Did Clinton Flip-Flop or did Obama distort the facts?

[Karmadillo]

This article suggests the latter.

http://www.slate.com/id/2175884/

Did Clinton Flip-Flop?
Dissecting Hillary's comments about Iran.
By John Dickerson

I am having a debate with the Obama campaign about the first-person pronoun. On Thursday night, Sen. Hillary Clinton suggested she would negotiate with Iran without preconditions. ''I would engage in negotiations with Iran, with no conditions, because we don't really understand how Iran works. We think we do, from the outside, but I think that is misleading.''

Sen. Barack Obama has seized on that statement, arguing that she has flip-flopped from her previous assertion that she would not negotiate with dictators. At one level, as I will explain in a second, this is a silly fight about pronouns. At another, it's an incredibly important policy debate. The question of Iran negotiations is an argument about which of the two candidates has a better grasp of the threats that face the country and how to deal with them. Finding the right answer to that question may be the most important thing in the election. Also, which candidate can we trust to tell us the truth, or as close to the truth as a politician will offer? And which candidate will distort the facts to make a point?

<edit>

When I told an Obama aide I didn't think she was changing her position on direct personal negotiations with Iranian leaders, the aide asked, "So when she says I, she actually means someone else?" The answer is yes. Clinton is using a common campaign construction in which the first-person singular stands for the entire administration. So, for example, when Obama pledges, as he did earlier in the month, "I will begin to remove our troops from Iraq immediately," he is not saying that he will go to Iraq to do the job himself. He's saying he would task his secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs to get the job done. So, too, with Clinton: She would task people to negotiate, but it does not necessarily follow from her statement that she would do the negotiations herself, which has always been her distinction. There's no evidence she was talking about direct negotiations with foreign leaders. Hence, no flip-flop.

end...

[msongs]

1. maybe neither one of your statements is true? nt

[Karmadillo]

5. Or maybe one is or maybe the other is.

nt

[aquart]

2. Flamebait.

[Karmadillo]

6. In what way?

nt

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

3. On this one, Obama's wrong. He conflated his debate answer

with the whole concept of negotiating.

Anyone who answered yes to the debate question wasn't listening to the question. (It would be silly to commit to personally meet with everybody in the first year.)

That doesn't mean he's naive, or the devil or anything. Just that it was (and is) silly to stick to a minor-gaffe answer by re-writing history to claim he was asked an entirely different question.

Entirely phony issue on both sides. There is no actual policy difference worth talking about.

[killbotfactory]

9. Yeah, if you look a dictator in the eye within the first year of your presidency..

They can turn you to stone, like Medusa. I'm surprised Obama doesn't know that. It's top secret presidential stuff noob's like Obama aren't hip to yet.

[calteacherguy]

4. K&R. nt

[SaveElmer]

7. He and Edwards...in their Pavlovian way...

Jumped on a lazily written report from the AP...that has since been modified to more closely resemble the truth...

[Karmadillo]

8. One would think Democrats wouldn't be so quick to amplify media distortions

in a way designed to hurt another Democrat. I guess desperation does strange things to good people.

[Dawgs]

15. The same way that Hillary and her supporters claimed that Obama was "naive".

Anyone that saw that debate knew what Obama was answering, and for her to twist it for political reasons was just as disingenuous as what he and Edwards did.

[Forkboy]

16. Just like Hillary, in her Pavlovian way, jumped on Kerry for his joke.

[illinoisprogressive]

10. Like a fish, she flips and flops all over the place. Or maybe she just **

[killbotfactory]

11. It's not a flip-flop

She's just took a political cheap-shot at Obama a few months ago, and it's just as stupid in hindsight as it was when it happened.

When Obama first stated he would be willing to personally meet with our adversaries within the first year of his presidency, it was in the context of denouncing Bush using preconditions to thwart diplomacy. His message was simple: We should honestly attempt diplomacy ASAP. When Hillary took exception to his answer and responded by calling his position "niave and irresponsible", what other message were people supposed to come away with? Is the idea of a president personally meeting with foreign adversaries, like they used to, so shocking to her that it warrants that response? Does Hillary have such a low opinion of Obama that she assumes no other diplomatic work would be involved? I doubt it.

[LWolf]

12. Both. They aren't mutually exclusive. n/t

[Joe the Revelator]

13. Sounds like more Clinton double speak and bullshit....

It all depends on what the definition of is, is.

[Armstead]

14. That's just stupid McCommentary

Splitting hairs in the den while the kitchen is on fire.

A chage in position is a change in position, regardless of the adjective, adverb, noun or pronoun.

This kind of nonsense is one reason I dread the thought of eight more years of Clinton/DLC Doublespeak.