Clinton Apologizes to Obama For Shaheen's Drug CommentDec 13, 2007
CONCORD, N.H. -- Despite a face-to-face apology from Sen. Hillary Clinton on an airport tarmac, the Barack Obama campaign today did its best to turn to its advantage remarks by a top Clinton supporter who said yesterday that Sen. Obama's admissions of past drug use would "open the door" to Republican attacks if he is the Democratic nominee.
At a press conference here, Ned Helms, a co-chairman of Obama's New Hampshire campaign, lamented the comments by Clinton state co-chair Billy Shaheen. In an interview yesterday with the Post, Shaheen said he worried that Republicans would have a field day picking apart Obama's past, notably his admissions of cocaine and marijuana use in his late teens. "The Republicans are not going to give up without a fight...and one of the things they're certainly going to jump on is his drug use," Shaheen said.
The Clinton campaign disassociated itself from the comments last night, saying they were "not authorized or condoned by the campaign in any way." Shaheen, the husband of former governor and 2008 Senate candidate Jeanne Shaheen, said in a statement,
"I deeply regret the comments I made today and they were not authorized by the campaign in any way." This morning, Clinton approached Obama on the tarmac of Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington to personally apologize for the remarks. "She made it clear that this kind of negative personal statement has no part in this campaign," said Clinton spokesman Phil Singer.
But Helms told reporters here that the remarks fit
a larger pattern of negative attacks and insinuations from the Clinton camp, including an incident last week in which a Clinton volunteer county coordinator in Iowa forwarded an incendiary
e-mail falsely asserting that Obama is a Muslim (the Clinton campaign asked the volunteer to step down). With each incident, Helms said, it has became harder to believe that the individuals were acting without any direction from above.
"I suppose you could say, well, the first time, that's what happened," said Helms. "But when
you see a pattern, of people making statements and then the follow-up statement, that that wasn't authorized, it doesn't take a genius to see that there's a thread going on here. How many times are we going to see the isolated incident followed by the denial before we just simply say, 'Would you please stop?'"
Helms stopped short of calling for Shaheen's removal from his leadership post on the Clinton team, saying that "is a conversation that needs to take place within the Clinton campaign."
Obama's national headquarters also sought to capitalize on the Shaheen comments, with campaign manager David Plouffe sending out an e-mail asking supporters to counter the remarks with a $25 donation from 5,000 of them. "In an increasingly desperate effort to slow Senator Clinton's slide, the focus of
the Clinton campaign has moved from Barack Obama's kindergarten years to his teenage years," Plouffe wrote, referring to the Clinton campaign's inclusion in a campaign document of a kindergarten essay by Obama declaring his presidential ambitions. "The only way to stop these kinds of tired, desperate attacks is to demonstrate very clearly that they have a real cost to Senator Clinton's campaign."
In his remarks, Shaheen, a local attorney and Democratic powerbroker, said he was worried that Republicans would have a particularly easy time going after Obama's drug use as a teenager because he has been so open about it. He contrasted this with George W. Bush, who Shaheen said wisely ruled out answering questions about his behavior as a younger man during his presidential run in 1999 and 2000.
Obama's candor on the subject, on the other hand, would "open the door" to further questions, Shaheen said. "It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?'" he said. "There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome."
Obama has been free about discussing his drug use as a young man. In his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father, written shortly after he graduated from Harvard Law School, he wrote that during his difficult late teens "Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though."
"Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man," he wrote. "Except the highs hadn't been about that, me trying to prove what a down brother I was....I got high for just the opposite effect, something that could push questions of who I was out of my mind, something that could flatten out the landscape of my heart, blur the edges of my memory."
And speaking with high school students in Manchester, N.H. a few weeks ago, he said that he had "made some bad decisions" as a teenager. "There were times when I, you know, got into drinking, experimented with drugs. There was a whole stretch of time where I didn't really apply myself a lot," he said. But once in college, Obama said, he realized, "Man, I wasted a lot of time" in high school. He added, "It's not something I'm proud of. It was a mistake as a young man."
Shaheen's comments inevitably renewed memories of Bill Clinton's handling of his past marijuana use during the 1992 campaign, when he said he had smoked marijuana but did not inhale. Asked about this at the Manchester high school, Obama said, "I never understood that line. The point was to inhale. That was the point."
--Alec MacGillis
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2007/12/13/clinton_apologizes_to_obama_fo_1.html
