One of the least attractive features of the blogosphere -- left or right -- is its ability to get outraged very quickly over very little. In a community with an outrage addiction, Bob Novak (of Plame outing fame) was able to set off a fire storm of righteous indignation with three paragraphs of unsourced material.
You don't need a Ph.D in political theory or American history to know that Republicans win when Democrats -- as they sadly so often do -- fight amongst themselves. Does anyone think that Novak had any Democrat's interest at heart in his piece?
Novak's claim was made in his column in the conservative magazine Human Events. When in the pages of Human Events you read an article that disparages Democrats a decent respect for truth and accuracy requires that we should carefully parse the actual claims therein.
Why and how you were pwnd -->
Here is Novak's item in its entirety (fair use since these three paragraphs are part of a longer column with other items):
Agents of Sen. Hillary Clinton are spreading the word in Democratic circles that she has scandalous information about her principal opponent for the party's presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, but has decided not to use it. The nature of the alleged scandal was not disclosed.
This word-of-mouth among Democrats makes Obama look vulnerable and Clinton look prudent. It comes during a dip for the front-running Clinton after she refused to take a stand on New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's now discarded plan to give driver's licenses to illegal aliens.
Experienced Democratic political operatives believe Clinton wants to avoid a repetition of 2004, when attacks on each other by presidential candidates Howard Dean and Richard Gephardt were mutually destructive and facilitated John Kerry's nomination.
I draw your attention to the use of the word "agents". Not even Novak is claiming that the Clinton campaign says that Clinton has "scandalous material" about Obama. He ascribes this to shadowy "agents". (And let me say that if there's one subject Novak should take pains to avoid, it is "agents"). The word "agent" could cover a range different relationships from a paid member of the Clinton campaign to some pro-Clinton blogger who believes that he is acting in the interests of the Clinton campaign.
Specifically, Novak does not make any claim that his information comes from anyone associated with -- or even authorized -- by the Clinton campaign. Why is that?
Notice also that Novak specifically says that "the nature of the scandal was not disclosed". Now, that could mean that his source refused to reveal that what "scandalous" information he had. It could also mean that the source himself did not know the nature of the allegedly scandalous alleged material. If the later, the "agent" would have been doing no more than repeating a rumor he'd heard.
Finally, Novak didn't say that anyone told him this, but only that it's being spread in "Democratic circles". "Democratic circles" is a phrase that could include a Berkeley cocktail party (or tofu party, or whatever) or even an ostensibly pro-Democratic group blog like dKos.
Now, Novak's statement would be accurate if someone from the Clinton campaign had called him directly and said "we've got dirt on Obama, but I'm not going to tell you what it is". However, it would also be accurate if Novak read on line a blogger saying "I've heard that the Clinton campaign has lots of dirt on Obama but they're not going to use it".
In fact, Novak's statement could probably be stretched to make me, LarryInNYC, the source! How? Firstly, I'm often taken for a Clinton supporter -- and I am, although not to the exclusion of the other Democratic candidates. Since I often stick up, forcefully, for Clinton here at dKos, could Novak call me an "agent" for Clinton? Frankly, there are a lot of people right here who would agree with that usage. You'll probably meet a few of them in the comments to this diary! If you take me for an "agent" of Clinton, you could then interpret a statement along the lines of "If anyone has an opposition research team, I'm sure it's the Clinton's. On the other hand, they're also the most likely to know that primary voters don't like to see fighting among the candidates, so I expect they'd hold any material they have as a threat of retaliation rather than using it directly" as an "agent spreading the word the word in Democratic circles".
Have I made such a statement. Although I don't recall it, I'm sure I have said something along those lines -- that if any campaign has dirt it will be the Clinton campaign. Could I be Novak's source?
There are four possible origins to the Novak story:
- Bob Novak invented it out of whole cloth.
- Someone from the Clinton campaign leaked the information to him for reasons that aren't quite clear to me (his analysis of why this might happen is pretty stupid, in my opinion).
- The Obama campaign leaked it as a preemptive strike against some perceived upcoming attack from the Clinton campaign or elsewhere.
- Novak heard some kind of unsubstantiated rumor about material someone thought the Clinton campaign has.
Of the four, I think the first three are pretty unlikely. I'd bet that number 4 is the most likely. Who started the rumor? Was it based on real knowledge or just a supposition? Is it true, or not?
Who cares!
Regardless of what the answer to any of those questions is, Novak is engaging in rumor mongering with the goal of causing intramural disharmony among Democrats. It's simply his good luck that not only does he have the historic tendency towards intra-Party fighting to help him along but the gullible and disharmonious blogosphere to pick up and echo his unsubstantiated charges.
Is there anyone here -- one person -- who believes that Novak's first thought when he got this rumor was anything other than "This will really set those Dems at each other's throats"! Is there anyone who thinks the interest of the Democrats, or any Democratic candidate, was foremost in his mind? Anywhere in his mind?
Congratulations Daily Kos. You've been pwnd.