The Fromson File

Sometimes political purity can overcome common sense. First, Politico and then the July 10 New York Times disclosed how a decorated, disabled Vietnam hero was dis-invited from an Atlanta fund-raiser for Barack Obama a week earlier. It turns out that Max Cleland, a former Senator from Georgia and a triple amputee, was a lobbyist for a company named Tissue Regeneration Technologies. The Obama brainstormers reasoned that having Cleland at the gathering would have been a conflict of interest since the campaign had been trying to remain squeaky clean on the matter of political lobbying. Never mind that Cleland’s client makes medical devices intended to help treat wounded veterans returning from Iraq and   Afghanistan, the Times reported.  Wouldn’t it therefore have been more logical for the Obama campaign to have allowed Cleland’s invitation to stand and welcome him to the audience,  the proviso being that the campaign would not accept any contributions from TRG? It would have been a legitimate opportunity to focus on a long-ignored tragedy: the number of badly disabled soldiers returning from Iraq that the Bush Administration hardly ever acknowledges.

Tags: No Comments