Given the chance to fall on the Sestak sword for President Obama, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel instead took off for Israel and left behind a note saying that Obama’s unpaid advisory job offer, as incentive for Democrat Joe Sestak to “avoid a divisive Senate primary”, was no biggie since past administrations practiced this type of sleazy politics all the time.
And oh, by the way, former President Bill Clinton is up to his eyeballs in it.
I have to admit, not the response from the Obama administration I was expecting.
Admitting to a misdemeanor in writing doesn’t exactly help Obama, so what exactly is going on here?
Usually the political playbook for this type of thing is either lying your tail off or nailing the scandal to a fall guy - both proven strategies in Washington.
Lying would have been much easier: “We never made Sestak a job offer, the guy is nuts, etc…” Turn it into a he-said-she-said situation and no worries. Sestak loses the election and Obama stays in power. Fair compromise I would think.
Unfortunately this would also put an important Senate race in doubt during a time Democrats are looking increasingly vulnerable in November, so no go there.
Plan B also has its problems. Like the Highlander, only without swords, there can be only one fall guy: Rahm Emanuel - the only other person in the administration that can give Obama a run for his money when it comes to sleaze and an over-inflated sense of self.
Both were politically born and bred in the Chicago way, where stabbing a man in the back to save your own skin is what politicians call fun. Someone attacks you, then you turn on the next guy, and on down the line it goes. After a while people forget what the problem was in the first place.
The only difference here is the next guy happens to be a sitting President … and there’s nowhere to go from there.
It’s not the Crime, it’s the Cover Up
To me the most interesting thing about the White House memo last week isn’t necessarily what it contained - to say there are holes in it is an understatement … even Robert Gibbs admitted on Monday the described job offer doesn’t make any legal sense whatsoever - but rather the fact the document exists in the first place.
As far as I can tell, the only political result it guarantees is to personally commit Obama to the cover-up. He can no longer say “I didn’t know” or “I had nothing to do with a job offer” now that this admission has been made public. Emanuel may have conveyed the Sestak offer via Clinton, but the memo makes it clear that it was with the full knowledge and approval of the President, or it would have stated otherwise.
The memo’s existence ensures that at the end of the day, should this thing spin out of control, it will be Obama’s head in the noose and not Emanuel’s.
Regardless of what happens from here on out … changes to the story or other crimes associated with this matter … all Emanuel has to do to save his own skin from prison is blame Obama.
And he now has the memo to prove it.
Fred Dardick got a BS in Biology at Boston University and MS in Biology at Stanford University before deciding that science bored him. He now runs a staffing company in Chicago where he is much happier now.
