Obama Took Credit for Other Senators' Work, Media Largely Ignores it

by D. Cupples |   Understandably, many media are all over Hillary Clinton's exaggerated claims about her trip to Bosnia in 1996 (e.g., NY Times) 

At the same time, most media seem oddly unaware of a story in yesterday's Washington Post about Barack Obama's having falsely grabbed credit for other legislators' work -- not just in the Illinois legislature, but also while in the U.S. Senate.

In April 2006, according to the Washington Post, six senators ran into Obama while heading to a news conference to announce an immigration bill.  Obama tagged along. When the microphone came his way, Obama said:

"'I want to cite Lindsey Graham, Sam Brownback, Mel Martinez, Ken Salazar, myself, Dick Durbin, Joe Lieberman . . . who've actually had to wake up early to try to hammer this stuff out,'" (The Post)

Senate staff members found it a "galling moment," because Obama had done little or no heavy lifting on that project.

Sen. Arlen Specter politely commented: "It's not an unusual matter for senators to take a little extra credit."

That immigration bill died, but some senators went back to the drawing board and the early-morning meetings, from which Sen. Obama was "notably absent."  Fast forward to some day in 2007, about which The Post reports:

"At one meeting, three key negotiators recalled, he [Obama] entered late and raised a number of questions about the bill's employment verification system. [Sen. Ted] Kennedy and Specter both rebuked him, saying that the issue had already been resolved and that he was coming late to the discussion. Kennedy dressed him down, according to witnesses, and Obama left shortly thereafter."

Fast forward to March 2008.  About two weeks ago, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CN) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-MI) unveiled proposals to help  homeowners facing foreclosure.  On Monday, Sen. Obama seemed to seek "top billing."  The Post reports:

"'At this moment, we must come together and act to address the housing crisis that set this downturn in motion and continues to eat away at the public's confidence in the market,' Obama said. 'We should pass the legislation I put forward with my colleague Chris Dodd to create meaningful incentives for lenders to buy or refinance existing mortgages so that Americans facing foreclosure can keep their homes.'"

"Dodd did say that Obama supported the bill, as does Clinton. But he could not offer pride of authorship to the candidate [Obama] he wants to see in the White House next year."

Translation: Sen. Dodd -- who recently endorsed Obama -- politely said that had Obama lied.

In February, Wonkette summarized a Houston Press article by Todd Spivak, which describes Obama's rapid rise in the Illinois legislature.  Below are parts of the summary:

"Barack’s entire record of state legislation that he touts now was done in his first year as a state senator, so that he could have some record when he wanted to run for higher office, immediately....

"Then, in 2002, black Democrats took over the state legislature and were led by the powerful Majority Leader Emil Jones Jr. (“a gravel-voiced, dark-skinned African-American known for chain-smoking cigarettes on the Senate floor”). Since Jones was powerful and black, Barack — and this has been reported before — asked Jones to make him a U.S. Senator. 'I’m gonna make me a U.S. Senator,' Jones said to a friend.

"Jones 'appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills.'”...

Here's a bit more from Spivak's article:

"'I took all the beatings and insults and endured all the racist comments over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen,' State Senator Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of landmark racial profiling and videotaped confession legislation yanked away by Jones and given to Obama, complained to me at the time. 'Barack didn't have to endure any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit.'

"'I don't consider it bill jacking,' Hendon told me. 'But no one wants to carry the ball 99 yards all the way to the one-yard line, and then give it to the halfback who gets all the credit and the stats in the record book.'

"During his seventh and final year in the state Senate, Obama's stats soared. He sponsored a whopping 26 bills passed into law — including many he now cites in his presidential campaign when attacked as inexperienced. (Houston Press)

Admittedly, I've gotten lost in the very interesting details. 

My point is this: from commercial media's perspective, it's juicy stuff when a candidate has nearly  habitually (not just once or twice) taken credit for legislative work that he didn't actually do. It's especially newsworthy when that candidate has repeatedly marketed himself as honest, clean, and above "politics as usual."

