Joe Conason, "Ghosts of Dirty Tricks Past" — RW Smears Obama and Clinton

[NYCGirl]

Worth getting the day pass to read this. Fine article, as usual, from Joe Conason.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2007/01/26/obama/

As the 2008 presidential campaign began last week, there was something inauspicious and even spooky in the political atmosphere, with strange echoes of ugly deeds committed more than 35 years ago.

On Tuesday, Watergate felon E. Howard Hunt passed on into history at the age of 88. But even while he lay dying in Miami, not far from the late President Nixon's Florida retreat, Hunt's spiritual heirs were orchestrating a classic Watergate-style dirty trick against both Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Not coincidentally, the perpetrators included certain veterans of the old Nixon gang, whose baneful influence on American politics has only grown over the decades.

—snipped—

Performing a dirty trick on one Democratic presidential candidate in a way that would reflect blame on another Democrat was the specialty of the Watergate crew led by Hunt, which back in the early '70s included G. Gordon Liddy and Donald Segretti, as well as a host of lesser goons and spies such as the ingénue Lucianne Goldberg.

—snipped—

Around the same time, on stolen Citizens for Muskie stationery, a letter went out attacking Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson. "We on the Sen. Ed Muskie staff sincerely hope that you have decided upon Senator Muskie as your choice. However, if you have not made your decision you should be aware of several facts." Those supposed facts were that Sen. Jackson, as a high school senior in 1929, had fathered an illegitimate child with a teenage girl -- and then had been arrested on charges of homosexuality in Washington in May 1955 and October 1957. The charges were all lies, as was the claim in the same letter that former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey had been arrested for drunken driving in December 1967 with a prostitute in his car. The bogus letter was intended not only to encourage rumors about Jackson and Humphrey, both of whom were potential candidates against Nixon, but to create chaotic civil war among the Democrats.

[illinoisprogressive]

1. But, this one was so obvious and clumsy it was easy to see what it was

One thing with the nixon crowd was that they were not that obvious. Whereas, these guys were particularly clumsy in their execution.
They tend to go for overkill.
On this note, the Muskie stuff is what inspired Rove...

[cadmium]

2. This was so obvious I dont even take the

debunking at face value. I bet the actual leak did come from a Clinton staffer. It is more like a three-fer. They smear Obama and they appear to smear Hillary. CNN is uncharacteristically outraged and comes to her defense then Hillary gets to emerge as the wounded party. Meanwhile the concerns about Obama stand in the public's mind.

[NYCGirl]

3. Except if Clinton wants to get Obama as a VP possibility (and he's amazingly

attractive for that) he wouldn't be any good to her if he was bloodied. You know that if she could get him as a VP, she would jump at the chance.

[cadmium]

4. That would argue against my theory. I dont think

she does. Stranger things have happened though.

[NYCGirl]

5. KICK.