That story’s focal point is to claim that Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama is independent-minded enough to vote against the interests of lobbyists – even ones who have donated money to his previous campaign funds.
THIS STORY WAS published one day after a public relations executive for Republican interests used a radio program to blast Obama as a “phony reformer” who more than 40 times as a state legislator voted for bills that benefited Antoin Rezko – the political operative who now faces time in federal prison for stepping over the lines that separate legitimate political activity from accepting bribes.
I don’t think there is a direct connection between the comments of Chris Robling, who was one of several people Sunday on a panel on Bruce Dumont’s syndicated “Beyond the Beltway” program, and the story that turned up in the Gannett-owned national newspaper the very next day.
But it doesn’t strike me as being at all out of character that when the rumor mill starts circulating stories that claim Obama’s voting record during his 7 years, 10.5 months in the Illinois Senate can be twisted into a certain negative connotation, that someone would think it worthwhile to get a story into the public information mill that says Obama knows how to take people’s money, then dump all over their interests.
When Robling, who has worked as a spokesman for Republican interests and also has been a broadcast reporter in Chicago, made his charge, my reaction was to think it was ridiculous.
IT STRUCK ME as being an after-the-trial attempt to link Obama’s name to the corruption trial in U.S. District Court that found Rezko guilty of significant wrongdoing when it comes to political influence peddling and also smeared the reputation of Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
Obama’s name barely came up during the trial this spring.
What struck me as particularly weak about the accusation was the figure Robling tossed out (which he made sound like it is the statistic being passed around from conservative pundit to conservative pundit).
Fewer than 50. And it’s not like specific bills were cited, so we have no way of knowing what constitutes support for a “Rezko interest.”
FORTY-PLUS BILLS may sound like a significant number, until one considers that the Illinois Senate (of which Obama was a member from 1997 until late in 2004) routinely votes for hundreds of bills (probably close to 1,000) every year.
Obama, in his nearly eight full years in the Legislature, easily has a record of about 7,000-plus votes. If the best one can come up with is 40-something suspicious bills, I’d have to say you’re not trying very hard.
My point being, that total offered by the Republican pundits is not very significant. If one can only come up with about an average of five bills per year that would have some Rezko interest at heart, the obvious conclusion is to say that Rezko didn’t ask much of Obama as a state legislator.
And the now infamous land deal where Rezko purchased a plot of land neighboring Obama so that the U.S. senator from Illinois could expand the property surrounding his dream house in the Hyde Park neighborhood didn’t come until long after Obama left the Illinois Legislature.
THINKING ABOUT THIS accusation rationally makes one realize it is not all that significant.
But it provides ammunition for the political operatives who are trying to knock down the reputation Obama is trying to create for himself as some sort of political “goo goo” who will bring radical change and honesty to the operations of government.
They want us to think that Barack Obama was just as likely to do favors for lobbyists and other special interest representatives as any other politician. They want to take away Obama’s ability to use his refusal to accept donations to his presidential campaign from lobbyist organizations as an issue in his favor.
Hence, the USA Today story becomes a significant factor.
THE STORY NOTES that six lobbyists who donated money to his campaign fund for his 2004 bid to move up from the Illinois Senate to a U.S. Senate seat being abandoned by Peter Fitzgerald could claim that 16 of their Illinois clients received grants, with support from Obama.
But the newspaper also found instances where Obama resisted the desires of lobbyists and voted against them, even though he had personal contacts with the individual lobbyists.
They found a 2003 bill desired by the telecommunications industry where Obama was one of six Democrats in the state Senate to vote against it, even though Obama had met with SBC lobbyists, had eaten meals with the corporate operatives and had even played poker with them.
That may be more in character with Obama from his days as a state legislator (where he spent the bulk of his time in the minority party caucus with little influence) than the incidents that conservatives will try to pull from the USA Today story.
ONE INCLUDES THREE grants received by Chicago State University. Totaling more than $8 million for various projects, Obama voted in their favor while also accepting campaign contributions of $1,500 from the university’s lobbyist.
It has the appearance to some people of a political favor that is one notch legally above being a bribe. But to other people, the key to understanding support for the grants is to consider the recipient.
Chicago State University is a state college on the South Side with an overwhelming African-American enrollment, and Obama was a member of the state Senate’s black caucus at the time. The interests of Chicago State and Northeastern Illinois (on the city’s Northwest Side) universities have a special place in the minds of many black caucus legislators in Springfield out of the belief that these two colleges provide special roles and support to racial and ethnic minority communities.
IT IS NO different than the Southern Illinois legislators who keep a special eye out for any benefits received from the state for the Southern Illinois University campuses in Carbondale and Edwardsville. It is part of looking out for one’s home community and its interests.
If anything, Obama likely would have come under attack back then had he voted against providing grants to Chicago State University. I don’t know it for a fact, but the chances are good that the campaign donation from a lobbyist back then likely was coincidence.
So what should we make of the fact that the man who now says he won’t take campaign donations from lobbyists accepted $1.2 million from political action committees and another $140,400 in personal donations from lobbyists (out of $16.3 million raised) during his attempts to raise money to be in the U.S. Senate?
IT SOUNDS A lot like people who are jealous of the massive campaign fund he has put together for his presidential campaign who are trying to find ways to turn campaign money into an issue.
In and of itself, there’s nothing wrong with that. Campaign money can corrupt some people. Obama is only human.
But the problem with a lot of people who try to make an issue out of political donations is that in their attempt to simplify the issue for the masses, they take all context out of it. Campaign contribution stories without context are simple-minded trash, worth about as much as the “breathless” reports that aired all day Monday about Obama shifting his presidential nomination acceptance speech to the 75,000-seat Invesco Field so that more people can witness “history” being made.
