Obama denies having inaugural address

[Ron Burgundy]

The Obama campaign, anxious to prevent an image of overconfidence, formally and insistently denied a report — seized on by the McCain campaign – that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) already has a draft of an inaugural address.

In remarks in New Mexico on Saturday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) accused his opponent of taking a “victory lap.”

“Well, my friends, when I pull this thing off I have a request for my opponent,” McCain said, according to Reuters. “I want him to save that manuscript of his inaugural address and donate it to the Smithsonian and put it right next to the Chicago paper that said 'Dewey defeats Truman.'”

“NBC Nightly News” repeated the notion that Obama has a draft inaugural address ready.

Obama-Biden spokesman Bill Burton issued an “Obama Campaign Response to McCain’s False Inaugural Address Attack”:

“While this charge is completely false and there is no draft of an inaugural address for Senator Obama, the last thing we need is a candidate like John McCain who just plans on re-reading George Bush’s.”

The idea surfaced Saturday in a New York Times article about Obama transition plans, which are led by John Podesta, White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton and now president and chief executive officer of the Center for American Progress.

The Times reported: “Mr. Podesta has been mapping out the transition so systematically that he has already written a draft Inaugural Address for Mr. Obama, which he published this summer in a book called ‘The Power of Progress.’ The speech calls for rebuilding a ‘grand alliance’ with the rest of the world, bringing troops home from Iraq, recommitting to the war in Afghanistan, cutting poverty in half in 10 years and reducing greenhouse gases 80 percent by 2050.”

Asked if there is any truth to the report, an Obama aide said: “No.”

Oops: The book was written when Podesta was advising Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in her race against one Barack Obama.

The center’s blog, ThinkProgress.org, dismissed the idea Saturday with a post cheekily headlined, “New York Times Refuses To Believe Obama Will Draft His Own Inaugural Address.”

The post by Faiz Shakir, filed under the category “Braindead Media,” notes that “Obama has been intimately involved in writing many of the most important speeches over the course of his career.”

The post says it is therefore unlikely that the senator “has already outsourced the most important speech of his career.”

“The book, which was in the works for over a year and was written with the help of CAP’s in-house progressive historian John Halpin, traces the history and successes of progressive politics in the 20th Century, draws lessons from that history, and then applies those lessons to the big challenges facing the country — the global economy, global warming, and global security,” the post says. “At the end, there is a sample inaugural address written not ‘for Mr. Obama,’ but rather, clearly offered as a literary device to summarize the main arguments in the book.

“The inaugural address was written and submitted to the publisher in March 2008, during a time when Podesta was supporting Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Podesta re-did the introduction to the book — but not the inaugural address — in June when it became clear that Obama would emerge as the nominee.”

source: Politico - http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20081026/pl_politico/14940 [link]