Sidney Blumenthal, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s unofficial adviser, advised Clinton in 2012 to use an impending hurricane as a prop to make President Obama look good.
And in her Aug. 27 reply, Clinton said, “I passed this on to the White House. We’ll see what happens.”
Blumenthal, who the White House rejected as a formal State Department employee, wrote Clinton a six-page memo on Aug. 26, and summarized it in an email to Clinton a day later.
“All Obama needs to do is turn up, surrounded by commanders, on the Gulf Coast, post-hurricane, on Saturday,” he wrote. “The hurricane is the counter-convention.”
“It provides the counter message without ever having to debate it: Obama is effective, gets things done, government is essential, etc.,” he added. “The event is the message. Plus, on the anniversary of Katrina, the contrast is naturally made, and Bush pops up.”
Blumenthal’s confidential memo on the issue said President George W. Bush lost popularity after the botched response to Hurricane Katrina. He said President Obama needed to quickly respond to Hurricane Isaac, and said Vice President Joe Biden should be sent to wherever the storm hit.
“It would draw intense media attention to the administration’s FEMA effort and maintain that focus for days,” he said. Blumenthal also said it would “raise his stature” as a team player.
Blumenthal said these steps and others would counter the GOP presidential nominating convention that Obama is a “failure.”