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EDITOR’S NOTES: Does Barack Obama have it in his character (http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/07/07/Report_Obama_opposed_lobbyist_friends/UPI-52351215438787/) to take money from lobbyists, then refuse to provide political favors?
Obama technically is not accepting campaign donations from government lobbyists. But a USA Today report found cases (http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-07-06-Lobbyists_N.htm) where lawyers who work for firms that hire lobbyists are making personal donations to Obama.
How long will it be until someone tries to make a negative campaign issue out of the fact that Obama is offering up special passes to (http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/obama.backstage.donation.2.765391.html) witness his Invesco Field acceptance speech for the winners of a drawing his campaign will conduct. The cost of a ticket for the drawing? A donation to the campaign, of course.
1 comment:
i will shortly release the list to which i referred on BtB. it has taken more time than i anticipated because illinois senate president emil jones has not computerized pre-2001 votes. thus, there has been a laborious photocopying requirement.
as for the 'conspiracy theorist' concerns, if usa today published an enterprise story that examined barack's donor - beneficiary relationships that was properly sourced, then that is the first amendment at work.
my two cents on the program were not about the trial. that well established barack's role, as chair of the sen health and human services committee, in the approval process for the IHFBP members who went on to approve the illicit levine deals. (see: wilhelm emails) it also pointed in a number of important directions about the whole barack crew.
if people want to vote for barack, then they should do so. my point re all of this is to provide information to those who have not yet decided. the same should be done about mccain and bob barr, as it was or should have been done about bill clinton, g.w. bush, etc.
in barack's case, the record is very clear for those who wish to see it:
-- always votes the most left wing line
-- negligible involvement in serious bi-partisan efforts (see lynn sweet today re immigration)
-- crucial initial fundraising for legislature, congress, senate and presidency led by a network of full participants in illinois' pension fund - private equity - investments - development - brokerage 'system,' to be anodyne about it, others would say combine, and that would also be accurate
-- a lengthy and growing series of statements which are either:
a) innocent flubs -- of these he has dozens, ignored by the national press corps, (thousands dead by kansas tornado, 57 states, etc)
b) negligent mis-cues -- the great example was making a hash of jerusalem before aipac and then having to retract, etc.
c) knowing misrepresentations -- of which perhaps the premiere example is his current retelling of the choice he had and the decision he made in march 2003 on the illinois senate health and human services subcommittee consideration of the "born alive infant protection act," though that one vies with his multiple ongoing contradictory estimates of tony rezko's fundraising success on his behalf, and there is a growing number of these
d) brazen denials of u-turns -- these, with the underlying position reversal, are the source of his troubles at daily kos, etc., and have been documented by all manner of mainstream media, so these cannot be termed a conservative conspiracy, they are genuine dissonance.
for these and for fun i re-dubbed him "barack uturna" on BtB.
another distinct problem area the campaign has detected is his inability to make much sense or show much substantial mastery of topics -- especially foreign policy -- when speaking casually.
(a recent example -- and i will get the cite if you wish -- was a one-on-one interview about middle east policy in which he strung together half a dozen cliches and kept repeating them. )
i will not say he is not bright -- but, to be charitable, it is increasingly obvious that another decade of senate homework would have come in handy before the rocket was lit beneath his campaign.
for all of this, he is ahead. but not by nearly as much as one would expect based on an objective review of the opinion atmospherics, influenced as they are by bush fatigue, bush hatred, war fatigue, gas price fatigue and hatred, economic concerns, etc.
barack is new and not well known. attractive and articulate with a script or a stump speech, possessed of a highly amiable affect, he was a thrilling opportunity for democrat primary voters -- including 95 percent of the national media -- who want desperately to end the bush era, but who over time found themselves to be unwilling to take another round with HRC and her husband.
one can hardly blame them for that, but in the rush to barack over the months of the primary race i think the actual reading and researching of his official record was in fact deeply problematic for HRC and of little interest to most members of the national press corps.
thus, the 100+ abstentions came to symbolize for HRC's campaign, "the best (worst) we could find in springfield" and, for the national press, reportage of those abstentions passed for appropriate due-diligence in the execution of its sacred trust.
in fact, neither conclusion is completely accurate.
it is now evident that -- and i am not making this up, please believe me -- HRC's researchers did not contextualize the votes, so in a very serious way they did not know what they were looking at.
the press that has gone to springfield has entered the conversation there seeking pre-conceived possible outcomes (in philosophy we used to call this de-ontological construction, and it is a cousin of HRC's campaign's failing).
the rest of the campaign will probably go like this -- if barack makes a major boo-boo on camera (ford freeing poland in the second-to last 1976 debate-sized boo-boo), then he will lose by several large states. mccain will be seen as presidential and barack will be put on the shelf for another look in a few years.
if he does not, and mccain continues to float cork-like on the sea of opinion which wants little more than An End to Bush and All He Represents, then barack wins by a little bit across the board of blue states with pick-ups of a few red states.
but it does not have to happen these ways. mccain could come up with an ordering principle for his campaign. in general, republican presidential campaigns have been good (successful) at this. right now it appears those embers have gone out. we will see.
or, people may decide for themselves. your readers may agree with you, mine with me and the whole broad constellation of 21st century information sources and audiences may throw the outcome up for grabs.
i like this idea because i think it may lead to greater involvement in the process generally.
what we have been taught again this year is to respect the voters and learn from their votes.
the voters are ahead of us and collectively they know considerably more than the rest of us. (meaning people like you and me who blog along in exchanges such as this.)
that is why all of us should know and discuss as much about barack's record as we possibly can before the election, as we should mccain's.
despite conspiracy concerns, that's all i am up to, no more. but certainly no less.
thank you for your blog and best,
chris robling
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