Two strikes against the incoming administration: Richardson quits under a grand-jury cloud

[thatcrazycajun]

First Blago gets arrested for trying to sell Barack Obama's now-vacant Senate seat. Now Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico (D), has had to withdraw his name from consideration as Commerce Secretary amid a grand jury's investigation of whether a California firm got a lucrative state contract for giving Richardson's PACs money. The Washington Post reports the story here.

There's an old, old saying in politics: "The fish rots from the head down." Twice now Obama has shown himself at best to be a naïve judge of character in the people with whom he surrounds himself. The closer we get to his inauguration, the more "change we can believe in" begins to look like "same old, same old." I want to believe these are less problematic than they seem, and that the new régime will be vindicated...but the signs do not look promising.

Comments

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

This is a rather foolish and naive approach.

As for Blagoiavich, what exactly did Obama do again? Oh yes, according to Blagoiavich himself: "These $%#@! won't give me anything but thanks! Stupid #@$! This thing is gold, and do they they think I'm going to give it away for free?"

As for Richardson, this appears to have been a development that came up after vetting. Short of a power of prophecy, what did you expect Obama to do.

I am all for holding the man accountable for stuff he actually does, but this is absurd. Worse -- it has made it ridiculously difficult to get anyone confirmed. After all, if you are not only accountable for anything you ever did or said in your entire life, but for everything that those around you might have done, then it is just game over on finding anyone who can fill this job.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

Hal, I admire and respect you greatly, but if you think this pattern isn't a danger to Obama and his agenda, you're whistling past a very full graveyard. Maybe Blago and the others aren't fair game, but Richardson must be; he was Obama's own choice for Commerce, and fairly or not, a President (or anyone seeking or about to be President) is expected to know pretty damned well whether the people he selects for high positions are of good character. This is even more important right now because Obama is (A) the first black President ever and (B) the first Democratic President since the tarnished Clinton administration, with (C) a Congress controlled by his party and (D) all kinds of wolves lurking and eager for any chance to get all over him like white on rice. (See my lengthier diatribe below in response to another poster.)

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

Of course wolves walk beside us and vultures circle above. But you do not defeat them by trying to live to an impossible standard. You win by kicking the wolves in the balls hard enough that they run off whimpering with their tails between their legs and by shooting the vultures out of the air until they realize you are very, very, very much alive.

I'm having deja vu all over again from September, when the Wussycrats were pissing themselves with fear because Sarah Palin smiled pretty for the cameras.

On the plus side, the analogy with the Children of Israel continues quite nicely. No sooner have we crossed the Red Sea when the Generation of the Desert begins to whine that there is no water and how shall we survive in the desert?

Learn to be a predator again instead of prey. Really.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

I agree with Harold here.

Obama pretty much avoided Blagojevich - they did not get along at all. Which sounds like he was a pretty good judge of character, actually. They certainly didn't "pal around."

As for Richardson - there is no evidence that Richardson knew anything about this. He withdrew, as near as I could tell from a radio report during a very long drive home, in order to not have any taint in the cabinet.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Obama did squat with regard to Blago; in fact, part of the record shows that B complained bitterly that O wouldn't compensate him with more than thanks.

As to Richardson, he withdrew to deal with what looks to me like a problem of appearance, rather than substance. (So far. We'll see.) But AFAIK, the timeline is such that these charges came up after whatever vetting the Obama team did.

Now, if you wanted to complain about Obama's handling of FISA, or the lack of intention to investigate the outgoing Administration's blatant criminality, you'd have something to say. But these? Scandals that don't accrue to Obama, or ought not to (not that our darling Republican-controlled media won't stick them to him anyway).

ETA: I see osewalrus and mamadeb got there first, and more concisely. What they said.

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with you and the other posters as well.
One wonders if he would have cut Hillary more slack.
*Matt keep this crap up for at least the next four years and you'll have LOTS of comments to reply to*

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

This is a definition of "surrounds himself" with which I have not been familiar.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

Okay, maybe you have a case for that re Blago, but Obama himself chose Richardson for CommSec. How is that not someone with whom he has surrounded himself? And the same can be said for his sitting in Rev. Wright's pews all those years. He's giving the right more ammunition against him, and he cannot afford to. At all.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

What's been said before, but with a different viewpoint.

