Obama's Campaign Not Off the Hook For Landstuhl

Friday, July 25, 2008

BARACK OBAMA

I had hoped to enjoy an afternoon free from politics, but I must note the latest controversy...

The latest version of the why-didn't-Obama-visit-wounded-troops story has some lefty readers insisting that Bush, McCain, and the Pentagon conspired to make sure Obama didn't meet with any wounded troops at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.

The reporting on Talking Points Memo, no friend of McCain:

A Pentagon spokesperson confirms to me that because of longstanding Department of Defense regulations, Pentagon officials told Obama aides that he couldn't visit the base with campaign staff. This left Obama with little choice but to cancel the trip, since the plan to visit with campaign aides had been in the works for weeks.

But while Greg Sargent reports, "the Obama camp says they received the Pentagon's directives on Wednesday, after they were already abroad," those "longstanding regulations" on no campaign staffers didn't just appear. Some lefty bloggers are insisting it was a last minute change on the part of the Pentagon, which wouldn't appear to be supported by the facts. The Obama campaign and his Senate office should have foreseen the logistical problems of an official Senate fact-finding portion of the trip right in the middle of the campaign-funded portions of it. (Or did they think that those regulations were just going to be waived because it was a special occasion?)

(Just as an exercise, I decided to take a look at options for traveling the 420 miles from Berlin to Landstuhl. The campaign plane would have been a no-go, for obvious reasons*. But there's a train, and a rent-a-car. (How do they pay? Senator, if there was ever a time to whip out the AmEx, this would be the time.) Could Obama have hopped on the Autobahn with the Secret Service guys and shown up at the gate? (Presumably the campaign staffer could have driven Obama to Landstuhl and waited outside.) I would have been impressed with the ingenuity. Of course, the traveling press would have screamed bloody murder about being left behind as Obama jets across Germany with no warning, but I think the McCain camp had it right — nobody would have given Obama much grief for making a stop to visit troops. (The lack of press would have made it even better, knocking down the "it's just a photo-op" excuse.)

Instead of that (admittedly difficult) scenario, the Obama campaign released an initial statement that the candidate decided it would be "inappropriate" to visit the troops on a trip funded by the campaign.

Fumble.

UPDATE: The campaign plane was permitted to land, the Pentagon now adds. So there wasn't an issue of transportation.

Obama himself now tells the press that the entire controversy was over one adviser, Gration, would be permitted to join Obama. (Remember who told you this first.)

NBC says Gration was the one telling reporters that the Pentagon scrubbed the visit.

Looks like my source was right. The visit's cancellation comes down to one adviser's disagreement with a Pentagon rule. I wonder if Obama feels like he's being well-served by retired Major General Jonathan S. Gration.

07/25 05:02 PM Share