During a meeting with the Des Moines Register, Senator Barack Obama finally sounded off against the not-for-attribution research document released by his campaign last week targeting Hillary Clinton's relationship with Indian outsourcing firms.
I had mentioned in several diary comments on the subject that this would likely not be an attempt at humor Obama would be happy about. I was right.
Obama launched into the staff responsible when asked about the document during the meeting with reporters. The article quotes Obama as saying
"It was a screw-up on the part of our research team. It wasn't anything I had seen or my senior staff had seen."
He went on to explain the "D-Punjab" reference, a source of particular irritation from both the Clinton campaign and the Indian community:
"That particular quote was a joke, I think, that Hillary Clinton made to an Indian-American audience. The research team thought it would be clever to put that at the top.
I thought it was stupid and caustic and not only didn't reflect my view of the complicated issue of outsourcing ... it also didn't reflect the fact that I have longstanding support and friendships within the Indian-American community.
I take responsibility for it, as does our campaign. and we quickly apologized and are communicating that in various circles around the country"
This is not the first embarassing initiative demonstrated by understaffers who, one can only surmise, have been empowered to make press releases without senior staff clearance.
I thought heads might roll over this and that very well could still be the case. However such firings might draw more attention to the episode than it continues to warrant. Comments?