Judgment calls, Obama, Clinton The Party

In 2002 Senator Obama had no plans to run for President and did not think President Bush had made a good case for going to war with Iraq. In 2004 Senator Obama in an interview with the New York Times declined to criticize the Democratic Party's presidential and vice presidential nominees, Sen. John F. Kerry and then-Sen. John Edwards, for supporting the 2002 war resolution. "But I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports," Obama said, according to the Times. "What would I have done? I don't know. What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made."

What is interesting is that Sen. Obama was uncertain about what he would have done different two years after Sen. Clinton supported the 2002 war resolution. As a Democrat I supported the Kerry/Edwards ticket regardless of the fact that both Kerry and Edwards had supported the resolution, most Democrats did. Senator Clinton, like Sen. Kerry and Sen. Edwards, was simply supporting the party just like Senator Obama was doing in 2004 when he answers “I don’t know.”

The point here is that Sen. Obama has used this issue to his advantage in more than one instance. First Senator Obama is against the War in Iraq by 2002 but supported Sen. Kerry in 2004 who committed the same sin he accuses Sen. Clinton of committing two years earlier. By 2008 Sen. Obama is no longer willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to Senator Clinton regarding making the proper “judgment calls” but is willing to do so for the Democratic party as a whole. In other words if Sen. Clinton had bad judgment problems back in 2002 then so did the whole Democratic party and its leadership at the time. If the case is that the entire Democratic party (except 22 members) had issues making proper judgment calls then maybe every member of the Democratic party should jump ship.

Michael Moore was very vocally against the war by 2004 and was also not privy to Senate intelligence reports. So my Question to Mr. Moore is what would he have done different back in 2004 because Sen. Obama did not “know?”