The Washington Post had the audacity to run this opinion column today by Mark Brzezinski. Brzezinski is a biased subject-matter expert, not a resident Post columnist, so it's actually a decent article that centers mostly around the problem of bribery and other shady business practices in developing nations. It is a problem worth examining, but Brzezinski foolishly believes that cracking down on the bribers (mostly American corporations) will be a more fruitful effort than encouraging responsible governance in the third world. That is not, however, my issue with the article.
I highlight this article because a mere 12(ish) hours before this piece went to press, President Obama refused to answer a question about the Sestak allegations of bribery. Democratic candidate for the US Senate from Pennsylvania Joe Sestak has said repeatedly that the Administration offered him a high-level appointment within the administration (it's widely speculated that the position was Secretary of the Navy) in exchange for withdrawing his primary challenge from incumbent Democratic Senator Arlen Specter. If Sestak's allegations are true, someone high up at the White House has committed a felony.
Couple this story with similar allegations by US Senate candidate from Colorado, Andrew Romanoff, which have been denied by a White House spokesman.
Throw in a little bit of the scandalous courtship of Jim Matheson's vote on Obamacare. Matheson, a Utah Democratic Congressman and waivering no-vote was aggressively courted by Democratic leadership during the Obamacare push. At the same time, Matheson's brother was nominated for a US Circuit Court of Appeals judgeship. After the backlash of making this news public, Mattheson was shamed into voting against
Obamacare to avoid the appearance of indefensible malfeasance. Nevertheless, it wouldn't be difficult to impugn the purity of the Administration for such a gauche contempt of Congressional ethics.
For good measure, sprinkle on a dash of the shady dealings of Rod Blagojevich, disgraced ex-Governor of Illinois, who (allegedly) actively shopped the US Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama after his 2008 Presidential victory.
All of this is not to mention the bevy of personal corruption accusations from Obama's Chicago days.
Mix it all together, and you've got the recipe for the type of dirty politics surrounding the President that, at very best, leaves a bad taste in the mouths of American citizens. At worst, it's felonious chicanery that undermines the very basic tenets of the Republic.
Yet, the Washington Post condenses Brzezinski's original title on the Op-Ed website to "Obama's Bribery Crackdown." The tone-deafness of extolling the virtues of the Obama Administration's anti-bribery platform is laughable against the weight and volume of the allegations against the Administration. It seems unfathomable that the Post's editors wouldn't know how poorly that slant on this article would play. But then, they wouldn't be the only ones. Check out Time magazine's editor squirm when he's asked about the Sestak allegations. First he's lost. Then he's bewildered. Then he's confused as to why anyone would think that a senior official at the White House committing a felony was a story worthy of Time Magazine.
I have a suggestion for the next cover of Time: "Barack Obama: Post-Partisan, Post-Racial, Post-Ethical."
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