We Have the Internet Now, You Might Want to Watch What You Say
March 7th, 2008It would seem that among the many trends popping up in this contentious election season is the new fad of flatly denying statements that you made in an interview with a Scottish reporter or, even better, on the campaign trail.
Obama aide Samantha Power told The Scotsman that Hillary Clinton would stop at nothing to even the Democratic Party primary race. Having made that point, she stepped straight off the political cliff:
“She is a monster, too — that is off the record — she is stooping to anything,” Power told the newspaper, which published the remarks in Friday’s edition and released them earlier on the paper’s Web site.
Seems fair enough to me, but apparently The Messiah’s campaign felt that calling your opponent a monster might not be consistent with their soul-fixing message. Predictably, the offending staffer resigned and issued an apology. Even more predictably, the apology wasn’t exactly straight-forward.
Power had first released an apology, saying her remarks “do not reflect my feelings about Senator Clinton.”
This is the new trend in public discourse. Say something stupid, and when you get called to the carpet for it, say you didn’t mean it. Then apologize to anyone who may have been so stupid as to take your words at face value and be offended.
If you’re a Clinton on the other hand, you can insult one group of potential voters in an attempt to suck up to another group of potential voters.
“How can Iowa be ranked with Mississippi? That’s not what I see. That’s not the quality. That’s not the communitarianism; that’s not the openness I see in Iowa,” Hillary Clinton told the newspaper then.
When those words come back to haunt you while, for example, campaigning in Mississippi, just invoke your right to “revise” your earlier statement.
“What I said is what I learned is that neither Iowa or Mississippi had ever elected a woman statewide and I referenced the fact that I was the first woman elected statewide in New York and I told the Iowans that they had a chance to try to change that and now in Mississippi giving Mississippi voters a chance to change that,” Clinton said in the radio interview.
It’s like they missed the last dozen years of technological and political development.
March 7th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
True, she’s as liberal as they get.
But I like that she says what she thinks. So she wouldn’t make a good Secretary of State.
Kinda’ wish others would say it as they think it, though.
And look good at the same time, too.
/Bill