IndiaPost.com - Obama apologises for India remarks

NEW YORK: After deriding Hillary Clinton for her Indian connections prompting angry reaction from Indian-Americans, the campaign of Barak Obama, her Democratic party rival in the US Presidential race, has launched a major damage control exercise by expressing "regret" and offering explanation.

The move is seen as an attempt to assuage the feelings of the influential community, which is becoming a major contributor to election campaigns. Facing flak over his campaign’s paper criticizing his party rival Hillary Clinton’s links with Indian-Americans, Democratic presidential hopeful Barak Obama has blamed lower-level officials in his team for the document and described it as "stupid and caustic". "It was a screw-up on the part of our research team," Obama said during a meeting with Des Moines Register editors and reporters.

"It wasn’t anything I had seen or my senior staff had seen," he added. The memo, which was passed on friendly political correspondents to quote from it without attribution to the campaign, had implied that Clintons haves raised tens of thousands of dollars from American Indians and that is why they are supporting outsourcing without caring for lost American jobs.

The memo denigrating Clinton’s Indian connection with the understanding that they will not reveal the source, became a major embarrassment and a public relations disaster at a time when strenuous efforts are being made to set up "Indians for Obama" chapters — on the lines of "Indians for Hillary" chapters— across the country. Confronted by the paper, the Obama campaign expressed regret and asserted that he has been a "long-time friend" of the Indian-American community. "Our campaign is fortunate to have strong support of the Indian-Americans across the country," campaign manager David Plouffe said.

"The intent of the document was to discuss the issue of outsourcing but we regret the tone that part of the document took," he said. The paper also picked up a remark of Hillary Clinton to imply that her investments in India made her fit to fight elections in India. It was referring to the remark made by Hillary Clinton to an Indian-American audience in March that "I can certainly run for the Senate seat in Punjab and win easily." "That particular quote was a joke, I think, that Hillary Clinton made to an Indian-American audience," Obama told the Register. "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," he said. With his efforts to raise money from the rich Indian American community on the line, Obama, in a posting on his website, said he was not aware of the contents of the memo before it was released and a new policy put in place would ensure that senior staff will review materials distributed.

The memo, which was obtained by the Clinton campaign and passed on the media, also denigrated Hillary Clinton’s major fund raisers, including leading hotelier and community leader Sant Chatwal. It came at a highly sensitive time when his campaign was making efforts to create "Indians for Obama" chapters on the lines of "Indians for Hillary Clinton" chapters to raise fund for him. In the memo, his campaign had also referred to former President Bill Clinton charging USD 300,000 in speech fees form Cisco which had moved jobs to India. The implication was that the Clintons are investing in India and care little about American jobs.

The Obama campaign now explains that the paper was written in the context of debate on outsourcing which is moving the American jobs overseas. Community leaders in New York and elsewhere were still discussing the intent of the Obama’s campaign especially its apparent attempt to malign major contributors to and organizers of Hillary Clinton’s major fund-raisers, including leading hotelier Sant Chatwal.

The paper circulated by Obama campaign had in effect claimed that Hillary Clinton is supporting outsourcing as she is getting hundreds of thousands dollars for her campaign from Indian-Americans and because of that she does not care about lost American jobs. Obama had promised to run a clean campaign but apparently his campaign decided to produce what is called the research paper as Clinton consistently scored ahead of him and some recent polls had suggested that she is increasing the lead.

The political campaigns often prepare such papers for friendly reporters who mention the facts without attributing to the campaign. But in this case, the Clinton campaign somehow got the paper and handed over to the New York Times which confirmed its authorship leading to strong denunciation from the Indian-American leaders across the board and demands that Obama himself explain it. "In this business, half the time we are attacked for not being tough enough and now we are being attacked for being too harsh," campaign’s chief strategist David Axelrold told the Times.

"The truth is that this is a tough competitive business." "Will we be judged by a different standard? We have, in many ways, held ourselves to a different standard. (But) when they throw stink bomb at you, you can’t be caught unawares," he said. This is second time that the Obama campaign has suffered embarrassment.

Earlier, it had to distance itself from entertainment executive David Geffen after he said that Hillary Clinton was unelectable and her husband Bill Clinton, former President, untrustworthy. Obama had then asked his campaign "to be careful not to slip into playing the game as it customarily is played."