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?