Commentary Magazine


Topic: Ben LaBolt

The Collateral Damage of Obama’s Post-Modernist Presidency

In response to a recent post — in which I wrote that “Barack Obama is a thoroughly post-modern president. Words and facts have no objective standing; they are relative, socially constructed, a way to advance personal reality.” — I was criticized by a Time magazine reporter for continuing my “relentless attempts to depict Barack Obama as a despicable human being” and for employing tactics that are “not only intellectually dishonest, but cynical in the extreme.”

In fact, the point of my piece — which is that during oral arguments before the Supreme Court President Obama’s legal team referred to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as a tax even as his administration now says it isn’t a tax and never was a tax — remains unrefuted. Indeed, this short clip validates exactly what I was arguing. It shows Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt insisting that “at no point” did any of the government’s lawyers, including Solicitor General Verrilli, refer to the ACA as a tax — followed by Solicitor General Donald Verrilli referring to the ACA as a tax.

How inconvenient.

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Obama’s Bain Hypocrisy

ABC News reports that one of Obama’s top bundlers, Bain Capital executive Jonathan Lavine, actually appears to have had much more of a connection to the Ampad plant-closing issue than Mitt Romney did:

The Obama campaign’s latest attack tells the story of workers at an Indiana office supply company who lost their jobs after a Bain-owned company named American Pad & Paper (Ampad) took over their company and drove it out of business.

Here’s what the Obama web video doesn’t mention: A top Obama donor and fundraiser had a much more direct tie to the controversy and actually served on the board of directors at Richardson, Texas-based Ampad, which makes office paper products….

Lavine started working for Bain in 1993. He was one of three Bain executives who served on the board of directors of Ampad for several years, a post he held until 1999. Here’s a news release announcing his departure from the company in April 1999.

Lavine’s placement on the board of Ampad suggests he had a more direct role than Romney in the series of events surrounding the layoffs, labor disputes and eventual bankruptcy of the Marion, Ind., factory featured in the Obama campaign video.

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Pressure Booker? From Inept to Dishonest

Earlier today I criticized Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt for his strikingly inept television appearance. But ineptness is one thing; misleading people is quite another. And as this new RNC ad  makes clear, LaBolt’s statement that the Obama campaign did not reach out to Newark Mayor Cory Booker in the aftermath of Booker’s defense of Bain Capital was simply not true.

Mayor Booker himself admits he was contacted by the Obama campaign. Which means that LaBolt was either lying or he’s speaking out on issues he has no knowledge about while giving us the impression that he’s an authoritative voice.

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Message Discipline Ad Absurdum

Anderson Cooper’s interview with Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt is fantastically ineffective. CNN’s Cooper asks LaBolt questions about the hypocrisy of Obama’s attack on Bain Capital. LaBolt refuses to answer them, choosing instead to simply repeat his talking points. This isn’t unheard of in American politics, of course. But LaBolt’s mechanical, rigid, and robotic style — his refusal even to acknowledge Cooper’s question if only to pivot off of it — is beyond parody. It is message discipline ad absurdum.

It’s impossible to know why the Obama campaign would think there is any up-side to putting someone like LaBolt on the air. Anyone even remotely objective would come away from this interview less impressed with the president’s position, correctly assuming that LaBolt’s inability to address the questions directed at him means he has no counter-argument to offer.

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