by Deb Cupples | Being consistent purely for its own sake can be a bad thing. We learned this from watching President Bush, with great regularity, stubbornly refused to alter his positions even after overwhelming evidence showed his earlier stances to be flat wrong.
On the other hand, sometimes consistency is a good thing -- especially for a political campaign. I bring this up, because of two articles I recently read. Today's Washington Post quotes Sen. Obama as saying the following:
"We're going to try to reach out to all her [Hillary's] supporters and tell them that we want to unify the party.... I understood that they were as inspired by her candidacy as some of my supporters are inspired by mine. They're not alone in drawing inspiration from her campaign. My own daughters now take the possibility of a woman being president for granted."
That's a gracious message: a positive step toward party unity. But it's nearly the opposite of a message that came from an Obama campaign representative a few days ago, according to The Politico:
"Obama is not, one of his senior advisers assured me Tuesday night, going to spend a lot of time in the next few months wooing Clinton supporters whose feelings may be hurting.
I think there are always immediate feelings of disappointment and anger, Anita Dunn said. But in the months ahead, he must appeal not just to the constituency groups who favored her in the primaries, but those he wants in the general election, and that includes independents and Republicans. (Politico)
Sen. Obama's adviser's message seemed to be that the campaign doesn't really care about the nearly 18 million people who voted for Hillary in the primaries -- a message that seems to conflict with Sen. Obama's own words.
The mere appearance of conflicting attitudes within a campaign is what some might call "mixed signals," a natural result of which is massive confusion among millions of voters.
I wouldn't be bringing this up if it were the first time that the Obama campaign's representatives had seemed to get their signals crossed. But it's not the first time.
At the debate before Pennsylvania's primary, for example, Sen. Obama took the high road and graciously said that Hillary Clinton's "mis-statements" about Bosnia were not a real issue and that he refused to try to make an issue of them.
A few days later but still before Pennsylvania's primary, according to a Slate reporter who was traveling with Obama's campaign, Obama's aides scheduled a media conference call to talk about Hillary's Bosnia "mis-statements."
That was a very confusing pair of mixed-signals.
In February, Obama campaign adviser Austan Goolsbee reportedly told a Canadian official who likes NAFTA that Sen. Obama was not really as hostile to NAFTA as he sounded during campaign speeches. That story broke some weeks after Goolsbee spoke with the Canadian official and a few days after Obama debated Hillary Clinton in the anti-NAFTA state of Ohio.
Mr. Goolsbee confused many voters, because Obama had indicated during the debate that he would threaten to back out of NAFTA if it weren't renegotiated in a way that was more favorable to American workers.
In March, campaign adviser Samantha Power indicated that Sen. Obama wasn't really committed to withdrawing troops from Iraq within 16 months after taking office (if he's elected).
Ms. Power confused many voters, because Sen. Obama, himself, seemed pretty clear about wanting to withdraw troops within that time frame.
Without pummeling corpses, I think I've made my point. Sometimes, Sen. Obama's campaign representatives say things that seem very different from what Sen. Obama says.
By insisting on making statements that conflict with Sen. Obama's, campaign representatives risk undermining the candidate's efforts to get elected.
Republicans know (many via repeated usage) how to spot inconsistencies -- and they don't care if people call
them hypocrites for shrieking about other people's inconsistencies (or
dishonesty or lack of credibility).
For that reason, I advise all of Sen. Obama's campaign representatives to think before they speak: to make sure that they know where their candidate really stands and to try to avoid making statements (and committing acts) that clash with the candidate's own words.
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