Dirty tricks?

Josh Marshall thinks the flurry of stories about the recent Dean-Clark meetings was cleverly spun up by dirty tricksters at Dean HQ:

Is the Dean camp trying to set up Wes Clark? (Yep, I’m talkin’ about you, Joe!) This piece in today’s Post says Dean and Clark “discussed the vice presidency at a weekend meeting in California.” Read down into the article and there doesn’t seem to be that much there there. But the story got picked up on CNN too. And now the story of the day is not those very active discussions Clark is having about his own presidential run, but the potential ‘Dean/Clark alliance’.

That’s one heck of a reach, if you ask me. I think the Post story reads a whole lot more like a couple of reporters in search of a storyline than like a campaign plant. But I have pro-Dean bias, and am certainly vastly less in-the-know than Marshall, so give him the benefit of the doubt and say Dean HQ brought this meeting to the attention of the Post. How is this a “dirty trick,” exactly?

Marshall goes on to say:

[I]f Clark decides to get into the race after all, doesn’t that mean that he wobbled, that as recently as this week he was thinking of taking the number two slot from Dean, or endorsing Dean? (His opponents want to play to the ‘indecision’ meme, remember.) I think that’s what some people would like us to think.

Now, I don’t know the term of art that professional reporter types use for baseless speculation about the motives of unknown actors, but colloquially, it rhymes with “he extracted it from his donkey.”

But again, Marshall: Beltway god. Me: Chicagoland nerd. On Marhall’s side: a Washington Whispers column that he links to in a later post. On my side: diddly. Grant that Marshall’s donkey squoze out the truth. Dean HQ pushed this story specifically to make it look like Wes Clark is having trouble making up his mind.

Again: How is this a “dirty trick,” exactly? Isn’t he having trouble? Hasn’t he publicly stated that he’s not yet made a decision, after 6 or more months of pondering? And anyway, no laws were broken. No lies were told. No innuendo whispered. No personal life or loved one smeared, insulted, ridiculed, or vilified. No record twisted. No campaign headquarters broken into. Even if Joe Trippi ginned this story up out of nothing, it’s harmless spin, and I think—call me a donkey extractor—but I think, maybe, Josh Marshall like Wes Clark a bit more than he likes Howard Dean and I think, maybe, by crying “Dirty tricks!” he is engaging in a little spinning of his own. Harmlessly! Of course.

Filed under: politics/2004