Pat Dollard | Young Americans

So … you mean to tell me that IF Hussein really didn’t want to make the hospital visit look as if it were ‘political-fodder’ … there was NOBODY in his campaign team that was wise enough, or smart enough, or paranoid enough to whisper in his ear, “Sir, if it comes out that you decided NOT to go, and canceled the hospital visit with the [wounded] troops, it WILL be “political-fodder” for the McCain camp to use against you …

Guess not.

Why was Obama a no-show at Landstuhl Medical Center?

by Paul Mirengoff (Powerline)

The controversy over Barack Obama’s decision not to visit U.S. troops at a military hospital in Germany has not died down. It’s easy to see why. Obama’s decision and the subsequent flap raise questions about his judgment, his honesty, and arguably the extent of his commitment to our wounded troops. In this lengthy post, I present my understanding of the campaign’s evolving explanations for Obama’s decision and, at the end, attempt to infer from the chronology what Obama’s real reason likely was.

At the outset, it should be noted that (as far as I can tell, though I may be wrong) Obama provided no explanation for his abrupt cancellation to officials at the military base. The military spokesperson who announced that Obama would not be visiting, stated: “Barack Obama will not be coming to us; I don’t know why.”

Common courtesy should have caused the campaign to provide an explanation for the cancellation. And beyond considerations of courtesy, political calculation would seem to dictate that, if you have a good reason for cancelling a visit, you provide it so as not to appear disrespectful. On the other hand, if you just don’t feel like it’s in your interest to come, you probably don’t explain.

The press, though, needed an explanation and, early on, campaign aide Robert Gibbs provided one. According to Gibbs, Obama decided out of respect for the hospitalized servicemen and women at Landstuhl that it would be inappropriate to visit troops at a U.S. military facility as part of a trip funded by the campaign. (ABC News, Jake Tapper’s blog, 7/24) Gibbs also claimed that the Pentagon had advised the campaign that the visit would be perceived as campaigning. (Fox News, 7/25) Along the same lines, Retired Air Force General Scott Gration, another Obama adviser, said that the campaign had decided not to make the visit after the Pentagon said the visit would be viewed as a campaign event. (USA Today, “On Politics” blog, 7/24)

This explanation, without more, makes little sense. Everything Obama did on his trip, including his visit to troops at a medical facility in Baghdad was viewed in part as a campaign event. Accordingly, top strategist David Axelrod offered a different story, claiming that the Pentagon told the campaign that Obama should not make the visit. (Chicago Sun Times, “Sweet” blog, 7/25) This would represent sufficient reason to cancel, but only if Axelrod’s statement were true. And here there were problems. For example, Gibbs did not back Axelrod up. He told reporters that the Pentagon had approved the visit, that it was “unclear” that the approval had ever been revoked, but that the Pentagon said, under military regulations, the visit would be considered “campaign related.” (The Washington Post, “The Trail,” 7/25) As discussed below, the Pentagon would later confirm that it had never advised Obama not to visit. In addition, it would contradict Gibbs’ more nuanced account.

Caught between two unsatisfactory explanations – one insufficient and the other false – the campaign attempted to shift the blame to John McCain. Thus, Andrea Mitchell reported that, according to the Obama campaign, McCain foreign policy advisers with connections to the Pentagon have “had something to do with this.” (MSNBC, “Morning Joe,” 7/25)

The Obama campaign also introduced an additional wrinkle. It said that the Pentagon had prohibited Obama from bringing a campaign aide (Retired Gen. Gratton) with him. Obama was welcome, though, to bring along his Senate staffers who apparently had accompanied him to the hospital in Iraq. (MSNBC, “Morning Joe,” 7/25) This story, corroborated by the Pentagon, is preferable to the vague “the Pentagon thinks I’m campaigning” and the concrete but untrue “the Pentagon says I shouldn’t come.” In this account, the Pentagon had no problem with Obama visiting as long as he didn’t bring a campaign aide.

But this explanation has an obvious problem: why didn’t Obama visit our wounded warriors without Gratton? Andrea Mitchell reported that the Obama campaign was upset with the Pentagon for imposing this condition which it speculated might not have been applied to “others.” (MSNBC, “Morning Joe,” 7/25) While it’s not difficult to believe that Obama and his campaign objected to the Pentagon “crimping their style,” this subjective unhappiness does not seem like a plausible explanation for cancelling a visit to troops in a military hospital.

Next Obama himself got into the excuse act. In London, he reverted back to the borderline nonsensical “they’ll think it’s political” narrative. Obama stated:

I was going to be accompanied by one of my advisers, former military officer, and we got notice that he would be treated as a campaign person, and it would therefore be perceived as political, because he had endorsed my candidacy, but he wasn’t on the senate staff. That triggered, then, a concern that maybe our visit was going to be perceived as political. And the last thing that I want to do is have injured soldiers and the staff at these wonderful institutions having to sort through whether this is political or not, or get caught in the cross fire between campaigns. So, rather than go forward and potentially get caught up in what might have been considered a political controversy of some sort, what we decided was that we would not make a visit, and instead I would call some of the troops who were there. So that’s essentially the extent of the story.