Yet, most newspapers and networks have failed to report these details to the public.

I can't help remembering the lead up to the Iraq war, that dismal period during which most journalists and media outlets simply failed to question anything that our war-eager president said. 

I hope the media quickly becomes more diligent and even handed. Memeorandum has commentary.

Related BN-Politics Posts:

* The Audacity of... Hypocrisy?

* Is MSNBC Biased Toward Barack (or Against Hillary)?

* Obama's Advisers Less Progressive than Advertised?

* Obama "Punching" & Pushing Hillary to Drop Out

* Campaign Uses Bush Tactics in Fundraising Email

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Comments

[Adam]

Specter's "It's not an unusual matter for senators to take a little extra credit" line may be the understatement of our young century. This is perhaps the mildest and most common form of meaningless political boasting in existence. Who gets their name on the sponsor list of a bill is heavily wrapped up in seniority and political muscle (something Obama had in Illinois but lacks on the Senate floor), but has little to no impact on reality. It's just political horsetrading.

Given the utter banality of Obama's claims, you can't really be surprised that the media is more interested in Clinton's inexplicable Bosnia claims. They've got all the elements of a juicy MSM story, right down to the parade of video clips which the talking heads can lay commentary over. Of course, the Clinton/Bosnia story is just a meaningless embarassment and has almost nothing to do with whether she would be a good president, but I bet Fox and friends could get (are getting?) three solid hours out of it.

I've heard that Hillary and Obama have each been a key sponsor of exactly two pieces of enacted legislation in their time in the senate. I don't have a citation on that, so I don't know it's true. I could guess what the Obama ones are - the ethics reform package is one, and controlling nuclear material in the former Soviet Union is probably the other. Of course, 2007 was the first time they controlled the agenda, and it's hard to get stuff passed with GWB in the white house.

As always, I'm more interested in policy positions than any of this.

[D. Cupples]

Adam,

To find out what legislation a senator sponsored, go to Thomas [http://thomas.loc.gov]. The front page has a drop-down menu with senators' names under the heading "Find a bill by sponsor."

My angle on this is different from yours. I don't think that Hillary's Bosnia lie is better or worse than Obama's legislative-accomplishment lies.

Obama is marketing himself as ABOVE "politics as usual," as coming to the game with clean hands.

Spivak's and WaPo's revelations are evidence that Obama's just another politician who'll say whatever sounds good even if his words sharply conflict with history or reality.

As I keep saying, it wouldn't matter if Obama weren't campaigning as an innocent. But HE IS, and that's partly why so many people are inspired by him.

The media finds extremely newsworthy that Hillary lied about the danger she faced that day she visited Bosnina (a country that was undergoing violence -- just not on that day, at that airport). It was dishonest and a dumb move.

My only point is that the media should find it equally newsworthy that Obama has (equally dishonestly) taken credit for work that he had little to do with -- both in Illinois and the U.S. Senate.

Remember, Obama campaigned heavily on his legislative "achievements." Now we're finding out that some of that was just BS?

I'm not saying you should stop supporting him. I still support Hillary despite the Bosnia thing.

But how can you say that Obama's inconsistencies aren't newsworthy?

[Adam]

Obama's legislative achievements are not BS, any more than Hillary's involvement in the Clinton white house was BS. There's exaggerations in both.

My point is not that one or the other story is really more newsworthy in some objective, normative sense. I don't think either is particularly newsworthy, frankly. But from a practical perspective, Hillary's gross exaggeration of the peril she faced in Bosnia is the sort of juicy tabloid-style story that the MSM loves to jump all over, while Obama's garden-variety legislative embelishment is just boring. As such, I see zero media bias here, unless we're talking about bias toward the sexier story.

[D. Cupples]

Adam,

I DIDN'T mean that all legislation Obama voted on was BS (except the Exelon-related bill, which was).

I did mean this: unless the WaPo and Spivak articles are BS, some of the claims Obama has repeatedly made in campaign speeches about his legislative achievement ARE bs.

