Since Watergate, it’s been the cliché that it’s the coverup, not the crime, that leads our public officials to perdition. And that’s basically the position regarding the Rep. Sestak scandal taken by Chris Cillizza in The Fix. Cillizza quotes some nervous – naturally anonymous – Democratic strategists:
“How do you make something out of nothing?,” asked one such operative who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the matter. “By acting guilty when you’re innocent.”
Another senior party official said that the White House “has a lot of egg on their face” and described the events as a “PR nightmare”.
Of course in the case of Sestak and his putative job offer, we have no idea what actually happened. But we do know the sleaze factor is high – and not just because of the presence of Bill Clinton whose SQ (Sleaze Quotient) may be even higher than his IQ. Clinton is merely a product of “The Culture of Narcissism.” Obama et al are the product of something worse – “The Culture of Chicago.”
Frankly, I have a tad of nostalgia for Clinton because, Monica excluded, he was a much more sensible (and honest – believe it or not?) man than Obama and far less of a threat to our country and the world. Not nearly as much went wrong under eight years of Clinton’s watch than in less than one year of Obama’s. It’s pathetic, actually, that Bill is now so willing, as apparently he was, to carry water for the new President in this kind of cheesy operation. Can you imagine George W. Bush doing such a thing for some Republican president? I can’t.
But the real issue now is not the “Deep Dish Sleazemeisters” from Chicago. They are who they are. Rod Blagojevich, Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama are all cut from the same cloth.
The real issue is our media – the Fourth Estate that we all are supposed to depend on to vet these people. When Nixon was President, they did so with an alacrity hitherto unseen. With Obama, as we all know, it has been completely the reverse. The press’ record on investigating the President – as a candidate and in office – has been nothing short of embarrassing. Even at the recent press conference, the first in months, only Fox News’ Major Garrett and ABC’s Jake Tapper disported themselves as genuine journalists. The rest appeared like Izvestia wannabes at a Moscow presser circa 1962, only slightly better dressed.
So now the time has come. The public has turned against the President. The media has nothing to lose but its sad preconceptions and its laughable elitism. And there plenty of things to investigate. Sestak is the least of it (minor league). So too is the oil spill (an accident). These are not even the big stories. The big ones are about an economy that is in free fall, a foreign policy that allows dictators to flourish around the world and a justice department that has gone miles off the reservation. (Pajamas Media will be looking into that last one. Stay tuned.) Will new Woodwards and Bernsteins appear in the mainstream media to investigate any of these subjects? Or are they too much “true believers” to dare? So far, there is no reason to be optimistic.
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