Obama persisted with this line in an interview with Fox News, saying “the last thing I want to do is to in any way distract the terrific work that’s being done in terms of treating our troops by getting it fouled up with a bunch of politics.” (Fox News “Live,” 7/26)

By now the campaign had dropped its pretense that the Pentagon had prevented Obama’s visit. Thus, Gibbs told Joe Scarborough: “We never said that the Pentagon prevented us from going. What we did say was that the Pentagon considered the trip to be a campaign trip.” (MSNBC, “Morning Joe,” 7/28)

But, as noted, to the extent the Pentagon considered the visit “campaigning” it was because of the folks Obama was bringing along. So the question remained, why didn’t Obama simply visit the troops without the campaign adviser? To this, Gibbs replied: “Even him going alone would likely be characterized by some as a political event.” (New York Times, 7/29)

Thus, the Obama campaign ultimately would have us believe that Obama stiffed our wounded troops out of fear that “some” (but not the Pentagon) would say he was engaged in campaigning. But the notion that Obama would be so easily deterred defies belief. Moreover, the candidate and the campaign must have understood that it defies belief; otherwise they would have asserted this explanation right away instead of blaming the Pentagon and the McCain campaign while groping for a credible narrative.

Moreover, Obama’s story is not consistent with statements by the Pentagon. Gibbs claimed that the Pentagon did not cite its rule regarding “campaign visits” until shortly before the scheduled event. However, the Pentagon said it informed the Obama campaign several days earlier that the date cited by Gibbs that he and his Senate staff could visit the hospital, but that no press would be allowed. (LA Times “Top of the Ticket” blog, 7/25) According to the Pentagon, the press and Obama’s campaign staff would be accommodated at the passenger terminal of a nearby air base. (same source) Chief Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell added that, while the Pentagon made the ground rules of the visit clear to the campaign – no press and no campaign aides – it “didn’t make any judgment whether it was or was not campaigning.” (The Politico, 7/25) In short, Obama was merely asked to follow basic rules. As long as he did, the Pentagon would have no problem with the visit and certainly would not (and did not) declare the visit “campaigning.”

So why didn’t Obama make the scheduled visit to our wounded troops? If one believes the Pentagon, the answer is not that the Pentagon was going to label the visit campaigning. And it’s almost impossible to believe that, if the Pentagon wasn’t going to make that claim, Obama would be concerned that “others” with no particular authority might do so. Obama has no history of permitting his critics to dictate his schedule.

The most logical explanation for Obama’s decision is that he objected to one or both of the two conditions the Pentagon laid down – leaving his campaign adviser behind and/or leaving the press behind. As noted, there’s no reason why the exclusion of his campaign aide would have been a deal breaker. Obama is certainly capable of talking to troops without a campaign aide. More likely, Obama was put off by not having the press along. For the absence of the press would deprive Obama of what he seemed to crave most throughout the entire trip – media attention and, above all, great pictures.

Other things being equal, Obama presumably would have been willing to visit our wounded troops even without the media. But other things are never equal when a candidate’s valuable time is being parceled out. For me, then, the best explanation for why Obama cancelled isn’t some high-minded desire not to appear “political.” Rather the best explanation is that he weighed the potential value of a visit against the opportunity costs (including rest time foregone) and concluded that the trip wasn’t worth it. And given that the Pentagon had recently informed the Obama campaign that the press could not come along, it seems plausible that this information factored into the candidate’s revised cost-benefit analysis.

Schooling Hussein:

“Injured” is what happens when you fall out of a tree … or off your bike

“Wounded” is what happens to troops in war …

——————————————————————————————-

McCain Charge Against Obama Lacks Evidence

By Michael D. Shear and Dan Balz - (WaPo)

For four days, Sen. John McCain and his allies have accused Sen. Barack Obama of snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true.

The attacks are part of a newly aggressive McCain operation whose aim is to portray the Democratic presidential candidate as a craven politician more interested in his image than in ailing soldiers, a senior McCain adviser said. They come despite repeated pledges by the Republican that he will never question his rival’s patriotism.

The essence of McCain’s allegation is that Obama planned to take a media entourage, including television cameras, to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany during his week-long foreign trip, and that he canceled the visit when he learned he could not do so. “I know that, according to reports, that he wanted to bring media people and cameras and his campaign staffers,” McCain said Monday night on CNN’s “Larry King Live.”

The Obama campaign has denied that was the reason he called off the visit. In fact, there is no evidence that he planned to take anyone to the American hospital other than a military adviser, whose status as a campaign staff member sparked last-minute concern among Pentagon officials that the visit would be an improper political event.

“Absolutely, unequivocally wrong,” Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said in an e-mail after McCain’s comments to Larry King.

Despite serious and repeated queries about the charge over several days, McCain and his allies continued yesterday to question Obama’s patriotism by focusing attention on the canceled hospital visit.