Frankly, for example, I was impressed by his claim that HE endured all sorts of trouble yet managed to forge bipartisan agreement re: the video-surveillance bill in Illinois. He seemed like a visionary, who had come up with the idea to solve a problem.

Now, we're finding out that it wasn't his idea or work, but largely someone's else? And that Obama snagged credit for it anyway?

Such not-so-true claims are important, because Obama's campaign has pointed to Obama's legislative work (in the Illinois and the U.S arenas) as evidene that he is qualified to be president.

About tabloid-style appeal, we just disagree. I DO think that a candidate who has repeatedly lied about the extent of his legislative work is just as juicy as a candidate's lying about the actual dangers she faced during a trip.

[Adam]

We're not "discovering" that the videotaping bill wasn't his work. Not his original idea, sure, but does this really matter? Even the legislator quoted is not denying that Obama played a crucial role in getting the bill passed. Should we be disillusioned because Obama didn't come up with the IDEA for the bill? That's an awfully high standard to apply for taking credit.

Obama was a star on the rise and had the political backing which allowed him to play a starring role in bill sponsorship in the state senate. (Correction - you write "first year" when you mean "last year".) In the US senate, old boys like Specter and Kennedy have not given Obama these sorts of political favors - nor has Hillary received them, for that matter. None of this has anything to do with their policy positions, or what true role they played in pushing bills through.

The fact is that this sort of practice - namely, legislators listing bills they supported among their "accomplishments" whether they were the primary sponsors or not - is really quite common. The WaPo article you reference spends almost an identical number of column inches on Clinton embellishment as it does on Obama embelishment. Again, it's a common thing.

From a tabloid appeal angle, you need to think about the way the MSM works. There's nothing more appealing for Fox news than playing clips of Hillary's story, followed by 1996 video footage, while a "Clinton exaggerates danger in Bosnia" marquee is splashed across the bottom of the screen. The segment is very visual and practically writes itself. By comparison, the "Obama wasn't the original sponsor of these bills" doesn't make for a good marquee to throw up on the screen along with some footage.

Again, I'm not saying the story is more IMPORTANT, just easier to craft into cable news fodder.

[Christines]

Real Clear Politics discusses Obama's friends.

Return to the Article

March 25, 2008
The Audacity of Rhetoric

By Thomas Sowell
It is painful to watch defenders of Barack Obama tying themselves into knots trying to evade the obvious.

Some are saying that Senator Obama cannot be held responsible for what his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, said. In their version of events, Barack Obama just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time -- and a bunch of mean-spirited people are trying to make something out of it.

It makes a good story, but it won't stand up under scrutiny.

Barack Obama's own account of his life shows that he consciously sought out people on the far left fringe. In college, "I chose my friends carefully," he said in his first book, "Dreams From My Father."

These friends included "Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets" -- in Obama's own words -- as well as the "more politically active black students." He later visited a former member of the terrorist Weatherman underground, who endorsed him when he ran for state senator.

Obama didn't just happen to encounter Jeremiah Wright, who just happened to say some way out things. Jeremiah Wright is in the same mold as the kinds of people Barack Obama began seeking out in college -- members of the left, anti-American counter-culture.

In Shelby Steele's brilliantly insightful book about Barack Obama -- "A Bound Man" -- it is painfully clear that Obama was one of those people seeking a racial identity that he had never really experienced in growing up in a white world. He was trying to become a convert to blackness, as it were -- and, like many converts, he went overboard.

Nor has Obama changed in recent years. His voting record in the U.S. Senate is the furthest left of any Senator. There is a remarkable consistency in what Barack Obama has done over the years, despite inconsistencies in what he says.

The irony is that Obama's sudden rise politically to the level of being the leading contender for his party's presidential nomination has required him to project an entirely different persona, that of a post-racial leader who can heal divisiveness and bring us all together.

The ease with which he has accomplished this chameleon-like change, and entranced both white and black Democrats, is a tribute to the man's talent and a warning about his reliability.

There is no evidence that Obama ever sought to educate himself on the views of people on the other end of the political spectrum, much less reach out to them. He reached out from the left to the far left. That's bringing us all together?

