Meet the new political bosses, worse than the old political
bosses.
By Jonah Goldberg
May 5, 2009
Democrats took back Congress in 2006 and the presidency in 2008 in no small
part because of their ability to bang their spoons on their high chairs
about what they called the Republican "culture of corruption." Their
choreographed outrage was coordinated with the precision of a North Korean
missile launch pageant. And, to be fair, they had a point. The GOP did have
its legitimate embarrassments. California Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham and
lobbyist Jack Abramoff were fair game, and so was Rep. Mark Foley, the
twisted Florida congressman who allegedly wanted male congressional pages
cleaned and perfumed and brought to his tent, as it were.
Of course, it wasn't as if Democrats were without sin. Louisiana Rep.
William Jefferson was indicted on fraud, bribery and corruption charges in
2007, after an investigation unearthed, among other things, $90,000 in his
freezer. Then-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer was busted in a prostitution
scandal.
But that's all yesterday's news. Let's look at the here and now. Barack
Obama, who vowed he'd provide a transparent administration staffed with
disinterested public servants with the self-restraint of Roman castrati,
appointed an admitted tax cheat to run the Treasury Department -- and he's
hardly the only one in the administration.
New York Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means
Committee, is under investigation for, among other things, failing to report
income from his Caribbean villa. Meanwhile, Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman
of the Senate Banking Committee, got sweetheart deals from subprime lender
Countrywide and has yet to adequately explain his too-good-to-be-true deal
on his million-dollar "cottage" in Ireland, which he may have gotten in
exchange for finagling a pardon (from President Clinton) for a felon. Oh,
Dodd also secretly protected those AIG bonuses that raised such a ruckus
last month.
Rep. Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania, Nancy Pelosi's moral authority on military
matters during the Iraq war, has been revealed as a kleptomaniac of sorts,
delivering as much of the federal budget as possible to various cronies and
lobbyists.
John Edwards, who had an affair even as he was scoring Oprah-points as the
supportive husband during his wife's battle with breast cancer, is being
investigated by the feds for the improper use of campaign funds. It looks
like the silky haired champion of the little guys may have used their
donations to bribe the alleged "baby mama" into silence.
And it would be a shame to let it pass that Obama's Senate seat was put up
for sale by the then-Democratic governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, and
Illinois Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. is under investigation for trying to buy it.
But you know what? We ain't seen nothing yet. For starters, the real
corruption isn't what the media are ignoring or downplaying as isolated
incidents. It's what the media are hailing as bold, inspirational
leadership. The White House, as a matter of policy, is rewriting legal
contracts, picking winners (mostly labor unions and mortgage defaulters) and
singling out losers (evil "speculators") while much of the media continue to
ponder whether Obama is better than FDR.
If a Republican administration, staffed with cronies from Goldman Sachs and
Citibank, was cutting special deals for its political allies, I suspect we'd
be hearing fewer FDR analogies and more nouns ending with the suffix "gate."
Take Obama's "car czar," Steven Rattner. According to ABC's Jake Tapper,
Rattner is accused of threatening to use the White House to smear a Chrysler
creditor if it refused to back the administration's bankruptcy plan. He's
also connected to a massive pension fund scandal involving the investment
firm he used to run. One allegation is that conspirators used investments in
the low-budget movie "Chooch" to expedite their alleged chicanery. Chooch,
by the way, is Italian slang for "jackass," which just happens to be the
Democrats' mascot.
More to the point, political corruption is inevitable whenever you give
hacks -- of either party -- too much discretion over public funds.
Businesses look to Washington for profits instead of to the market. The
thing is, this has become the governing philosophy of the Democratic Party,
from banking and cars to healthcare and now student loans. The federal
government is taking over, and the culture of corruption inevitably trickles
down. That in itself should be a scandal. Call it "Choochgate."