McCain’s campaign released a statement from retired Sgt. Maj. Craig Layton, who worked as a commander at the hospital, who said: “If Senator Obama isn’t comfortable meeting wounded American troops without his entourage, perhaps he does not have the experience necessary to serve as commander in chief.”

McCain’s advisers said they do not intend to back down from the charge, believing it an effective way to create a “narrative” about what they say is Obama’s indifference toward the military.

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said again yesterday that the Republican’s version of events is correct, and that Obama canceled the visit because he was not allowed to take reporters and cameras into the hospital.

“It is safe to say that, according to press reports, Barack Obama avoided, skipped, canceled the visit because of those reasons,” he said. “We’re not making a leap here.”

Asked repeatedly for the “reports,” Bounds provided three examples, none of which alleged that Obama had wanted to take members of the media to the hospital.

The McCain campaign has produced a television commercial that says that while in Germany, Obama “made time to go to the gym but canceled a visit with wounded troops. Seems the Pentagon wouldn’t allow him to bring cameras.” The commercial shows Obama shooting a basketball — an event that happened earlier in the trip on a stopover in Kuwait, where the Democrat spoke to troops in a gym before grabbing a ball and taking a single shot. The military released the video footage.

A reconstruction of the circumstances surrounding Obama’s decision not to visit Landstuhl, based on firsthand reporting from the trip, shows that his campaign never contemplated taking the media with him.

The first indication reporters got that Obama was planning, or had planned, to visit the hospital came last Thursday morning, shortly after the entourage arrived in Berlin. On the seats of the media bus were schedules for his stop in Germany and the final entry — a Friday-morning departure — indicated that the senator’s plane would fly from Berlin to Ramstein Air Base.

When a reporter asked spokeswoman Linda Douglass that morning about the trip to Ramstein, she said that the trip had been considered but that Obama was not going to go. At that point, the campaign provided no other information.

Later that night, after Obama gave a speech in Berlin, a campaign source spoke about the canceled stop on the condition of anonymity. The official said that the trip was canceled after the Pentagon informed a campaign official that the visit would be considered a campaign event.

Overnight, the Obama team issued two statements, one from senior campaign official Robert Gibbs and the other from retired Air Force Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration, an Obama foreign policy adviser who was on the trip.

Gibbs’s statement said the hospital visit, which had been on the internal schedule for several weeks, was canceled because Obama decided it would be inappropriate to go there as part of a trip paid for by his campaign. Gration said the Pentagon had told the campaign that the visit would be seen as a political trip.

Those two statements, while not inconsistent, did not clarify whether the visit was canceled in reaction to Pentagon concerns or because of worries about appearances. They also opened Obama’s camp to charges that it was offering slightly different reasons at different times.

Gibbs said yesterday that the campaign had planned to inform the traveling media members sometime on the morning of the flight to Ramstein that Obama was intending to visit the hospital but had made no plans to take reporters, including even the small, protective press pool that now accompanies him most places.

Reporters, he said, probably would have been able to get off the plane but not leave an air base facility close by. “We had made absolutely no arrangements to transport the press to the hospital,” he said.

On Friday afternoon, en route from Berlin to Paris, Gibbs briefed reporters traveling with Obama. He noted that the candidate had visited wounded soldiers several weeks earlier at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the District and at a combat support hospital while in Iraq earlier in the week — both times without reporters.

At one point, a reporter asked, “Why not just say it is never inappropriate to visit men and women in service?” — a key McCain charge — “What is your response to that?”

Gibbs replied: “It is entirely likely that someone would have attacked us for having gone. And it is entirely likely — and it has come about — that people have attacked us for not going.”

On Saturday in London, Obama addressed the controversy during a news conference. He said Pentagon concerns about Gration’s status triggered the decision not to visit Landstuhl.

“We got notice that [Gration] would be treated as a campaign person, and it would therefore be perceived as political because he had endorsed my candidacy but he wasn’t on the Senate staff,” Obama said. “That triggered then a concern that maybe our visit was going to be perceived as political, and the last thing that I want to do is have injured soldiers and the staff at these wonderful institutions having to sort through whether this is political or not, or get caught in the crossfire between campaigns.”

Obama’s explanation, which came after more than a day of controversy, was the clearest in noting that it was Pentagon concerns about Gration accompanying him to the hospital that forced Obama to reconsider and, ultimately, cancel the visit.

Gibbs was asked yesterday about the continuing allegations from McCain that the real reason was a desire to bring a media entourage to the hospital.

“That’s completely untrue, and I think, honestly, they know it’s untrue,” Gibbs said.

Return to (Powerline) Paul Mirengoff’s observation:

I don’t know what evidence McCain and “his allies” are relying on. However, it seems to me that the facts I cited (above) — Obama’s campaign’s shifting justifications for the decision, the implausibility of the justification it eventually settled upon, and the timing of the cancellation (not long after the military says it told the campaign the press could not accompany Obama) — constitute circumstantial evidence that the absence of press was a factor in the decision.

I’ve seen civil court cases won on less.