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Obama camp denies link to Palin smear; smears McCain
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The continuing investigation into the the release of a video designed to smear Republican Vice Presidential Nominee, Governor Sarah Palin has led the Obama campaign to blame John McCain. Writing at The Atlantic, columnist Marc Ambinder states that an Obama spokesperson denied that the campaign was involved with the video and claimed that the investigation into it came from the McCain camp. Ambinder quotes Tommy Vietor as stating that “Neither our campaign nor any of our consultants had any involvement with this YouTube video, and the McCain campaign should provide a shred of believable evidence before advancing false allegations and misleading voters yet another time."
This Obama camp allegation is a flat out falsehood. After I wrote about the initial investigation conducted by The Jawa Report blog and other bloggers (which I read about on those blogs), I continued investigating the matter on my own in my capacity as a freelance investigative journalist. I then released my findings in this column.
Speaking for myself I have never had any contact with the McCain campaign or the Senator about this issue. To be honest, I'm not a particularly big McCain supporter. But, if I had contact that would be a front and center disclosure in my writing. Several months ago I listened in on a McCain conference call in anonymity, and I never conversed with any of the participants. I didn't waste my time on any more of those calls after that.
As for the other investigators, I asked The Jawa Report if they had any contact with the McCain camp. "Rusty" denied it was involved. No part of this investigation was orchestrated by the McCain campaign. In fact, Rusty told me that the McCain campaign refused to comment when contacted for comment about the matter. The Obama campaign is firing blindly in it's denial.
What that investigation did and did not say
The investigation discovered that the Palin video had been distributed to left-wing fringe blogs by executives with the Winner PR firm. Ethan Winner, an executive at the firm later admitted it had originated with him and denied that anyone else had a hand. The question then became “was anybody else involved?”
It was noted that the methodology involved in posting and distributing the ad was similar to a process called “astroturfing”. It was also noted that Obama media advisor David Axelrod is a recognized authority of this PR tactic. This raised the question of David Axelrod's involvement in the matter. In addition, the “viral” video pushed by Ethan Winner had similar production values as Axelrod produced Obama campaign videos. In my research, I found evidence that Axelrod had worked with a Winner PR firm in a previous campaign.
In my writing, and at The Jawa Report, nobody has claimed to have direct evidence that Axelrod handed Winner the video or even gave him a “wink..wink” to make it happen. That would be an assertion that nobody outside the principles could ever support without an admission by them. But the evidence supports that conclusion though not definitively: a pre-existing relationship between Winner and Axelrod has been established, similar production qualities in the videos, and certainly the motivation was there as the Winner clan includes big Obama supporters.
In his column, Marc Ambinder tries to dissuade readers from the evidence: Ethan Winner did not do a good job of hiding his identity. He claims that if Axelrod has been the originator than it would be stupid for him to use the same voice-over artist. It's easy to create professional looking videos. The video is too slick to have been meant for a viral campaign, which usually contain defects that make them memorable.
His argument boils down to Ethan Winner being dumb. That's not a a great argument for Ambinder to hang his hat on, but let's address that. Maybe Winner isn't dumb, or more to the point too dumb to have done it for the Obama campaign, it's just that Winners posted the videos in order to distribute them to left-wing blogs. He personally contacted those blogs wanting to be identified as being down with the cause until it blew up in his face. In addition, he had no reason to suspect his PR firm would be identified by investigation and further tied to Axelrod. That was a very unique happenstance.
As to creating professional looking videos. Yes, anyone can call up Axelrod's voice-over talent, slip her a few bucks and get an ad out there. That seems to be Ambinder's logic anyway. Or is it more likely it was done by the same production company that used her voice in other ads? You be the judge on what makes sense to you.
Yes, everyone with photo shop and a video editor application has million dollar contracts to churn out high quality political adds, right? The truth is, it takes skill, time, money, and connections to make ads like this. As Ambinder himself notes, viral videos are often flawed (at the same time he notes that this perfectly produced video could have been done by anyone).
If like me, you suspect that this video was an Axelrod production, it leaves you with two reasonable theories. First, the ad was possibly produced by Axelrod before The New York Times retracted the claim carried in the video. Then Axelrod shelved it. At that point, Winner probably had the ad from Axelrod and was either told to sit on it and he disobeyed or told to release it as a viral video.
Take note of the Obama spokespeson's denial. He said we had nothing to do with this "YouTube video". Let's parse that statement. By characterzing the video as a "YouTube video" he can disassociate the general act of making the video from the act of uploading it to YouTube. In fact, this does not expliciately deny that Axelrod's company or another contractor produced the video for the Obama campaign. Too fine a point? Does what the meaning of "is" is ring any bells?
Or, perhaps, as Ethan Winner claims, he was completely responsible from top to bottom for the ad. Of course, a sleazy ad like this would harm any professional PR firm's reputation. What would his motivation be to damage his own reputation?
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