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The Newark mayor’s real blunder wasn’t criticizing Obama’s campaign ads. It was giving Mitt Romney a pass.
Cory Booker is a famous man of action. The mayor of Newark shovels walkways in heavy snowstorms. Recently, he rushed into a burning building to save a woman. Sunday night he was at it again, this time working fast to remove his foot from his mouth. On Sunday morning’s Meet the Press, Booker described President Obama’s recent campaigns ads attacking Mitt Romney as “nauseating,” comparing them to the foiled 10 million dollars plan to remind voters that Obama was a longtime parishioner of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Booker, who is considered a possible presidential prospect some day, had spent most of the show boasting about Obama’s achievements. But when you undermine the central thrust of the president’s attack strategy you must repair. By the end of the day, Booker had released a four-minute video trying to explain his comments.
Mayor Booker was wrong on both counts. Bain is fair game, and there’s no equivalence between the Obama campaign going after Romney’s record at Bain and the proposed super-PAC-funded attack ads attempting to link Obama to his controversial former pastor.
Booker’s complaint was that the Obama campaign’s ads distracted from the important issues facing voters and that its tone would sour people on the election. In general, it’s a reasonable complaint. There’s plenty in Obama’s campaign that saps voters’ hopes and distracts from core issues. But Booker picked the wrong target. Mitt Romney has argued repeatedly that his career at Bain—more so than almost anything else—gives him special insight into how to turn around the U.S. economy. It’s well within bounds to put that career under a microscope to assess the truth of his claims.

Cory Booker.

Add Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker to the long list of political stand-ins for both President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney who’ve veered wildly off message in a presidential contest notable for its attention-grabbing gaffes.
An Obama backer, Booker forced the president’s campaign into damage-control mode over the weekend when he called its attack on Romney’s tenure at a private equity firm “nauseating.” It didn’t take long for Republicans to highlight the comment and for the Democratic mayor to try to clean up the mess he caused by releasing a YouTube video in which he said – it was fair for Obama to make Romney’s business record a campaign issue.
Obama weighed in Monday as the dust-up lit up social network sites, calling Booker an “outstanding mayor” but insisting he would continue to talk about Romney’s experience at Bain Capital.
“It’s important to recognize this issue is not a distraction” – the president said. “It’s part of the debate we are having in this election.”
The episode, which delighted Republicans while causing a headache for Obama, illustrated the difficulty a presidential candidate faces in controlling his or her message in the era of YouTube and Twitter. It also raised questions about how much campaigns should be held responsible for what their supporters — known as “surrogates” in political-speak — say or do.
“Maintaining message discipline with surrogates has always been a challenge of the modern campaign. In the era of social media it is an exercise in futility” – said Chris Lehane, a spokesman for Democrat Al Gore’s 2000 presidential bid. “Most surrogates are significant people in their own right with their own views, own constituencies and own press corps, and are used to speaking for themselves and not conditioned to the idea that whatever they say or do will become attached to a presidential candidate.”

Here’s a quick rundown of what Booker said:
On whether the Bain attack is really fair game – “When [Romney] says, I’m a job creator, I think that’s a characterization of his record that deserves inquiry, and I think the way the president himself is talking about is something I will defend, in fact something I will echo.”
On the RNC’s effort to exploit Booker’s comments by launching an “I Stand With Cory Booker” petition – “Here they are plucking soundbytes out of that interview to manipulate them in a cynical manner, to use them for their own purposes … I’m very upset that I’m being used by the GOP this way.”
On his support for President Obama on the issues – Anybody in the GOP who wants to stand with me, please stand with me. Stand with me for marriage equality, as Barack Obama stands up for. Stand with me for not turning the clock back on women in terms of medical issues, like Barack Obama is stanidng again. Stand with me on making healthcare more accessible to all. Stand with me for making college more affordable as President Obama is doing.”
On his history with Obama – “I’ve been standing for Barack Obama before most peope were standing for Barack Obama, as one of his earliest supporters in New Jersey, his first major political endorsement.”
On whether he was strong-armed into tonight’s appearance by the Obama camp – “They have never pressured me to do anything… I certainly did talk with campaign officials but they didn’t force me to do anything. Especially after hearing the president’s remarks on this issue, where he was not condemning all of private equity, he was not condemning any particular firms, he was focusing in on a guy who’s bragging about his job creation record – all of those things made me say, you know what, I need to go on and clarify.”
On his own mistake of comparing Obama campaign’s attacks on Bain with conservative attacks on Obama over Jeremiah Wright – “Those can’t even be equated. The noxious nature of some of the attacks that we’ve seen on our president, where if you even poll many people in the GOP who still believe he’s a secret Muslim and these other things, it’s gotten ridiculous. You can’t even equate the negativity on the right with what’s happening by sectors on the left.”
On what he was really trying to say on Meet the Press – “My outrage and really my frustration was about the cynical negative campaigning and manipulating of the truth.”
On the GOP’s lack of interest in urban issues – “To say I stand with Cory Booker – I have not seen a Republican national candidate, with maybe the exception of Jack Kemp a long time ago, willing to stand with me in places like Newark, New Jersey, Camden, New Jersey, Paterson – places that often the GOP seems to want to imagine don’t exist.”
Of course, none of this is likely to discourage Republicans from gleefully continuing to use Booker’s unfortunate remarks as a way to undermine the Obama campaign’s attacks on Romney and Bain. In many ways, from Team Obama’s point of view, the damage may already have been done.