Posted by
Patrick Henry on Friday, May 28, 2010 5:54:23 PM
It's Friday afternoon on a holiday weekend when the president has skulked out of
town leaving his media shills to release a report explaining away the fact that the
administration offered Representative Joe Sestak a major advisory board appoint-
ment if he would pass on the Pennsylvania senatorial race. The tactic is predictably
cynical because it bets that the media focus will be on Obama's trip to the disaster-
ridden gulf, and that most people will focus on the upcoming holiday instead of the
scandalous news.
Their story goes like this. Some White House official, probably Chief of Staff
Rahm Emanuel, asked former president Bill Clinton to approach Sestak about
staying in the House and accepting an appointment to the president's national
security advisory board. Sestak declined the offer, and both he and Obama would
love for us to believe that it ended there. The rationale was that (a) they didn't want
to risk losing Sestak's House seat, and (b) they were already committed to support
Senator Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania as the quid pro quo for his notorious party
switch.
But many questions linger. Who could have authorized Emanuel to make such an
offer if not Obama himself? And if the matter was truly confined to one late summer
phone call, why did Sestak wait until February to go public with it? And if it went
down as the White House and Sestak now say it did, were any laws broken or ethical
canons violated?
First, it is obvious that Emanuel does not have the juice to unilaterally offer such a
position without having consulted with Obama. That means that however their actions
are eventually adjudged, both Emanuel and Obama are culpable. Second, it strains
credulity to assert that the matter was dropped after one phone call. If so, it wasn't
a very serious offer. Sestak appeared angry when he leveled the charge -- and it is
undeniable that it WAS an accusation -- in February. It's hard to believe he carried
a loaded gun around that long without firing. So what triggered his disclosure?
Title 18, 600 SC, makes it very clear that any "job, offer of employment, position,
appointment or other consideration" made in conjunction with an election constitutes
the tender of a bribe. The White House tries to weasel out by saying the appointment
offered Sestak was an unpaid job. The legal question is was it "of value." If it was not,
then they are trying to convince Americans that they were offering something they
knew to we worthless in return for Sestak's cooperation in regard to the Pennsylvania
electoral process. It seems unavoidable that a crime was committed.
Sestak's several iterations of the fiasco make it very clear that in his mind he was
"offered a job." If, as the White House now contends, he wasn't offered a job, then
Sestak is lying. If he's not lying, then the White House is compounding bribery and
electoral tampering with a cover-up. No matter what speed you play this record at
the dissonance is ear-splitting, and the administration's stonewalling instead of simply
telling it like it was in the first place suggests they know they've done something wrong.
Then there's the matter of Bill Clinton, the disgraced preisdent who was impeached
for misleading (lying to) a grand jury. You will remember his pious words, "I did not
have sex with that woman." This reminds one of a philanderer caught with his pants
down offering the procurer as his character witness. Has the odor of all this begun
to reach you yet?
However you spin the bottle, it seems indisputable that Obama and his people have
been caught trying to rig elections yet one more time. The irony of it is that they've
cast Joe Sestak who, his questionable choice of political parties aside, seems like an
honorable and decent man, in a lose-lose meat grinder. As this thing gets nastier, and
that is likely, what will you bet that Obama won't throw Sestak under the bus just as he
has other "friends" who were no longer useful to him? Hope and change, huh? I think
we might have both, come November.