2008 United States presidential election controversies and attacks (deleted 01 May 2008 at 08:44)

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During the 2008 U.S. presidential election, a number of issues were raised by various people and organizations that tended to portray various candidates in a negative light, including the candidates themselves, their campaign staff and advisors, news organizations, and political organizations.

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy certain standards for completeness.

Revisions and sourced additions are welcome.

Contents 1 Relating to Hillary Rodham Clinton 1.1 Cattle Futures 1.2 Rose Law Firm 1.3 Whitewater 1.4 White House Travel Office 1.5 Bosnian sniper fire 2 Relating to Rudy Giuliani 2.1 9/11 issues 3 Relating to John McCain 3.1 Keating Five 3.2 John Hagee 3.3 Rod Parsley 3.4 Cindy McCain family recipes 3.5 Most absent from Senate 3.6 Campaigning with wife's airplane 4 Relating to Barack Obama 4.1 Muslim and madrassa claims 4.1.1 Middle name 4.2 Flag Lapel Pin 4.3 Bill Ayers 4.4 Rev. Jeremiah Wright 4.5 'Small town' comments 4.6 Tony Rezko 4.7 Canada and NAFTA 5 References

Relating to Hillary Rodham Clinton

Main article: Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign, 2008

Cattle Futures

Main article: Hillary Rodham cattle futures controversy

In 1978 and 1979, lawyer and First Lady of Arkansas Hillary Rodham engaged in a series of trades of cattle futures contracts. This became controversial in 1994, after Hillary Rodham Clinton had become First Lady of the United States, because of the high rate of return and possible conflict of interest.^{[1][citation needed]}

Rose Law Firm

Main article: Rose Law Firm

Whitewater

Main article: Whitewater controversy

White House Travel Office

Main article: White House travel office controversy

Bosnian sniper fire

In March, 2008, Clinton admitted that campaign statements about having come under hostile fire from snipers during a 1996 visit to U.S. troops at Tuzla Air Base in Bosnia-Herzegovina were mistaken^[2] The accuracy of her description of the event had initially been questioned by the comedian David Adkins (known popularly as "Sinbad"), who along with singer Sheryl Crow accompanied her on the trip.^[3] The incident attracted considerable media attention, which was claimed to undermine her credibility and her claims of foreign policy expertise.^[4]

Relating to Rudy Giuliani

Main article: Rudy Giuliani presidential campaign, 2008

9/11 issues

Main article: Rudy Giuliani presidential campaign, 2008#Relations with fire fighters' association and families

As Mayor of New York City at the time of the 9/11 attacks, Giuliani initially earned widespread praise, including being named Time Magazine's Person of the Year in 2001.^[5] However, during the 2008 Republican primary opponents, and some victim groups and rescue personnel who were dissatisfied with his handling of the response efforts, announced that they would Swift Boat his campaign.^[6] The International Association of Fire Fighters drafted, then shelved, an election-related statement harshly criticizing his leadership.^{[7] [8]}

Relating to John McCain

Main article: John McCain presidential campaign, 2008

Keating Five

Main article: Keating Five

John McCain (R-AZ) was one of five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s. They were accused of improperly aiding Charles H. Keating, Jr., chairman of the failed Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which was the target of an investigation by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board.^{[citation needed]}

John Hagee

See also: John Hagee#Criticism

McCain has been criticized for seeking and accepting the endorsement of John Hagee, a non-denominational evangelical leader. McCain has said it was probably a mistake, but that he was still happy to get it.^[9]

Rod Parsley

See also: Rod Parsley#Criticism of Parsley

Rod Parsley, a televangelist, is senior pastor of World Harvest Church, a Pentecostal megachurch in Columbus, Ohio, and founder and president of The Center for Moral Clarity. He has called Islam a "false religion" and has advocated war against it. McCain has referred to him as his "spiritual advisor", accepted his endorsement, and not denounced or rejected Parsley's statements.^[10][11][12]

Cindy McCain family recipes

In April, 2008, "family recipes" for ahi tuna with Napa cabbage salad, crab scampi with whole wheat pasta, pasta with turkey sausage, and passion fruit mousse attributed on McCain's campaign website to his wife, Cindy Hensley McCain, were found to have been plagiarized from the Food Network. ^[13][14] The discovery was made by an environmental lawyer and amateur home chef, who repeatedly found links to the McCain site when using google to search for ingredients in Giada De Laurentiis recipies. The story was first reported in the Huffington Post, and quickly spread.^[15] The campaign attributed the problem to an error by an intern.^[13]

Most absent from Senate

As of April 2008, John McCain was the Senator most often absent from the United States Senate.^[16]

Campaigning with wife's airplane

Senator McCain is using his wife's airplane for campaigning, at a cost less than normal charter flights. McCain has stated, "What we did was perfectly legal and appropriate." CNN reports that "There is nothing illegal about what McCain did." Campaign finance experts said using the plane goes against the spirit of the campaign finance reform law, but they also maintain that McCain's actions are in keeping with the letter of law^[17][18]

Relating to Barack Obama

Main article: Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2008

Muslim and madrassa claims

Main article: Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2008#Coverage of Obama's childhood and heritage

Middle name

Some opponents of Obama have featured his middle name "Hussein" and the similarity of his last name with "Osama" to highlight his Muslim heritage, draw inferences and associations with terrorists, and question his loyalty to the United States.^[19] In February, 2008, the Tennessee Republican Party circulated a memo titled "Anti-Semites for Obama" that featured his middle name and showed a picture of him in African clothes while on a trip to Africa.^[20] This was then countered with photos of Hillary Clinton, George Bush and other government officials wearing native dress on foreign trips.^[21] A website, ExposeObama.com, sent out emails in early 2008 that included messages such as "President Barack Hussein Obama ... the scariest four words in the English language!"^[22] These incidents were not openly supported, and were generally condemned, by the other candidate' official campaigns and by the major parties.^[20]

