Trashy Team Obama Looked Clean [Tim Graham]
In all the gauzy coverage of the Obama ascendancy ("campaign" is too plebian for this idealist's rise to power), reporters suggested that if, Obama had a weakness, it was that he was too much of a softy, too nice, too civil, and his team too unlikely to defend itself in the nasty give-and-take of talk radio and TV. Ben Smith of Politico reports that Obama campaign manager David Plouffe is now letting the real mangy cat out of the bag:
Obama's campaign had a particularly capable opposition research shop, a source of tips to many reporters, not all of them on policy. And Plouffe, in passing, outs the campaign as the source of a brief item I did in April 2007 off an Edwards campaign expenditure — probably driving as much traffic, chatter and grief as anything that short I've ever written.
"We did much less of this [opposition research] than other campaigns did," Plouffe writes a bit self-servingly, "but there were times we indulged — it was our researchers who found John Edwards's infamous $400 hair cut expenditures."
It's maddening when people assume political reporting is driven by opposition research when you've actually dug up something yourself, but in this case, I'm in no position to contradict Plouffe's account.
It's also worth noting, when the pianos start falling on Mitt Romney, that a top Obama researcher, Shauna Daly, is now the DNC's research chief.
If Team Obama was dishing on John Edwards at the salon, it makes you wonder if they were tipping reporters to the more scandalous Edwards stories to come. Why are learning this — from Plouffe — this late?
11/11 02:00 PM
Share
