POLITICS: Obama apologizes for campaign 'screw-up'

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[UPDATE: Aziz Haniffa of Rediff/India Abroad has this interview with Obama, who said he was "furious" when he heard about the document, and spoke of how much he values Indian/South Asian support. It appears that Haniffa is the first desi journalist that Obama himself has spoken to - please correct us if that's not the case.]

As the Des Moines Register reports (and as Ultrabrown-ie Manish Vij and Ram Narayanan have brought to our attention) Senator Barack Obama apologized for a campaign memo that maligned Senator Hillary Clinton - calling her Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab) - based on the fact that she and her husband had invested in Indian companies (see our earlier posting) and thus represented outsourcing interests. Obama blamed aides who hadn't checked with him or their supervisors.

"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."

Obama said, "I take responsibility for it, as does our campaign. and we quickly apologized and are communicating that in various circles around the country."

But as Josh Gerstein notes in The New York Sun's Latest Politics blog, damage has been done. He said Indian-American supporters are "fuming" and points to a posting on the website of South Asians for Obama:

In addition to being offended by the clear anti-Indian sentiment in the memo, we were particularly disturbed because the memo flies in the face of what we respect most about Senator Obama -- his inclusive message and his ability to relate to people of all backgrounds.

The page includes several comments, some of which express disillusionment with Obama's slow response, and one person wondering how the campaign would've responded to variations on the supposed joke:

What really bothers me is that a (D-Israel), (R-Vatican) or (D-Mexico) would have triggered an immediate apology. We deserve the same connsideration.

Comments

[kwable]

It is not only the statement that Obama needs to distance himself from. In his excuse, Obama suggested that the campaign had taken "appropriate measures" to ensure that such a blunder would not occur again alleging that neither he nor his senior staff approved the relase of the statement. Frankly, this rings all too familiar after the U.S. Attorney firing debacle and A.G. Gonzalez's mutterings of a miscommunication at the senior levels of his staff. Obama needs to distance himself from the statement, yes. But more importantly he needs to distance himself from the Washington philosophy that takes cover behind the failings of an amorphous bureaucracy coupled with a gesture aimed at "owning the mistake" to recover from any major policy failure. In reality, such failures are the result of the people who we vote into office not caring enough.

[Kapil]

The Indian American's umbrage at Obama campaign's insensitive comments and subsequent lame & insufficient apologies aside, what disappoints me is that this is just a symptom of the American mainstream politicians' readiness to give into the temptation of turning every debate into "Us vs Them" paranoia. It is disheartening to see that nearly every issue has been dumbed down to a simplistic level of xenophobic rhetoric in recent American polity, and many pregnant nuances amongst which various solutions possibly lay have been left out. It is true of the immigration debate, it is definitely true of the debate around War on Terror and perhaps even for the paranoia around free-trade and outsourcing.

more on my post at http://www.arthshastra.com/post/229