Transition trouble
“President-elect Barack Obama wanted to bring some Chicago with him to Washington. But with one stiff wind, Chicago has grabbed Obama and his transition - and blown it off-course for the first time since Election Day,” ABC News reporter Rick Klein writes in the Note at abcnews.com.
“It isn’t about the direct implications - though having a senior adviser win a pseudonym in a Patrick Fitzgerald legal filing might be enough to keep a scandal around for a while,” Mr. Klein said.
“What the stunning charges leveled against Gov. Rod Blagojevich, D-Ill., mean for the heretofore flawless transition:
“1. The underbelly of the Obama political operation, with all its Chicago tints and taints, is now fair game for reporters looking for a story.
“2. Obama will not control a news cycle for a while - maybe until Christmas.
“3. David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel (and Valerie Jarrett and Andy Stern) … will cringe with every BlackBerry vibration as Blagojevich and his chief of staff are pressed to name names by a no-BS prosecutor.
“4. The culture of corruption has put its home on the market and is well into the process of moving to the other side of the aisle.
“5. The most open and transparent transition in American history just by necessity got more closed and opaque.
“6. Obama’s still-cautious political enemies have what they need to advance the story: a contradiction (and one involving no less an eminence than Axelrod).
“It’s that contradiction that might give the story more legs than it might otherwise have, a genuine what-did-the-president-elect-know-and-when-did-he-know-it to keep Team Obama on defense.”
Puzzling picks
“The plurality of moderates and conservatives on Obama’s appointments list didn’t surprise me, because I never thought he was the flaming radical socialist portrayed on right-wing talk radio (which I listen to and enjoy even when I disagree),” Camille Paglia writes at www.salon.com.
“As an Obama supporter and contributor, I’ve been very gratified by his dignified deportment and steadiness at the helm to date. But I must admit to puzzled disappointment with his recycling of Clinton era veterans, who reek of deja vu. Surely we might have expected a better mix of fresh faces and progressive voices? Obama’s team may have underestimated the labyrinthine personal interconnections and habit-worn loyalties of that cliquish crew,” the columnist said.
“As for Obama’s appointment of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, what sense does that make except within parochial Democratic politics? Awarding such a prize plum to Hillary may be a sop to her aggrieved fan base, but what exactly are her credentials for that position? Aside from being a mediocre senator (who, contrary to press reports, did very little for upstate New York), Hillary has a poor track record as both a negotiator and a manager. And of course both Clintons constantly view the world through the milky lens of their own self-interest.
“Well, it’s time for Hillary to put up or shut up. If she gets as little traction in world affairs as Condoleezza Rice has, Hillary will be flushed down the rabbit hole with her feckless husband and effectively neutralized as a future presidential contender. If that’s Obama’s clever plan, is it worth the gamble? The secretary of state should be a more reserved, unflappable character - not a drama queen who, even in her acceptance speech, morphed into three different personalities in the space of five minutes.
“Given Obama’s elaborate deference to the Clintons, beginning with his over-accommodation of them at the Democratic convention in August, a nagging question has floated around the Web: What do the Clintons have on him? No one doubts that the Clinton opposition research team was turning over every rock in its mission to propel Hillary into the White House. There’s an information vacuum here that conspiracy theorists have been rushing to fill.”
Auto delusions
“Leave it to Bob Lutz, GM’s voluble vice chairman, to puncture the unreality of the auto bailout he himself has been championing,” Wall Street Journal columnist Holman W. Jenkins Jr. writes.
“In an e-mail to Ward’s Auto World, he notes an obvious flaw in Congress’s rescue plan now taking shape: The fuel-efficient ’green’ cars GM, Ford and Chrysler profess to be thrilled to be developing at Congress’s behest will be unsellable unless gas prices are much higher than today’s.
“’Very few people will want to change what has been their “nationality-given” right to drive big and bigger if the price of gas is $1.50 or $2.00 or even $2.50,’ Mr. Lutz explained. ’Those prices will put the CAFE-mandated manufacturers at war with their customers - and no one will win in that battle.’
“Translation: To become ’viable,’ as Congress chooses crazily to understand the term, the Big Three are setting out to squander billions on products that will have to be dumped on consumers at a loss.
“None of this was mentioned at four days of congressional bailout hearings, because Detroit knows better than to suggest Congress has a role in the industry’s problem. Yet its own recently updated Corporate Average Fuel Economy regime, or CAFE, makes a mockery of the idea that government money will render the companies profitable, even as the same bailout bill demands that the Big Three drop their legal challenge to a California mileage mandate even more unsustainable than the federal government’s.”
Bye-bye, Camelot
“So though Illinois isn’t surprised - this is after all the home of the Chicago Way - the national media must be shocked” by Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s arrest, Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass writes.
“They’ve been clinging to the ridiculous notion that Chicago is Camelot for months now, cleaving to the idea with the willfulness of stubborn children. It must help them see Obama as some pristine creature, perhaps a gentle faun of a magic forest, unstained by our grubby politics, a bedtime story for grown-ups who insist upon fairy tales. But now the national media may finally be forced to confront reality,” Mr. Kass said.
“Even national pundits with tingles running up their legs can’t ignore the tape recordings in which Blagojevich speculated how he’d get the gold for picking Obama’s successor.”
• Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or Greg Pierce.
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