Obama's Wall St. Regulations Attack Debunked

Sen. Barack Obama has been trying to tie rival Sen. John McCain to the financial misdealings on Wall St., saying that McCain is a long-time opponent of increased regulation, which Obama says is responsible for the turmoil in the nation's investments sector. But in what is becoming a daily occurrence for his campaign, Sen. Obama went too far in taking a quote from McCain out of context in an effort to make his point, and has been called on it. Obama claims that McCain is not being genuine in his calls for increased regulation of financial institutions, pointing to a months-old quote from McCain that supposedly proves it. Obama told an audience recently, "When I was warning about the danger ahead on Wall Street months ago because of the lack of oversight, Senator McCain was telling The Wall Street Journal, and I quote: 'I'm always for less regulation.' "

Now, McClatchy newspapers has come out with an analysis of Obama's characterization of McCain's position on regulations and calls it simply, "wrong." McClatchy provides the full quotation from McCain, which makes it clear that McCain was not ruling out increased regulation for the financial sector. In fact, he referenced it immediately after the truncated portion of the quote that Obama presented.

"I'm always for less regulation. But I am aware of the view that there is a need for government oversight. I think we found this in the sub-prime lending crisis, that there are people that game the system, and if not outright broke the law, they certainly engaged in unethical conduct which made this problem worse. So I do believe that there is role for oversight.

As far as a need for additional regulations are concerned, I think that depends on the legislative agenda and what the Congress does to some degree, but I am fundamentally a deregulator. I'd like to see a lot of the unnecessary government regulations eliminated, not just a moratorium."

Earlier this week, the Obama campaign was taken to task by Factcheck.org for similarly mischaracterizing McCain's position on Social Security reform. The Obama campaign has complained repeatedly about allegedly dishonest and unfair attacks leveled against it by the McCain campaign, and has consistently decried the "old-style Washington politics" of attacks and smears. But Sen. Obama can clearly fling the mud with the most seasoned of Washington insiders. The trouble for Obama, though, is that when he throws dirt in the form of distortions and half-truths, some of it sticks to him, revealing him to be less the new politician that he claims to be.