The Campaign Trail To MistakeTown

Much of the news in the last 24 hours or so has been about Michael Bloomberg, but on the Democratic side of the presidential race, hijinx were recently afoot. Did you know about Hillary Clinton's interactions with computer networking behemoth Cisco, which outsources some of its work to India? You probably wouldn't, if not for what might have been a crafty maneuver by the Obama campaign.

Yesterday, Barack Obama apologized for a memo distributed by his staff concerning Clinton's various ties to, among other things, companies that have sent jobs to India. The memo styled Clinton's moniker as "Senator Hillary Clinton (D - Punjab)", and Obama's people distributed it to the press, albeit not for attribution. Well, of course, the Clinton camp got a hold of it and made waves, as was proper and how situations like this usually go.

So, on Monday, Obama apologized for what he referred to as "a dumb mistake." From AP, via MSNBC:

In a statement on his Web site, Obama said he was not aware of the contents of the memo before it was distributed. The Illinois senator said he was responsible for the mistake and the campaign had taken appropriate action “to prevent errors like this from happening in the future.”

The campaign said the new policy is to ensure that senior staff reviews materials before they are distributed publicly.

Obama was campaigning in Iowa on Monday. Stopping in an Iowa town rocked by the closure of a Maytag plant, he called for new efforts to create jobs and end tax subsidies for companies that shift jobs overseas.

So was it really a mistake? It is possible, I suppose. But while the Indian-American community understandably took some offense, it stills seems to have washed out to a net positive for Obama, in that he drew attention to his issue. I think it is equally possible there might have been — maybe! — more calculation than carelessness here.

Consider: If you go to the press with a description of how your opponent has received speaking fees from companies that have engaged in globalization outsourcing to low-cost labor sources outside of the USA, you can almost never be hard-hitting or attention grabbing. However, if you make a little noise and gain earned media on the subjects you want to talk about by using a tone that, at worst, can be described as overly rowdy and results in a few tersely-worded letters, then you get to apologize and immediately talk about what you wanted to talk about anyways, and people will pay attention to it. In this situation, it doesn't even matter if what you're focusing on is a big deal, or worth anyone's time at all, because it is tied to a tiny scandal and an apology. Bonus: You get to blame the anonymous staffer!

This is also different from Sam Brownback's recent campaign staff troubles, in which a staffer sent out emails of dubious content. From the Salt Lake Tribune:

The list forwarded by Brownback's southeast Iowa field director to a dozen activists asked about the validity of several items, including "the only thing Christianity and the LDS Church has in common is the name of Jesus Christ, and the LDS Jesus is not the same Jesus of the Christian faith."

Now, true, Brownback ended up apologizing to Romney and the Mormon Church, and it is impossible to know what the reprimanded staffer was planning to do with her information had the verification ever come in. But this was not a staff-produced op-research piece on financial and economic issues distributed to the press by the main campaign staff. This was far less design and far more maliciousness, in what seems to have been prep work for a hit piece on another candidate's religious beliefs. This wasn't politics, not even of the high-stakes variety — it was borderline fundamentalism cooked up by an individual low on the ladder.

It doesn't require a good campaign to say something mean, whether implicit or explicit, about another candidate; nor does it necessarily make a campaign bad to do so. Everyone does it all the time in both parties. This is, after all, professional politics, and that's half the currency that a candidate carries prior to Election Day. It is worth noting, though, that with some skill and foresight you can take a small hit and make a small negative become Max Value Criticism of your opponent.