Is "divisiveness" defined as disagreeing with the agenda of the left? Who on the left was ever called divisive by Obama before that became politically necessary in order to respond to revelations about Jeremiah Wright?

One sign of Obama's verbal virtuosity was his equating a passing comment by his grandmother -- "a typical white person," he says -- with an organized campaign of public vilification of America in general and white America in particular, by Jeremiah Wright.

Since all things are the same, except for the differences, and different except for the similarities, it is always possible to make things look similar verbally, however different they are in the real world.

Among the many desperate gambits by defenders of Senator Obama and Jeremiah Wright is to say that Wright's words have a "resonance" in the black community.

There was a time when the Ku Klux Klan's words had a resonance among whites, not only in the South but in other states. Some people joined the KKK in order to advance their political careers. Did that make it OK? Is it all just a matter of whose ox is gored?

While many whites may be annoyed by Jeremiah Wright's words, a year from now most of them will probably have forgotten about him. But many blacks who absorb his toxic message can still be paying for it, big-time, for decades to come.

Why should young blacks be expected to work to meet educational standards, or even behavioral standards, if they believe the message that all their problems are caused by whites, that the deck is stacked against them? That is ultimately a message of hopelessness, however much audacity it may have.

[D. Cupples]

Christines,

About an hour ago, I saw the article at Real Clear Politics. Thanks for dropping in and sharing it with other readers!

[athy]

Can someone tell me WHY sen Obama has been labeled a Progressive, liberal Democrat?
What criteria is used to determine a politician's ideology. I thought it was their voting record. However, if you look at these 3 articles (authors analyze some of Obama legislation) it appears that Sen Obama is sabatoging efforts to help the middle class and lower middle class, poor citizens.

http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/The_Obama_Craze_Count_Me_Out_5413.html

Beyondchron.org, The Obama Craze: Count Me out ” by Matt Gonzalez 2/27/08

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080211/fraser

The Nation, “Subprime Obama” by Max Fraser 1/24/08 Post 2/11/08 issue

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2008/03/i-am-barack-obama.html

Mother Jones, ” I am Barack Obama” by Mark Winston Griffith 3/17/08

[D. Cupples]

Athy,

I've no idea why. Thanks for sharing the links, incidentally. I'll go check them out when I finish commenting.

Weeks ago, Paul Krugman pointed out that Obama's economic policies aren't as progessive as Hillary's or John Edwards'.

http://bucknakedpolitics.typepad.com/buck_naked_politics/2008/01/economy-krugman.html

A few days ago, my co-blogger Damozel did a piece on Obama's advisers being less progressive than advertised.

http://bucknakedpolitics.typepad.com/buck_naked_politics/2008/03/obamas-supporte.html

Maybe people think of Obama as progressive, because he keeps SAYING that he is.

[Adam]

To answer Athy's question - for the last five+ years, the first test of a politician's place on the liberal/conservate spectrum has been the tone of their comments on Iraq. Obama opposed the war way back in '02, ergo, he is a liberal. Nice, easy, thoughtless analysis. There are a few rare exceptions to this rule, like Ron Paul, but by and large this is how people have been categorized.

Now, that in and of itself doesn't mean that Obama is NOT a progressive, but if you want to know WHY he's called a progressive, there's your answer. Howard Dean was labeled an extreme leftist in '04 for the same reason, and Dean's claim to progressivism is, if anything, even more tenuous than Obama's.

I agree that Obama's economic policies are slightly less progressive than Hillary's (and by exension, even less progressive relative to Edwards's). As a fiscal conservative, I happen to like this. But it's certainly a fair point to argue.

Damozel's piece does bring up two advisors (McPeak and Brennan) who hold differing views from Obama, but there's no ambiguity as to where Obama stands on those issues. He's not taking counsel from those guys on those issues. Most of the supporters Damozel brings up, though (e.g. Power, Wright) are actually quite progressive. They are victims of scandals, sure, but their progressive credentials have not been seriously questioned.