#9. Obama's Bad Call

June 14, 2007

"It was a dumb mistake on our campaign's part and I made it clear to my staff in no uncertain terms that it was a mistake."
— Barack Obama, after his campaign released a memo entitled "Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab)," criticizing the Clintons' financial ties to India, where, the memo said American jobs are being outsourced

Initially leaked to the press on a "not-for-attribution" basis, the Obama release eventually found its way into the in-boxes of the Clinton team, which promptly forwarded it on to the New York Times. Although Sen. Hillary Clinton had jokingly referred to herself as a prospective Senator from Punjab at an earlier Indian-American fund-raising event, one reporter called the memo "a rather sleazy brand of very old-style negative campaigning" that seemed to be "trafficking in xenophobic caricatures of an Indian takeover of U.S. politics."