I’m a little surprised that this story has become more than it should be. Apparently, yesterday’s story in The Wall Street Journal that related Barack Obama’s pledge that he would work to end the government control over the Teamsters has caused a bit of a hoo-hah. It elicited this story today in The New York Times:

The Teamsters union vigorously denied on Monday that its decision to endorse Senator Barack Obama in the presidential race was in any way tied to Mr. Obama’s statement that federal supervision of the union had run its course.

    What exactly is the story here? That a government control of a union that is TWENTY YEARS old might be a bad idea and that a Democratic presidential candidate might say that he opposed it and would support its end? Big deal.

    And, the fact is Hillary Clinton also made a pretty close to similar pledge when she appeared before the union’s executive board meeting, as the Times story points out. I listened to the audio files from that meeting where both Obama and Clinton appeared. It would be very hard to distinguish any difference in what the two of them were saying. Here is the {attachment id=88 output=desc description=”audio file”} for Obama and here is the {attachment id=89 output=desc description=”audio file”} for Clinton.

    So, it leaves me to wonder: who drummed up that story at this point in the campaign? I’ll leave the imagination to the reader–and the obvious.