BY BILL GREENER
The White House, in one form or another, offered Joe Sestak some sort of political deal to get him to refrain from running against Arlen Specter in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania. The first time I heard this, I thought to myself, why would this surprise or upset anyone? Yet, the longer the story stuck around, the more I have come to conclude it is both a story and worthy of being harshly criticized. Inasmuch as most of my adult life has been spent in politics, in the abstract, it bothers me not that politics are involved in solving a political problem. However, what this White House has done is wrong pure and simple. There are four big reasons I am now upset.
President Obama promised during the course of his campaign that, if elected, everything would suddenly be different in Washington, D.C. Politics as usual would come to a screeching halt. Political deals would become a thing of the past. After all, stopping the seas from rising was not the sort of thing that ever would be associated with tawdry and ordinary politics. No matter what else can be said about the Sestak affair, it seems to me that you have to acknowledge this is, indeed, politics as usual. That accounts for the giant yawn we see on the part of most of the media and many Americans. When a conservative is caught engaging in behavior inconsistent with adherence to family values, we are told that is news because it not only shows hypocrisy, but because it also is contrary to the basic candidacy of the individual. How is what Obama has done and tolerated any less hypocritical or less central to his candidacy? Why isn’t it news that, after promising to be so very different, that Obama (and those around him) truly represent old style Chicago politics?
Second, the choice of the poster child for questionable ethics, Bill Clinton, as your emissary strikes me as particularly bad judgment on the part of all those who decided he was the man for the job. As is almost always the case when Bill Clinton gets involved, we are confronted with being asked to trust and believe things that simply defy credulity.
This leads to my third source of anger—dealing with the parsing of truth that defines Clinton politics and debates that surround him. The argument goes that since Bill Clinton only discussed positions that involved no payment, everyone was in compliance with the law that bans offering “something of value.” Back to the narrow differences between oral sex and sex, between arguing about the definition of the word “is.” Is it barely possible Bill Clinton only discussed positions without compensation? I suppose so. Do I think that is reality? I do not. Not only that, but whom, other than someone “looking for loopholes” would even conjure this argument.
Fourth, and most offensive to me, is the simultaneous assertion Clinton made an offer to get Joe Sestak to do something different than what Joe Sestak was planning to do, but what Clinton offered was of no value. How can that possibly make any sense? It is as Al Pacino says in Godfather II to his brother-in-law. “Don’t lie to me. It insults my intelligence.” If what Bill Clinton was offering was of no value, why in the world would it ever have any bearing on the thinking and decisions of Joe Sestak? By definition, at least in terms of logic, what was offered was thought to be of value. Whether or not any of this is a breach of the law, or even if it is a breach whether it merits taking action, I leave to lawyers. But, please, can’t we all agree that what was being discussed had a value?
At the end of the day, my real wish is that President Obama (along with those in the White House and those who cannot refrain from fawning over him) will simply decide not all politics as usual constitute evil. In the future, so long as the positions being discussed are ones for which a person is obviously qualified, I hope the White House will muster the courage to say that, of course, politics entered into the thinking, but that is entirely proper. After all, what is wrong with putting a qualified person into an important post while, at the same time, solving a thorny political problem?
The behavior of the President and others in the White House has managed to turn my instinct to not be upset about something pretty ordinary into anger. He is a hypocrite of the first order. This is politics as usual. Bill Clinton has restored the parsing of truth to prominence, and I am being asked to accept the incredible as actual truth. Baloney and shame on them.
Editor’s Note: Bill Greener is a founding partner of Greener and Hook, a communications firm specializing in work for Republican candidates and private organizations facing public policy challenges. Formerly, he headed the political and communications divisions of the Republican National Committee, as well as serving as Convention Manager for the 1996 National Convention. Greener also has been an executive at International Paper and Wheelabrator Technologies.