Flag Lapel Pin

During a campaign stop in October 2007, a reporter inquired as to why Obama had stopped wearing a lapel pin of the American flag, which he had started wearing after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and his response was that he felt some people were using the pin as "a substitute for true patriotism" and he preferred to let his actions speak for his own patriotism. This led to discussions on the cable news channels, including one with Karl Rove.^[23] In reaction, photos of various politicians and commentators, with and without flag pins, were then circulated.^[24] Nash McCabe, a supposedly ordinary Pennsylvania voter, became a familiar face as she voiced her concern about Obama and the flag to the New York Times, ABC News and in the Philadelphia primary debate.^[25][26]

Bill Ayers

See also: Bill Ayers

In February, 2008, reports began circulating about Obama's connection with Bill Ayers, a former member of the radical 1960's group the Weather Underground.^[27] The two had served together for three years on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, an anti-poverty foundation founded in 1941, and had appeared on various panels. Ayers, who lives in the same Chicago neighborhood as Obama, had donated $200 to Obama's 2001 state senate campaign. ^[28] A Bloomberg L.P. reporter quoted Hillary Clinton who stated that the Republican Party might use Obama's association with Ayers to discredit Obama if he were chosen as the nominee of the Democratic Party.^[29] At the Democratic Party primary debate in Philadelphia on April 16, 2008, (full transcript), moderator George Stephanopoulos questioned Obama on the matter, leading to an exchange between Obama and Clinton.^[30][31] Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago issued a statement in support of Bill Ayers on April 17, as did the Chicago Tribune editorial board.^[32][33] During the Philadelphia debate, in response to Sen. Clinton's raising the Ayers issue, Obama referred to President Bill Clinton's pardoning of two Weather Underground convicts. (The convicts were Linda Sue Evans and Susan Rosenberg, although Obama did not refer to them by name.)^[34]

Rev. Jeremiah Wright

Main article: Jeremiah Wright sermon controversy

In March 2008, a controversy broke out concerning Obama's 23-year relationship with his (now retired) pastor and religious mentor, Jeremiah Wright, who preached Black Liberation Theology at Trinity United Church in Chicago, Illinois.^[35][36]

'Small town' comments

Senator Obama campaigned in Pennsylvania in preparation for the April 22 Pennsylvania primary, and spoke about small-town Pennsylvania at a private April 6 fundraising event in San Francisco. His remarks were widely reported:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.^[37][38]

Obama subsequently said that he did not choose his words well, as he meant people then vote on these issues rather than economic issues. "So I said, well you know, when you're bitter you turn to what you can count on. So people, they vote about guns...."^[39] Obama had addressed similar themes of guns, religion, and economics in 2004 during an interview with Charlie Rose (video).^[40][41] Obama's strategist David Axelrod pointed out that Bill Clinton had made similar comments during his presidential campaign in 1991.^[42]

Tony Rezko

Main article: Tony Rezko#Ties to politicians

Obama has been accused of favoritism and improper business dealings with Chicago developer Tony Rezko and associates.^[43][44] From 1993 to 2002, Obama was an attorney with a small Chicago law firm Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, which represented Rezko and his development company, Rezmar, although Obama himself never represented Rezko. The firm's then senior partner, Allison S. Davis, later went into business with Rezko.^{[44][45][46][47][48]} When Obama began his political career Rezko supported him, serving on his U.S. Senate finance committee and eventually along with his companies and associates donating $250,000 to his U.S. Senate campaign.^[49][50] Obama later purchased a home, in the process engaging in a series of transactions that involved Rezko's wife, ultimately resulting in a substantial profit for Rezko's development company.^{[51] [52][44][53]} Obama acknowledged that the exchange created an appearance of impropriety^[54] but denied any wrongdoing.^[54] In 2007, Obama wrote letters on behalf of a low-income building project headed by Rezko and Davis. Obama and Rezko, through their spokespeople, denied that the letters were written as a favor. Obama's spokesman claimed the support was offered solely in the interest of the community.

The land trade was reported by the major Chicago newspapers in late 2006,^[55] and the low income development transaction was reported locally in June, 2007. The Clinton campaign picked up the issue as a way of impugning Obama's ethics, an effort the Obama campaign attempted to counter by calling attention to Clinton's own Whitewater scandal.^[56] When Rezko was charged with federal crimes in connection with the "Operation Board Games" case (which did not involve Obama), the judge assigned to the case a former member of the Independent Counsel team that prosecuted the Whitewater case.^[56]

In an effort to comprehensively address the issue, Obama spent about an hour and a half with the editorial boards and journalists of the two major Chicago newspapers, the Chicago Tribune (audio and transcript) and the Chicago Sun Times (transcript), agreeing to answer all their questions with no time limit. The previous owner of the Obama house also provided an email exchange confirming Obama's description of the purchase.^[57] Both newspapers had endorsed Obama for the presidency earlier, and the Tribune specifically reaffirmed their support in an editorial.^[58]

Canada and NAFTA

According to a memo written by Canadian consulate staffer Joseph DeMora, after a meeting in Chicago with Obama's economic policy advisor Austan Goolsbee and Canadian Consul General Georges Rioux, Barack Obama's threat to withdraw from NAFTA should be viewed as "political positioning." The Obama campaign said the memorandum inaccurately described Professor Goolsbee’s comments, as well as Mr. Obama’s position. “At no point did anyone in our campaign convey to anyone that there had been any backing away from Obama’s position on Nafta,” a campaign spokesman, Bill Burton, said. ^{[59] [60]}

References