11/10/2008 (12:39 pm)
Playing the Right (Updated)
This morning’s bloghonking is about a New York Times profile on potential members of the new Obama administration by Eric Lichtblau. His first subject: Jamie Gorelick is allegedly being considered for Attorney General.
The outcry in response is so predictable that it has to be a ploy. I can’t believe they’re actually serious.
As Deputy Attorney General from 1993 – 1997, Jamie Gorelick was personally responsible for the infamous “wall” between domestic and foreign intelligence in the Clinton administration. This wall was not only arguably a major factor in the US’ failure to identify the 9/11 conspiracy, but also acted as a firewall to prevent reasonable investigation of the Clintons’ solicitation of illegal campaign contributions from China. When she sat on the 9/11 Commission, she famously attempted to blame the wall on John Ashcroft, only to have her own memo thrown appropriately in her face.
As though it were not bad enough that Obama might be considering as Attorney General somebody who can plausibly be connected to the coverup of Clinton scandals and to America’s failures in protecting itself from Wahabist extremists, Ms. Gorelick also sat on the board of Fannie Mae from 1997 – 2003, the very period when Fannie’s CEOs were cooking the books to protect their bonuses while hoodwinking stockholders.
Beldar is nearly appoplectic:
Short of appointing an actual member of al Qaeda, I cannot imagine a more offensive symbolic repudiation of the Global War on Terror — nor a more enthusiastic embrace of the chronic mismanagement, cronyism, and graft which led to this fall’s credit crisis — than the appointment of Jamie Gorelick as Attorney General.
Appointing Rahm Emmanuel as White House Chief of Staff signaled clearly that the Obama administration would be anything but post-partisan. An attempt to raise Ms. Gorelick to higher office would not just emphasize Obama’s partisan intentions, but signal a commitment to cronyism, and to Democratic dirty-politics-as-usual from the start.
None of this surprises me; only the naive or credulous expected a centrist, post-partisan Obama. However, Obama’s team is not so obtuse as to miss how the announcement of Gorelick being under consideration would play on the right. I feel certain that this is why she’s being mentioned first (which also signals that the New York Times is still a functioning adjunct of the Obama team. Again, no surprise.) After Gorelick, nobody will seem extreme. Furthermore, if they attempt to have her confirmed, the fight in Congress will give the Obama administration ammunition to complain of partisanship and obstructionism by Republicans; the public, who have little idea who Gorelick is (and who will not be enlightened by the press,) will eat it up. The Republicans will spend all their political capital opposing her. If she can be confirmed, literally anybody can; and if she can’t, her defeat will make the defeat of other candidates harder.
In other words, Gorelick is a lightning rod, and the Republicans are being played.
One of the real outrages of the Bush years was the manner in which Democrats decried unfair partisanship by the Bush administration. The Bush administration was barely partisan at all, compared to the Clinton administration. Obama is demonstrating that he intends a return to the harsh partisanship of the Clinton years. Again, this is no surprise; I never believed they were serious when they were complaining about Bush, nor did anybody with the slightest awareness of political reality. It was all a hoax. We’re about to see what real partisanship looks like.
UPDATE: ABC News points out that Rahm Emmanuel, Obama’s Chief of Staff, was also a member of Fannie Mae’s board during the period when fraud was being committed. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air explains the legal implications. Obama apparently intends for nothing about the way Washington does business to change much. Again, this surprises only the unbelievably naive.
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3 Comments »
Comment by RM
Given how the media acted as a megaphone for Mr. Obama’s positions during the campaign process and provided cover for anything questionable in his background, and given how a seeming majority of US citizens blamed the Republicans for the subprime mess and resulting problems, it is disheartening, but hardly surprising that they are trying this type of tactic.
I had also heard Rahm Emmanuel received about $18M in bonuses or whatever from FNMA from his tenure there (I do not know for sure whether this is true so this is a qualifier). Maybe it’s just me, but I haven’t noticed much of this little factoid in the MSM in all the discussion of Emmanuel so far.
(Author notes: follow the link to Hot Air in the UPDATE, and you’ll find a link to the actual numbers Emmanuel received from his board tenure at FNMA.)
Comment by Horatius
Well, this is disheartening, but as the commentor above stated, not surprising. That Obama will use everyone’s better natures against them is nothing new.
I have been rereading Conquest’s “The Great Terror” and one of the things that struck me about the opposition (any of them really, the right, the left, Stalin’s own people) is how he and his cronies played on their belief in Stalin’s humanity, when in fact he had very little (or he was all too human.)
He always gave them a reason to go along: Agree to this and you need not be executed. Confess to this and your wife or your daughter or your son need not share your fate. Go along with this because it does not effect you directly. In the end they believed his lies, because they did not think he could go back on them. In short, they believed he would be reasonable.
I am not saying that Obama is Stalin, or even close. However, what it does speak to is the very naive, very human need to believe that those arrayed against us are trustworthy, even when they are not. People all too often believe that someone who speaks kindly is kind. That someone who speaks rationally is rational. That someone who seems optomistic and Hopeful is actually talking about things that are worthy of Hope and Optomism, even though you KNOW that the things they are talking about are worthy of neither. In short, if you can dress a lie up in an appealing enough wrapper, you can sell it and people will swallow it without a second thought.
This says a lot about people, both good and bad. Mostly bad.
Comment by RM
My apologies for the overstated amounts Rahm Emmanuel apparently received from FNMA during his tenure on the board and while in Congress. Thanks for the link. I’ll leave it to the other readers to form their own opinion as to whether his ties to FNMA/Obama/the Clintons et al are red flags or simply “past associations” that are as meaningless as those that link Ayers and Rev. Wright to Pres. Elect Obama.
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