In the Garden, Growth Has Its Seasons
The Scarlet & Black, a student newspaper at Iowa's Grinnell College, reports on Hillary Clinton's latest campaign travail. It happened at a speech Mrs. Clinton gave last Tuesday in Newton, half an hour from Grinnell:
After her speech, Clinton accepted questions. But according to Grinnell College student Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff '10, some of the questions from the audience were planned in advance. "They were canned," she said. Before the event began, a Clinton staff member approached Gallo-Chasanoff to ask a specific question after Clinton's speech. "One of the senior staffers told me what [to ask]," she said.
The campaign's explanation is classically Clintonian:
But the Clinton campaign also denied the practice of planting. "It's not a practice of our campaign to ask people to ask specific questions," said Mark Daley, Clinton's Iowa Communications Director. Daley said that when an event is focusing on a specific topic, such as health care or Iraq, "people are encouraged to ask questions in these regards," but denied that they are given specific questions.
But when directly asked if his statements meant that planting does not occur in the Hillary campaign, Daley could only say, "to the best of my knowledge."
"[Planting] is not something that is encouraged in our campaign," he said.
Reader Gerry McCracken translates this into English for us: "I can't remember if we have ever planted questions, and we certainly don't think we should plant questions, and if we do plant questions, we don't do it all the time."
opinionjournal.com
Let me re-translate it: You can't prove we have planted other questions, so we catigorically deny everything. I cannot recall, I do not recall, I will not recall, If I recalled, I certainly would not admit it to you. |
