June 18, 2008
A Conference Call Trilogy
Barack Obama's campaign held three back-to-back conference calls today to discuss matters ranging from national security to offshore drilling to the gas tax holiday proposed by John McCain.
When put together, the calls lasted longer than almost any single town halls, policy speech, roundtables or retail stop the candidate makes on any given day. In each of them, Obama surrogates said the Arizona senator as a flip flopper who, increasingly in lock-step with George W. Bush, is taking politically expedient positions that hurt working families or the environment.
At 11:45am EDT, Obama’s foreign policy advisors Dr. Susan Rice, Greg Craig, the former director of the State Department Office of Policy Planning, and U.S. Rep. Adam Smith, who chairs the House Armed Services Subcommittee, hosted a call to accuse the McCain campaign of distorting Obama’s position on issues like the Supreme Court’s decision to grant Guantanamo Bay detainees habeas corpus rights.
Rice said the court’s decision merely allowed suspects to appear in court to hear the charges against them and in no way meant they would be freed, while Craig noted that the record of Guantanamo Bay was nothing to be proud of because it violated the Constitution and damaged America’s standing in the world.
"The United States government simply cannot hold people without charges indefinitely,” said Craig.
The surrogates scoffed at the argument made by some of Obama’s rivals that his stance on this matter would mean even Osama bin Laden would get habeas corpus rights, arguing that in such an instance it was clear any judge would find sufficient evidence to hold the mastermind of the Sept. 11th attacks in custody, with Craig calling it “a ridiculous argument.”
In response to a question about why so many of the people on Obama's Senior Working Group on National Security announced today were former Clinton officials – like Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Warren Christopher -- and whether that was an attempt to appeal to Hillary Clinton supporters, the call participants said the people were chosen on their merits but that the two points where not mutually exclusive. Rice noted there was “a great deal of talent and experience within the Democratic Party on national security.”
Gas tax holiday and offshore drilling
In the second call, which began at about 12:30pm EDT, Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill and Admiral John Nathman convened reporters to declare McCain a flip-flopper on the matter of offshore drilling for oil and to blast him for proposing a summer gas tax holiday. McCaskill called the proposal a “gimmick”, just as she did in a similar conference call in the run up to the North Carolina primary.
"In Missouri ,as you all know ,we are very proud of our independent traditions and we are not big on election year gimmicks. The people of Missouri can smell a phony deal a mile away,” she said, adding that McCain knew the gas tax holiday would never pass and arguing it would produce little savings and take money away from infrastructure investments if it were to be enacted.
She said McCain was “shilling for Saudi Arabia” which recently suggested the U.S. reduce gas taxes.
On the matter of McCain’s proposal to lift the ban on offshore drilling for oil, McCaskill said he had performed a “classic flip-flop” on the issue and had “folded under the pressure from big oil.”
Nathman stressed the need to stop sending billions of dollars overseas to pay for foreign oil and to focus more on biofuels here at home and develop more fuel efficient cars, a point Obama makes on the stump frequently.
Offshore drilling redux
In the third call, which started just after 1 pm EDT, Democratic Govs. Jon Corzine (New Jersey), Mike Easley (North Carolina) and former Gov. Bob Graham (Florida) railed against McCain on the offshore drilling issue, with Corzine declaring himself “surprised and disappointed” by the “flip flop” with regard to Sen. McCain’s view on a moratorium onwhich there had been wide bipartisan agreement.
The Garden State governor used the term “flip flop” at least three times and said McCain had made a mistake on this issue. He said he believed his state would remain in the Democratic column in the fall in response to a question about whether McCain’s stance on drilling could help him in the state, especially among Independents.
"I think New Jersey will be solidly blue this fall,” Corzine said. "“Early polls are indicative of a fairly good lead by Sen. Obama here in New Jersey and I think that will widen as time unfolds and I think that this flip flop, this Bush-McCain policy on offshore drilling is gonna accentuate that.”
Easley said he echoed Corzine’s concern of McCain joining Bush in his policy for offshore drilling.
"I hoped that was one place where John McCain would stay put and hold onto the position that he’s long articulated,” Easley said, adding later “"McCain has caved to Bush on the war, he’s caved to him on tax cuts for the wealthy, now he’s caving to him on offshore drilling. How are we supposed to gauge him? How do we know the commitments that he makes will not be broken?”
The North Carolina governor said the policy would not help working families, that any benefit from drilling would be at least 10 years away, that the amount of oil likely to be recovered would not be enough to significantly change the world price of oil and that therefore the benefits from drilling were too small when compared to the costs.
"It’s just too much squeeze for the juice when you’re looking at the real estate market that’s on the coast, recreational fishing, the tourism and other economic interests that would be adversely affected by some problem that could easily arise from offshore drilling,” he said, adding that it would take the focus off things like developing hybrid cars, which could reap benefits sooner.
(NBC/NJ's ATHENA JONES)
Posted at 03:48 PM
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