That second paragraph sounds like something straight out of the GOP playbook. Don't know whether that's fatalism or if FOX Lose agents have infiltrated NPR, but here's my point:

This is our time, our fight, our message. We don't have to listen to those junkies on the other side of the aisle to decide what's right. We might want to listen to them maybe a little if we decide we need something veto-proof. But we have our political capital.

Let's use it. Be optimistic. Do the right thing, for the right reasons, don't panic, and, as Lord Nelson said, forget about the maneuvers, go straight at'em. The time for hand-wringing was last year. We gotta go balls to the wall and see just what we can get done. If we have a problem, fix it, right now. No finger pointing, no time for that. No analysis paralysis. The clock is already ticking, and they're keeping score.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

Hear! Hear!

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but you all are missing the point. The Obama administration is going to be under the closest, most ruthlessly critical scrutiny of any Presidential administration in this country's two-centuries-and-change history, for several reasons:

1. He is the first African-American president, and thus (in the eyes of many, at least) a tremendous, if long overdue, experiment. If you think there aren't still those, even today, who are just waiting to pounce on stuff like this as evidence a "nigger" can't be trusted as President, you know nothing whatsodamnever about the history and real nature of racism in this country. I grew up in the deep, deep, DEEP South, and trust me, I know something about it...and there are.

2. There's also the GOP and right-wing media and activists, which have been bleating that Obama can't be trusted (or at least makes bad choices about his associations) at least since the conviction of his old Chicago pal Tony Rezko and the flaps over Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers. (In Wright's case, at least, they have the barest hint of an argument; Obama sat in Wright's pews for decades listening to him spew and didn't say jack publicly, nor did he leave.) If you think conservatives aren't likewise waiting to pounce on stuff like this, listen to Hannity's or Limbaugh's radio shows right now.

3. The first Democrat administration since Bill Clinton's, which was dogged by scandals both financial and sexual, is taking office. Again, many, many people will be expecting the worst simply because Obama is a Dem and has hired a bunch of Clinton retreads for his administration...including the Lady MacBeth of Little Rock Chappaqua herself as Secretary of State.

4. Along with Obama, we're getting another Democrat-controlled Congress—one even more so than the last, particularly now that Minnesota authorities have finally declared Dem challenger Al Franken the narrow winner in that state's contested Senate election—and one-party rule is always suspect from the get-go in a lot of people's eyes. (And after seeing the results of six years of one-party rule from 2001-06, can you blame them?)

The point of all this is that Obama cannot—and I mean absolutely, positively, no-fucking-around CANNOT—afford this kind of thing to be even remotely connected to him and his administration, let alone happen more than once. "Pay-to-play" is one of the worst kinds of ethical/legal scandals, and the last thing he needs at any point in his tenure, let alone before he's even frigging sworn in. He is walking a very thin, very taut tightrope just now...and plenty of hostile audience members are rooting for it to snap on him and let him fall. If this administration is to succeed, to have any chance at succeeding, in its already-declared plans for drastic change, it has to be so clean it squeaks. Anything less invites disaster or at least being nibbled to death by media and right-wing ducks to the point of ineffectuality.

Please do not misunderstand: I want Obama to succeed, with all my heart and soul. Which is why I cringe every time one of these things hits the news headlines...and worry that the things we liberals all want him to do will get scuttled as Obama spends too much time trying to prove his integrity.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

Matt, this is absurd.

At policy level, shit happens. Really. The notion that there are not going to be bumps on the road is absurd. Fretting about them even more so.

The conservatives manufacture shit. The trick is to counter effectively, not buy into this. There is simply way to be "perfect" and thus avoid the smear tactics of the right. Trying is counter-productive and wastes energy. The solution is to continue moving forward while planning the effective counter-offensive.

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

YES!!!!!!