Is Chris Lehane the scum of the earth?

[kerryistheanswer]

I never liked this guy. When he was working for Kerry, I read many pieces in which he complained about Kerry's reluctance to attack Dean. His press comments always seemed ill-advised and negative.

Then he moved over to the Clark campaign and did a bit of the same smear work. Some at the Dean campaign complained that he was behind the Iowa tapes that NBC got hold of.

And now, many suspect his role in the Drudge story yesterday. How does this guy live with himself? His job is to find really shady stories from opp. candidate's past and reveal them.

He should be booted out of the Demo party. Let Karl Rove have his sorry ar$se.

[JI7]

1. chris lehane wasn't involved in this

i don't think many on here, including kerry and clark supporters care for chris lehane. but he wasn't involved in this kerry intern drudge story. drudge was trying to make it seem like it came from a rival democratic campaign (clark). but it wasn't true. lehane's involvement in checking out kerry goes back to 2000 when kerry was being considered for vp, but this was done on all the possible vp choices. and he uses that to connect clark to this. but the affair drudge alleges started in 2001. a disconnect. the ones responsible for this are the right wingers. the kerry blog last i checked was full of right wing trolls disguised as supporters of other democratic candidates.

[kerryistheanswer]

2. Thanks for the info

Maybe you're right. But I still don't like Mr. Lehane. He doesn't play fair politics.

[sadiesworld]

3. Cark didn't out this story...

The story broke because clark was out.

[TexasPatriot]

4. when lehane was sourced for this

he went after the person who sourced him (the 'lehane's been shopping this' quote - and the msnbc reporter issued a retraction laying the blame on other campaigns...

look - i can not like Lehane till the cows come home - but seeing as this is obviously NOT going away, i think there will be plenty of time for recriminations later when we know everything about who said what (it all gets out eventually)

for now, i think i'll reserve judgement

[JI7]

5. the right wing is responsible

they didn't like the questions on bush's national guard unit.

[John_H]

6. Sure Lehane is kind of a dick, but he's not doing anything that

is unusual in politics.

[Tim_in_HK]

7. Except he seems to do it so

badly.

I don't think Clark or Lehane had anything to do with the Drudge lies.

But Lehane seems to be a political operative on the level of a ranting child. I'm not that familiar with his history beyond that he was involved with Gore and got shitcanned by Kerry, but judging from his appearances with the Clark campaign (a couple of interviews with the media and the ridiculousness on Hardball), this guy seems like a friggin' idiot. Am I cherry picking his bad moments? Are there good ones? Or maybe he's one of those people that you want to have on your payroll b/c you don't want him working against you?

I wish Clark had gotten in the race earlier for a variety of reasons, but one of them because I think he may have been able to get a better calibre of people in his campaign if he entered earlier before all the good ones done be got. None of them seemed very good. Actually, I take that back. Jamal (sp?) Simmons (is that his name?) was pretty good on interviews with the media.