered it. I wasn’t making an argument about it."
Axelrod said that Obama is expecting attacks tonight.
"He understands where this campaign is at and rarely has a campaign been as explicit as the McCain campaign has been about what their tactics are all about," said the adviser. "They essentially announced to newspapers that they feel like, if this campaign is a discussion of the economic crisis facing America, then he’ll lose and that they need to try to create a distraction to divert the discussion from the economy.”
But isn't Obama fighting mud with mud by brining up McCain's history with the Keating Five scandal?
"The Keating case is pretty germane to the discussion we’re having right now," Axelrod said. "The Keating issue was one in which Sen. McCain intervened with regulators on behalf of a financial institution that ultimately collapsed and the taxpayers were left holding the bill. Many, many people lost their savings, their homes, and so on. So, it is a germane issues, it’s not an abstraction. Now look, are there broader issues that need to be discussed? Yes and we’re discussing them. We’re the campaign that’s actually running positive ads. The McCain campaign doesn’t even pretend to make a case for John McCain anymore, they’re running all negative ads.”
Will Obama bring up Keating tonight?
“I don’t think he’ll shy away from a discussion of it if it comes up," Axelrod said. “The American people know who’s running a positive campaign about the future of the country, about the change we need, and who’s desperately throwing lefts and rights hoping to score a knockout because he thinks he’s behind in the game."
McCain, Axelrod said, has "turned to plan B, which is to throw as much negative out there as possible -- to send his vice presidential candidate out there as a kind of tip of the spear in this negative campaign.”
Axelrod said the GOP-pushed controversy about Obama's small donors -- that some of them have kicked in so many small donations, they've exceeded maximum limits, and questions about whether some of them are non U.S. citizens -- is another distraction. McCain discloses the names of donors who give less than $200; Obama does not.
"I know Sen. McCain may not know this," Axelrod said, "but you can get on the Internet -- actually, you can get on anywhere in the world. That’s the thing about the Internet. And you can buy a t-shirt wherever they live ... and we monitor those things as best we can."
Axelrod said it is "unbelievable ... given the times in which we live and the problems that we face, that this is how they are spending their time as a campaign. It seems like the bigger the challenges we face, the smaller their campaign gets.”
The Obama senior strategist said that the reason Palin has been campaigning in Nebraska, Florida, and North Carolina is because the McCain-Palin campaign is "being offensive but they’re not really playing offense. They’re playing defense." But he insisted the Obama campaign isn't overconfident.
"Obviously, we like the position that we’re in, but we understand that we have to battle every day ... If I took the polls to heart, I would have jumped off a tall building about a year ago when we were 30 points behind during the nomination, so we don’t get too intoxicated when the polls are encouraging.”
-- Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller
October 7, 2008 | Permalink | Share | User Comments (214)
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.
McCain really doesn't get it.
It's going downhill with the elections and I'm a amazed he just keeps making the wrong decisions and then blames it on Obama.
Keep on making these raging attacks ...
it only will turn undecided voters away. The attack on the media and the anti-Obama hysteria and hatred just scare them away.
Latest poll 9 points ahead..
Posted by: CLabs | Oct 7, 2008 8:16:59 PM
Ryan C:
If "nipping in the bud" means downplaying and willfully obfuscating obvious truths about their relationship, then those goals may well be attained.
Posted by: Wade | Oct 7, 2008 8:08:34 PM
Here is how dumb Axelrod and co. think we are:
Wow. He didn't know...
Hey, Barack, want to go to a fundraiser for you down the street?
Sure, who is hosting it? Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn.
Who are they?
Education professor, great guy. Used to be a fugitive-Weather Underground...ever hear of them? She is a law professor too...you ever run into her? She was a BIG radical--WU too. Blew stuff up, almost killed people but never quite hit anyone. You never heard of the WU, huh?
No, sorry.
What? I thought you went Columbia and Harvard and Yale? You surely took some classes on the sixties, since you were into community organizing. Better get your money back. I know guys in community college with a better understanding of history than that..oh well...
This is now more than being about Ayers's past...it is not about Obama's blatant dishonesty in distancing himself from Ayers.
Posted by: Wade | Oct 7, 2008 8:07:13 PM
Embedded within a comprehensive Monday report from NPR on Barack Obama's history with William Ayers, there is an interesting bit of straight talk from a former Republican who served in the state legislature.
Discussing Ayers' rehabilitation as a member in good standing of the education policy-wonk community, former state Republican Rep. Diana Nelson said: "It was never a concern by any of us in the Chicago school reform movement that he had led a fugitive life years earlier ... It's ridiculous. There is no reason at all to smear Barack Obama with this association. It's nonsensical, and it just makes me crazy. It's so silly."
Posted by: Aussie | Oct 7, 2008 8:01:52 PM
Sarah Palin said Obama should be "disqualified" for his remark about Afghanistan. Naturally, she will hold her running mate to the same standard.
Posted by: Aussie | Oct 7, 2008 7:51:36 PM
John McCain in 2000 said because of tactical decisions U.S. troops were put in the position of killing civilians in Kosovo -- something awfully similar to the comments he's now attacking Barack Obama for.
During a Republican primary debate in 2000 McCain called the Clinton strategy in Kosovo "obscene" because it forced troops into using tactics that meant civilians were going to get killed.
"In the most obscene chapter in recent American history is the conduct of the Kosovo conflict when the president of the United States refused to prepare for ground operations, refused to have air power used effectively because he wanted them flying -- he had them flying at 15,000 feet where they killed innocent civilians because they were dropping bombs from such -- in high altitude."
