Cherry Pickin'...

Hillary Clinton called on Barack Obama to knock off the cherry picking. And Lowell Paxson may have busted John McCain for a different kind of cherry picking. We'll explain.

Saturday morning, Hillary blasted Obama for a couple of fliers distributed by his campaign. One flier uses a "Harry and Louise" motif (the health insurance lobby's ads that doomed Hillary's plan in '94) to scare voters about the mandates in Hillary's 2008 healthcare plan. It also captures a negative quote about the mandates from a student newspaper in Iowa. The second flier criticizes Hillary's position on NAFTA, which is a touchy subject in industrial Ohio. That flier uses a Newsday quote that makes it seem as if Hillary said NAFTA was a 'boon' to the economy. In fact, the word 'boon' was part of Newsday's characterization of her position. Later yesterday, Newsday issued a statement clarifying that 'boon' was their word, not Hillary's.

Obama's fliers used a technique known in political circles as 'cherry picking'. It's the art of presenting damaging morsels of information, often out of context, in materials that can't be defended by the accused. And while the information isn't technically incorrect, it serves to negatively distort a candidate's position. The only way to fight back is to do what Hillary did today. She accused Obama of employing "Karl Rove tactics" and threw down the gauntlet to "meet me in Ohio and let's have a debate about these tactics." Obama responded calmly by saying that nothing in the fliers was untrue. He also wondered whether her outrage was itself tactical, pointing out that these fliers had been circulating for several days and she must have seen them before Saturday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080223/ap_on_el_pr/clinton

It will be interesting to measure the fallout of this episode. Hillary is correct to state that Obama's characterization of her health plan undermines Democratic efforts to achieve universal healthcare. She also pointed out correctly that these tactics run contrary to Obama's claim that his brand of politics 'doesn't tear people down, but lifts the country up'. (Lost in her valid complaint was a line she uttered that underscored a huge frustration: "...Enough about the speeches, and the big rallies...". Clearly, she has been unnerved by the sight of 19,000 screaming Obama supporters at every one of his campaign stops.) In any case, will this be "I found my voice, part 2"? Or will Obama cement his rep as the new 'teflon man'? Will this be judged as an unwise tactic that gave Hillary energy and sympathy when she most needed it? Or have the fliers already done political damage to her positions? However it shakes out, there's one thing no one can say anymore: that Obama's too nice to mix it up in the rough and tumble world of presidential politics. I mean, when you have the Clintons crying foul, you know you've jumped into the grown-up pool.

John McCain continues to ride a wave of positive reaction for his response to the NY Times article accusing him of inappropriate behavior with lobbyists and their companies. The problem is, Mac has been cherry picking his memory for the good stuff and not 'fessing up to the not-so-good. And now, he's getting caught in some lies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/23/us/politics/23lobby.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin
In Thursday's news conference, McCain adamantly denied doing any favors for lobbyists. But in 1998 he sent a threatening letter to the FCC about a station ownership loophole. The FCC was considering closing the loophole, which would have adversely affected some media companies. Two of these companies retained Vicki Iseman to lobby McCain and it worked. McCain leaned on the FCC with the threatening letters and the loophole remained open. Mac has said recently that he never met with Iseman or Lowell Paxson before sending off the letters. But in a deposition in 2002, McCain offered that he had met with Paxson. Paxson also confirmed this, saying that he and Iseman met with McCain. Tsk,tsk,tsk.

Now, is this a big deal? McCainiacs will say no, it's a smear job on their candidate. They might also point out that most of the denials about the details of these episodes are being issued by the campaign. We know what that means, right? In the event that a bald-faced lie is reported, Mac can say "my campaign said it, I didn't. And they were mistaken". This is another type of cherry picking.

In either case, Mac's or Obama's, cherry picking is a sure fire way to turn off the average voter. We'll see if it has that affect on their campaigns.

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