WASHINGTON, D.C. — At his press conferences, President Obama gets quizzed on what humbles and enchants him. Nobody asks Obama about Steve Rattner, Adolfo Carrion or Ronald Sims.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fields tough questions on grading fellow Democrat Obama. She gives him an “A.” No reporter dares ask about what kind of grades she’s post for Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL), Rep. Charles Rangel, (D-NY) or Rep. John Murtha (D-PA).
Pelosi doesn’t like nosy questions about them or other House Democrats who operate under an ethical cloud, any more than Obama’s communications operators welcome such distractions. Both have bigger fish to fry. Besides, no matter what’s wrong, it’s going to be OK.
Rattner is Obama’s adviser on the auto industry retrofit — the so-called “car czar.” New York State Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo is probing an investment house, which Rattner founded and ran, for offering kickbacks to state officials who pick which bankers handle money for the state retirement system.
Rattner says he didn’t know anything about it. So it’s OK. Rattner is now in a scrum over a reported threat that he would bring down the full force of the White House press corps on investors who balked at going along with Obama’s arrangements on the Chrysler bankruptcy.
Why on earth would anybody think that the Obama Administration has influence over this press corps?
Carrion is Obama’s urban affairs director. As former Bronx Borough president, Carrion waited two years to pay an architect who did a private job for him. The architect needed permits influenced by Carrion’s office. Carrion says there’s nothing unusual about the delay. So move on.
Sims will be Obama’s deputy housing secretary. He was county executive in Seattle, Wash. His office was handed the largest fine in U. S. history, $124,000, for covering up records on the price of a new stadium for the Seahawks.
Sims says it was his office that was fined, not him. So that’s apparently OK with the Obama camp, which promised voters a new era of transparency. Hey! Turn the page.
Jackson is being scrutinized for possible involvement in former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s plan to sell Obama’s Senate seat.
Murtha is chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, and is an ever-flowing conduit of federal funds to firms linked to his relatives, but most of all his campaign contributors.
Federal agents recently raided a Murtha-connected political consulting firm that played a role in Murtha’s earmarks. He is, however, a confidant of Pelosi, and directs defense appropriations handed out to his Republican colleagues. So there doesn’t seem to be any hurry about the Ethics Committee jostling him.
No more than with Rangel, chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. Because of newspaper articles alleging Rangel irregularities on taxes and misuse of House resources, Rangel last year threw himself on the mercy of the Ethics Committee.
It was a gamble that has so far paid off. Pelosi said the Rangel probe would be finished in 2008. It isn’t yet. The ethics panel could announce something as soon as next week. It could also wait until Labor Day, or later.
After all, we have change you can believe in: From a Republican culture of corruption to a Democratic one.
Doug Turner is the Washington Bureau Chief since 1989, he joined The News in 1982 following the closing of the Buffalo Courier Express. A graduate of Brown University and an Olympic rower for the U.S. at Melbourne in 1956, he attended Stanford University’s Professional Journalism Fellowship program in 1968. Doug is widely acclaimed as one of the top journalists in Washington over the last 20 years. He has reported from national presidential nominating conventions, presidential news conferences, State of the Union addresses and inaugurations. Turner is a member of the National Press Club and the Gridiron Society. 
