By Jim Tankersley
When is an attack not an attack – or better put, when is one attack worse than another?
That’s the question two Hillary Clinton spokesmen and a conference-call-full of reporters danced over, around and through this afternoon, spurred by the Clinton aides’ charges that Barack Obama’s campaign has criticized Clinton’s character in a manner inconsistent with his campaign’s promise to change the tone of American politics.
Obama, Clinton aides Howard Wolfson and Phil Singer contend, preaches unity and civility to his campaign-trail crowds while his aides “assault” Clinton’s truthfulness and character. Instead of building up Obama’s credentials on the economy and national security, Wolfson said, “they have chosen to tear Sen. Clinton down… This is not the campaign we were promised.”
To which several reporters replied, hey wait a second, isn’t your campaign doing the same thing? Haven’t you been attacking Obama for months?
Wolfson and Singer responded, over the course of several questions, with two basic arguments: 1) That Clinton is “drawing contrasts” – that’s political speak for “attacking” – on issues, such as Iraq, NAFTA and health care, while Obama’s campaign is attacking “character”; character attacks are much worse, by their reasoning; and 2) That Obama’s campaign is predicated on eschewing such attacks (with the unspoken punch-line being, Clinton’s is not).
“It’s not a question of who’s more positive or who’s more negative,” Singer said. Wolfson followed up: “Sen. Obama is telling people he’s running one kind of campaign when in fact he’s running a different kind of campaign.”
Got that?
For the record, Obama’s campaign responded with this statement from spokesman Bill Burton: “Since the Clinton campaign had a news-less conference call, reiterating tired lines of attack with no basis in reality, instead of responding with a call of our own, we are going to give the press corps a break so that we can all enjoy this holiday weekend with our families and maybe even watch a little basketball.”