Posted by: Aussie | Oct 7, 2008 7:45:19 PM
Palin today: "Obama said, too, that our troops in Afghanistan are ‘air raiding villages and killing civilians,’” Palin said, mischaracterizing a 2007 remark by Obama. “I hope Americans know that is not what our brave men and women in uniform are doing in Afghanistan. The U.S. military is fighting terrorism and protecting us and protecting our freedom.” Shortly afterward, a male member of the crowd in Jacksonville, Florida, yelled “treason!” loudly enough to be picked up by television microphones.
Palin and McCain can’t be held responsible for the fact that racists are part of their base, but now she has people thinking Barack Obama is a traitor purely because she’s misleading them into thinking that he is. This is on her.
Matthew
Posted by: ebarracuda | Oct 7, 2008 7:38:44 PM
"The campaign realizes that nipping these McCain attacks in the bud does two things...
It reassures antsy Dems and unconvinced swing voters that Obama will defend himself against these "outrageous lies."
It also manages to keep the McCain talking points off the air and out of the campaign dialogue. How can the attacks stay in the headlines if Obama keeps rebutting them with harsh jabs of his own? "
Good analysis.
Posted by: Ryan C | Oct 7, 2008 7:38:02 PM
The campaign realizes that nipping these McCain attacks in the bud does two things...
It reassures antsy Dems and unconvinced swing voters that Obama will defend himself against these "outrageous lies."
It also manages to keep the McCain talking points off the air and out of the campaign dialogue. How can the attacks stay in the headlines if Obama keeps rebutting them with harsh jabs of his own?
Posted by: matt | Oct 7, 2008 7:35:57 PM
MORE INFO ON AIP - TODD PALIN'S ANTI-AMERICAN SECESSIONIST GROUP
AIP's founder Joe Vogler's greatest moment of glory was to be his 1993 appearance before the United Nations to denounce United States "tyranny" before the entire world and to demand Alaska's freedom. The Alaska secessionist had persuaded the government of Iran to sponsor his anti-American harangue...
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday the solution to the Middle East crisis is to destroy Israel.
So much for Palin's tough talk on Iran. Her friends in the AIP were clearly collaborating with Iran. Her husband was clearly a member of this fringe party for seven years. And Sarah Palin herself clearly supported them, praising their "good work" and asking God to "bless them" only this year.
Posted by: you betcha that's a problem | Oct 7, 2008 7:34:59 PM
Vogler's greatest moment of glory was to be his 1993 appearance before the United Nations to denounce United States "tyranny" before the entire world and to demand Alaska's freedom. The Alaska secessionist had persuaded the government of Iran to sponsor his anti-American harangue.
That's right ... Iran. The Islamic dictatorship. The taker of American hostages. The rogue nation that McCain and Palin have excoriated Obama for suggesting we diplomatically engage. That Iran.
AIP leaders allege that Vogler, who was murdered that year by a fellow secessionist, was taken out by powerful forces in the U.S. before he could reach his U.N. platform. "The United States government would have been deeply embarrassed," by Vogler's U.N. speech, darkly suggests Clark. "And we can't have that, can we?"
Posted by: Ryan C | Oct 7, 2008 7:31:40 PM
Take the brackets out.
Posted by: Ryan C | Oct 7, 2008 7:30:25 PM
John McCain’s lead has been cut by over half in Alaska, but he still leads Barack Obama by 15 points, 55% to 40%, in the latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of voters in the state.
A month ago, in the first poll since McCain named Alaska’s highly popular governor, Sarah Palin, as his running mate, the Republican led Obama 64% to 33%. In the two months prior to that, he was ahead by just five.
Posted by: Ryan C | Oct 7, 2008 7:28:01 PM
Jim Cramer (bald guy financial show)
What will New York look like a year from now? The answer: bad and probably worse, and perhaps downright catastrophic. Three degrees of awful. The first step was passing the bank-bailout legislation. Now that it’s done—and if it didn’t get done we would have been looking at a guaranteed economic collapse—the critical issue will be presidential leadership. And while any president will be an improvement over the current one, there is a growing belief on Wall Street that Barack Obama has the capacity to lead us out of this wilderness while John McCain does not. I’ll go a step further: Obama is a recession. McCain is a depression.
Posted by: Ryan C | Oct 7, 2008 7:26:35 PM
'Cut and Paste': You might as well ask Obama why he works in the senate with people he disagrees with. The answer is self-evident - the work is the issue, not who else is part of the organization.
If you quit something every time you find yourself working with someone you disagree with on something unrelated to the work, you'd quit pretty much everything.
Also, it's a distortion to say that Ayers recruited Obama. His appointment was suggested by Deborah Leff, one of the working group of five who assembled the initial board that appointed Obama. Similarly for the Woods Fund. As politifact states, 'Neither chose the other to work with either group.'
Posted by: Aengil | Oct 7, 2008 7:25:41 PM
hanna
Are you saying if I make 10,000 a year on top of living expenses and necessities, I should still pay taxes.
Posted by: MM | Oct 7, 2008 7:15:16 PM
Aengil
Thank God Obama left Project Vote 2 years before ACORN took it over.
Posted by: MM | Oct 7, 2008 7:12:07 PM
I just don't understand why Obama will not answer the one very basic question - why did he serve for seven years on an education board with Ayers, knowing Ayers' background (he was recruited by Ayers to serve as chairman - they served on another board together too) If Obama answers that question honestly, I'll have new respect for him, but avoiding the questions only makes us wonder why he refuses to talk about it.
Posted by: Cut and Paste | Oct 7, 2008 7:04:33 PM
Post a shorter cut & paste without links.
Cut & paste with imbedded links tend to get removed.
Posted by: Ryan C | Oct 7, 2008 6:53:58 PM
What do Bush and Palin have in common?
They're both idiots!
Posted by: JV | Oct 7, 2008 6:53:34 PM
Post a comment
