Loiusev -- Thanks for your note. My post was about much more than my exchange with the Obama campaign over Cuba policy. But to answer your questions specifically, I am invited with other members of the press and political blogging community to on the record conference calls with the candidate's team. These sessions are like press sessions. Transcripts and tapes are kept.

My issue -- to the degree I have one -- is that I posed a question during a conference call and received an answer from Susan Rice. She was thoughtful and serious -- and she gave a sound answer. I wrote up her response --- and indicated my disagreement with it. There was no problem with any of that.

The problem came when I began to hear through third parties that Rice had tried to tell other parties that I had misquoted her and intimating as well that Barack Obama did in fact endorse something along the lines of the 2001-03 status quo in US-Cuba relations. On substantive policy grounds, I know that Obama does not agree with that position -- and Susan Rice's stated formulation to me on the phone was Obama's real position. But to intimate informally that she was misquoted and then to potentially imply that Obama's position was fuzzier than what I reported is not a professional way to deal with foreign policy writers.

Yes, it is quite normal for writers and bloggers to ask for transcripts. I did so six weeks ago.

I let the matter drop until I had lunch with one of Obama's top foreign policy advisers who raised the issue with me and who said what I did.

This is not a mountain/mole hill problem. It is a micro case regarding trying to determine what a candidate's policy really is -- and to what degree it is solid and how the decision was made.

Thanks for your questions.

Steve Clemons

Posted at April 27, 2008 6:12 PM in response to Gravity Puts Dent in Obama Momentum

Thanks Tom - That "Solar Grand Plan" article was superb and like the broader question of next gen communications or broadband 2.0, I think what constitutes "infrastructure" needs to be broadened.

Thanks for the comment,

Steve Clemons

Posted at February 13, 2008 12:12 PM in response to Finally! A Serious Proposal on Infrastructure

Thanks Troll bait. I didn't mean to intend I thought your post yesterday was snarky. Been too rushed I think to respond fully.

To rmrdooooo -- I think Debra Dickerson's take on the power relationships between the races continues to be the most stimulating reading out there. She's not saying race is a dead issue -- but she's pointing that direction and thinks race needs to be tackled through other dimensions, through the real problems folks have....

Anyway, I may write more on the subject above at some point as I didn't mean for folks to get lost in it or confused -- which clearly may be the case.

Best on MLK Day,

Steve Clemons

Posted at January 21, 2008 8:29 AM in response to Beyond King

What it means is that while I acknowledge race is an issue in the country and will be for some time, Martin Luther King's vision was for a discussion and reality that transcended race, when race was a non-issue. That is what I think Debra Dickersion writes about -- and it is ultimately what I think MLK's vision was. best regards, Steve Clemons

Posted at January 21, 2008 6:25 AM in response to Beyond King

Tom -- I have to admit similar personal astonishment. best, Steve Clemons

Posted at December 15, 2007 9:25 AM in response to McFarlane, Woolsey, Inman Support McCain and Declare Opposition to Use of Torture

The Whitehouse speech was fantastic.....and I mostly agree with your point.

best, Steve Clemons

Posted at December 10, 2007 2:29 PM in response to Dems Need to Copy Chuck Hagel

Dan K -- you are right. A headwind is resistance. A tailwind gives momentum.

best, Steve Clemons

Posted at December 10, 2007 8:35 AM in response to Dems Need to Copy Chuck Hagel

"my only morality is who invites me to dinner?"

someone remember that the next time I'm roasted somewhere.

best, Steve Clemons

Posted at September 5, 2007 12:20 PM in response to Norman Ornstein's AEI/Neocon Problem

lally -- i would assume that if you have been reading my blog since its inception that you would know this not to be true. I convey what happens in the dinners, etc -- but they don't sway my views. i would not be taking on the neocons, or Bolton, or Paul Wolfowitz, or Woolsey if acceptance at dinner parties were the price. I see these people at the dinners -- and my views on them have had substantial traction in the policy community.

thanks for your note.

steve clemons

Posted at September 5, 2007 12:19 PM in response to Norman Ornstein's AEI/Neocon Problem

JohnW1141 -- thanks for your note. There has been a lot of back and forth here on my negating my own pacifism. More is being read into this than I had intended. The truth is simply that I'm not a pacifist and wanted to make that clear because I'm not anti-Iran War out of pacifist principles. I'm anti-Iran War from a mostly realist assessment of the situation and the costs and benefits embedded in a hot military action against Iran.

I do see scenarios in which Iran's government could engage in a reckless escalation with the U.S. that leads to an idiotic and highly destructive war. Cheney and Ahmadinejad are the two players who most want war -- and they need to be preempted.

There are many here who are pacifists, and I respect their commitment to such an ideal -- but I'm not there. But if pacifists, liberal internationalists, realists and others are all equally opposed to what Ledeen is proposing, I think that's something that should be noted positively.

best,

Steve Clemons

Posted at August 19, 2007 4:10 PM in response to Michael Ledeen's Dangerous Iran Obsession