As you pity Samantha Power for having to resign for calling Hillary a ‘monster’, the story of the week’s other Obama leak is still developing. As readers will recall, that leak was to do with a meeting last month between Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s senior economic adviser, and officials at the Canadian consulate in Chicago. As the FT reported earlier this week,
In a summary of the meeting, a Canadian diplomat wrote that Mr Goolsbee “acknowledged the protectionist sentiment that has emerged, particularly in the Midwest, during the primary campaign … He cautioned that this messaging should not be taken out of context and should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans,” said the memo, which was obtained by the Associated Press …
The Canadian embassy in Washington expressed regret for how the meeting had been interpreted. “There was no intention to convey, in any way, that Senator Obama and his campaign team were taking a different position in public from views expressed in private,” it said.
At the time, my reaction was simply: how embarrassing for the Canadian embassy. But there’s a twist. Since then, media coverage has reported that the leak actually came from Ian Brodie – chief of staff to the [highly conservative] Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper – after ABC News identified him as the source of briefing to reporters. As Jeet Heer remarks on Comment is Free,
In Canada, the whole story is emerging as a major political scandal. This sort of interference into another country’s elections is not just a huge diplomatic faux pas, but also a deep affront to democratic norms.
Naturally, Harper vehemently denies that the leak came from his office. But the basis of his denial is interesting. What he said was:
“The reality is what we’re talking about here is a report that someone in the consulate to Chicago wrote to their superior … There are literally thousands of documents like this written around the world by Canadian officials. It’s ridiculous to think that the prime minister’s office even ever sees these documents.”
So it’s “ridiculous” to suppose that a diplomatic cable clarifying a leading US Presidential candidate’s position on NAFTA would make it as far as the Canadian PM’s office? Hmm. Methinks he protests too much…
Update: spoke too soon. Actually there were three unfortunate leaks from Team Obama this week, not two – I’d overlooked this regrettable slip from Obama adviser Susan Rice on MSNBC:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TumIz2bajus]
Stumper puts it like this:
As many observers have noted, gaffes like these are a natural result–and risk–of running a “movement campaign.” Obama has surrounded himself with bright, energetic political neophytes–many of whom clearly haven’t mastered the art of shutting up. In some ways, the “honesty” of Obama’s surrogates is refreshing. But it’s also bad politics, and after two slips, he simply couldn’t afford to give Power a pass. Nor should he have. While Goolsbee and Rice made fundamentally accurate–if politically inconvenient–remarks about policy, Power simply called Clinton a nasty name.
