In his interview with Maureen Dowd, which is filling up email inboxes all around DC and Hollywood, David Geffen made this prediction about the Hillary Clinton campaign (which Dowd dubbed "Clinton Inc"): "That machine is going to be very unpleasant and unattractive and effective."
It didn't take long for Clinton Inc to prove him right. Not long after Dowd's column hit the streets, "that machine" whirred into high gear with Clinton Communications director Howard Wolfson firing off a press release condemning Geffen and urging Obama to denounce him:
While Senator Obama was denouncing slash and burn politics yesterday, his campaign's finance chair was viciously and personally attacking Senator Clinton and her husband.
If Senator Obama is indeed sincere about his repeated claims to change the tone of our politics, he should immediately denounce these remarks, remove Mr. Geffen from his campaign and return his money.
The thing is, Geffen is not Obama's "finance chair" nor his "principal fundraiser" as Wolfson also claims. Indeed, as Geffen told me this morning: "I have no official role in the campaign. None whatsoever." Which makes it kind of hard for Obama to "remove" him.
Geffen was merely one of three co-hosts of a single event -- an event that is now over. Obama's actual campaign finance chair is Penny Pritzker of Chicago. If Wolfson wants to learn more about her he can read Lynn Sweet in the Chicago Sun Times.
In the Dowd interview, Geffen said of the Clintons: "Everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it's troubling."
And this morning's dust-up proves him right.
