Obama's Lies

Last week the Obama campaign announced that it has raised an astonishing $25 million in just the first quarter of '07. Clearly that got the attention of the Republican establishment because this week the attacks began in earnest.

Timed to coincide with Obama's appearance on David Letterman tonight, the RNC has issued a blast-email entitled "Obama's Top Ten Fabrications." The RNC is clearly attempting to plant the seeds of a press narrative here. Ideally, they'd like to see journalists start covering Obama in the same way they covered Al Gore in 1999-2000, when everything Gore said (and even a lot of things he didn't say) was hyper-scrutinized and offered up by lazy, narrative-driven mainstream journalists as further evidence of Gore's pathological need to embellish the truth. The press corps' coverage of Gore during campaign 2000 was a low point in modern journalistic history rivaled only by the coverage surrounding the lead up to the Iraq invasion, so it's no wonder than the hacks at the RNC oppo-research shop have dreams of recreating that perfect storm of deception, laziness, and idiocy.

But if they hope to recreate the magic of 2000, they're going to have to try a little harder. The list of Obama's supposed "fabrications" is so totally unconvincing that it actually makes you wonder if Obama is some sort of Abe Lincoln like figure. A crack team of opposition researchers scours the public domain for dirt and this is the best they can come up with? The Hotline has the entire list, but here's a sampling:

#10: Obama Was A Constitutional Law Professor:

. . . Obama Made This False Claim In His 2004 Senate Race. “Several direct-mail pieces issued for Obama's primary [Senate] campaign said he was a law professor at the University of Chicago. He is not. He is a senior lecturer (now on leave) at the school.

Can you believe the nerve of this man? Some campaign literature--which he may or may not have ever seen--referred to him as a "law professor" when in fact he is a "senior lecturer." (By the way, conservative Richard Posner is also a "senior lecturer" at the University of Chicago and is routinely referred to as a "law professor").

#8: Obama Was Fluent In Indonesian As A Child:

. . . Obama has claimed on numerous occasions to have become fluent in Indonesian in six months. Yet those who knew him disputed that during recent interviews. Israella Pareira Darmawan, Obama's 1st-grade teacher, said she attempted to help him learn the Indonesian language by going over pronunciation and vowel sounds.

So let me see if I understand this. Obama's first grade teacher had to help him with the "pronunciation and vowel sounds" of a language he'd just heard for the first time a few months before (he lived in Indonesia from age 6 to 10). And somehow this means Obama lied about being able to speak Indonesian as a child? I'm not sure I follow. Oh well, I'm sure the other ones are better.

#5: Obama’s Campaign Didn’t Have The “Technical Capacity” To Produce The “1984” Ad:

Obama: “But it's not something that we had anything to do with or were aware of and that frankly, given what it looks like, we don't have the technical capacity to create something like that.” (CNN’s “Larry King Live,” 3/24/07)

But The Creator Admitted All It Took Was A “Sunday Afternoon” On His Mac. Phillip de Vellis: “I made the ad on a Sunday afternoon in my apartment using my personal equipment (a Mac and some software), uploaded it to YouTube, and sent links around to blogs.”

Apparently Obama is a liar because he didn't realize that the "1984" ad--which he knew nothing about--could have been produced using ordinary household equipment. So. Totally. Busted.

But this one is my favorite:

#4: Obama’s Campaign Claimed His High School Friend Tried To Extort Money From Them:

“According To The Obama Campaign, [Obama’s Punahou Classmate Keith] Kakugawa Explicitly Raised The Possibility That He Could Make Up False Stories About Obama, Implying He Would Do So If The Campaign Did Not Give Him Money.” (Maurice Possley, Kirsten Scharnberg and Ray Gibson, “An Old Friend's Troublesome Return,” Chicago Tribune, 3/25/07)

Kakugawa Was “Infuriated” By The Charge And Flatly Denied It. “That allegation infuriated Kakugawa, prompting him to speak to the Tribune after repeatedly refusing to do so. ‘You must understand, I am not an extortionist,’ he said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles, where he is living out of a car with an acquaintance after being released from a California prison on March 10. ‘Listen, I'm homeless. ... I ask everyone I know for money.’”

I literally spit out my drink when I read that. I'm not even sure what's being implied. Apparently the Obama campaign claimed that an ex-classmate tried to extort money from them, but the man himself, who is homeless and just got out of prison, claims that all he was doing was asking for money, just like he does with everyone. Huh? And somehow this made it all the way to #4 on the list. Astounding.

The other supposed fabrications are just as weak (though not as funny). Suffice it to say, if this is the best the RNC has to offer, Obama has little to worry about.

One final question: if you were to put together a list of President Bush's Top Ten Fabrications, what would you include and in what order? There's so much to choose from. I'm confident you won't have to interview his first grade teacher to complete your list.

UPDATE: Some more debunking from Ron Chusid at Liberal Values. As Ron points out:

The top Obama fabrication deals with the story Obama said he read in Life but couldn’t be found. It does appear to be true that the article Obama mentioned did not appear in Life. It turns out that similar stories appeared in both Time and Look. I guess everyone will have to decide for themselves if they can vote for a man who would confuse Time and Life magazines.