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Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Tell the truth and no crossies, Mr. President
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Dan Froomkin of The Washington Post, noting the round of “exit interviews” being conducted by President Bush, came up with a great idea:
“I was going to ask you what questions you think reporters should be asking Bush,” he tells readers, “but since he’s so adept at ducking, I’ve decided to ask something a little bit more fun: What questions would you most want to ask the president if he were under Pentathol?”
Froomkin’s own first choice: “When exactly did you decide to go to war in Iraq?” But some of his readers got a little more inventive.
SaveTheCountry, for example, wants to know if Bush wore “a concealed radio receiver in any of the 2004 debates with John Kerry? If so, who was transmitting?”
And GavinM would ask: “Do you believe in the literal truth of the Bible and what is your opinion on the end of days passages in Revelation?”
What about you guys? One question, and he has to answer truthfully.
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Are Senate Republicans willing to play Scrooge?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’m still very much torn about the auto industry bailout, and I haven’t had time to delve into the details of the latest proposal, although recent changes do address some of my biggest concerns. For example, the new plan no longer requires government approval before companies spend more than $25 million of bailout money; the new level is $100 million, which is at least somewhat reasonable. You want government oversight, but not government micromanagement.
However, as a matter of politics rather than policy, I really wonder at the apparent willingness of Senate Republicans to filibuster the proposal worked out between the Bush administration and the Democrats. Polls suggest that the country as a whole is divided on the bailout, but a pre-Christmas GOP filibuster of a bill designed to keep millions of blue-collar Americans working and collecting paychecks…. it’s hard to imagine a better way to cement the Republican image as an enemy of the working man, particularly if they succeed in killing the bill and force GM into bankruptcy.
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What’s the story with Rod and Barack?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The allegations in the Blagojevich case out of Illinois would be fascinating in their own right, if nothing else as a case study in self delusion. That guy thought he would get away with all this? But it’s also important to remember that he’s in his second term of governor and spent most of his life in Illinois politics — his assumptions and understandings of how the world worked that the rest of us find so astounding did not rise out of nowhere. They reflect what he saw around him.
You occasionally get whiffs of a similar world here in Georgia — stories about politicians shaking down contributors in return for, say, a zoning necessary for an apartment project, or a politician slyly reminding a business person that he has regulatory oversight over that person’s industry. And sure enough, when you look later at the campaign disclosures, there’s a substantial contribution from that business person to that politician. Unfortunately, that’s not enough to go to press with.
The larger story, however, is what impact this will have on President-elect Barack Obama, who as a Democratic senator from Illinois inevitably had dealings with Illinois’ Democratic governor. The only thing on the record is in Obama’s favor — Blagojevich’s anger and frustration at Obama’s refusal to “pay to play” in naming his replacement to the Senate.
Reuters describes Obama as essentially untouched by the scandal:
CHICAGO - President-elect Barack Obama’s decision to keep a distance from his state’s governor, who was arrested on corruption charges on Tuesday, should enable him to escape becoming tainted by the scandal, analysts said.
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich stands accused of trying to sell the president-elect’s vacant U.S. Senate seat for financial and other personal benefits for himself and his wife, among other charges.
“Obama is not related to the corruption pattern in Chicago,” said political scientist Dick Simpson of the University of Illinois in Chicago. “He has not been pressing for any person to replace him in his Senate seat.”
However, Michael Scherer at Time’s Swampland blog is not quite so sure:
At a news conference just now, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald made very clear that he had uncovered no evidence of misbehavior on the part of Barack Obama. “I should be clear that the complaint makes no allegations whatsoever about the president-elect or his conduct,” he said. But he also made clear that his investigation was hardly complete. He still needed “to find out what happened.” And he said, as a policy, that the U.S. Attorney office is not in the business of “giving clean bills of health.”
That’s the reason that the fall of Gov. Rod Blagojevich is going to continue to haunt Obama, not to mention Chicago’s Democratic establishment where he built his roots. The President of the United States has a higher burden than just about any elected official anywhere. His staff will be called on by the press to account for all their conversations with Blagojevich and his aides. Obama will have to explain what he knew about these discussions. The bit players in the complaint, like the unnamed Senate Candidate 1 and Senate Candidate 5, will have to come forward and explain their involvement.
If the investigation continues into next year, which seems likely, there may even be calls for the appointment of something like an independent counsel at the Justice Department to avoid any hint of political interference. Obama’s staff and political allies may be forced to get attorneys of their own.
And ABC News describes some heated, and quite obscene, language from Blagojevich toward Obama in FBI wiretaps, particularly considering Obama’s refusal to pay to play:
“Told by two other advisers he has to “suck it up” for two years, the FBI says it heard Blagojevich complain he has to give this “motherfer [the president-elect] his senator. F him. For nothing? F* him.”
The governor is heard saying he will pick another candidate “before I just give fing [Senate Candidate l] a fing Senate seat and I don’t get anything.”
All in all, there seems no sign of any direct problem for Obama. But the case will be a distraction at a time he really didn’t need any.
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