Hullabaloo

Monday, December 22, 2008

 
Moving The Goalposts

by digby

This was inevitable. Last week I noted that there was some thought among the Village media that if it turns out that Rahm didn't run to the prosecutors with any suspicions that Blago wanted something in return for appointing (presumably) Valerie Jarrett, then he is guilty of a political crime if not a legal one. Not that it matters. Monica Crowley predicted on the McLaughlin Group this week-end that he's toast:

"Regardless of whether or not Rahm Emmanuel is found guilty to have done anything on these tapes, Barack Obama needs a sacrificial lamb on this scandal. He will ask Emmanuel to step aside as chief of staff and be his point man in the Congress."

Somerby tells us today that over the week-end the gasbags believe that because Obama said his staff didn't have any inappropriate contact he opened himself up to charges of being evasive. (Seriously)

Today we hear from the Politico that if Obama doesn't release the content of all the emails and phone calls, he will still be under suspicion. Apparently, there is some rule which says that transition documents are not subject to FOIA requests, something which good government groups find appalling and which the press is seizing on in advance as some sort of sign that the Obama team is stonewallikng --- even before they issue their report. Typical stuff.

But this is really too much:

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a leading advocate for government transparency, is considering legislation to retroactively apply the Presidential Records Act to the Obama transition team.

Leslie Phillips, a spokeswoman to Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), who chairs the committee that oversees the Presidential Records Act, all but brushed off Cornyn’s idea.

“Sen. Lieberman has been pleased with the Obama transition team’s commitment to transparency and is hopeful the Obama administration will also maintain a high level of openness,” Phillips said.

But the aide familiar with Cornyn’s idea, who did not want to be identified talking about the Senator’s plans, said the need to regulate transition team records extends beyond the Blagojevich matter to policy plans and analyses done with the cooperation of federal agencies.

“To the extent that they are currently operating with public funds and with authority given to them by federal statute and courtesies given to them by federal agencies, they ought to be under the Presidential Records Act, if not the Freedom of Information Act,” said the aide.

Other than voluntary disclosure by Obama’s team, there aren’t a whole lot of ways that its Blagojevich-related records could come out.

The governor’s office might be compelled by Illinois’ public records law to release emails that may have passed between his aides and Obama’s, though the state has argued — unsuccessfully so far — that it shouldn’t have to release documents related to the U.S. attorney’s ongoing investigation.

Also, transition team correspondence related to both Blagojevich’s selection process and Obama’s internal review could become public as evidence in the case against Blagojevich, which is partly why some experts questioned the wisdom behind the Obama review.

May I be so bold as to predict that by the time this is all through that Joe Liberman will be convinced that Obama needs to release all transition records?

And is there any doubt that if Obama hadn't conducted the review, he would have been accused of stonewalling?

The good news is that there is, so far, no sex involved, which means that certain members of the media are getting like, totally, boooored...

I miss the sex.

The nation is engrossed in an orgy of scandal, a 24-hour cable news burlesque of greed, graft, cronyism and corruption, with appointed villains so lurid and over-the-top they could be characters in “Bleak House.” (Even their names, Madoff and Blagojevich, have a Dickensian ring, like Skimpole or Pardiggle.)

The most salacious news stories pivot on money, not mistresses, prostitutes or toe taps in an airport men’s room. It’s the 10th anniversary of Monicagate and the impeachment of President Clinton, and even the Fox News Channel cannot summon the energy to dwell on Linda Tripp or the semen-stained dress. (At the moment, muckrakers are studying Clinton donors, not doxies.)

So, I guess there's hope as long as nobody tried to tweet a page or diddle an intern.

Meanwhile, the pollsters are taking the public's temperature. Here's Ed Henry on CNN:

HENRY: That's right. Two transition aides now say that we can expect that on Tuesday, tomorrow. We'll finally get this internal investigation from the Obama team about their contacts with Rod Blagojevich, Illinois's governor, his staff and everything, about the Senate seat, the controversy and all the allegations.

You see we have some new poll numbers out this hour from CNN, where we asked people what they think about the Obama team's contacts. And basically, 12 percent say that they think there was something illegal here. Thirty-six percent say there was something unethical. Forty-three percent say nothing wrong. So you see, a clear majority in this CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll believe that the Obama team did nothing wrong, you know, that a large number of people believe that there was really nothing wrong.

Apparently, Henry doesn't know what illegal and unethical mean because if those numbers ae correct, it means that 48% think something either illegal or unethical happened and only 43% think he did nothing wrong. Whatever. It has no real bearing on anything at the moment.

But the fact is that the drumbeat has undoubtedly led a lot of people to believe something unethical happened between the Obama team and Blagojevich. And there is no evidence of such a thing at all. Indeed, there is ample evidence of the opposite.

Even though he misreads the number, Henry goes on to say:

And that's why it's probably in the interests, politically, of the Obama team to get this out as soon as they can. They say they've been waiting because a prosecutor urged them not to jump out too quickly. But they've been facing some pressure to tell the whole story.

But we need to be clear, as well, that this is not going to be the final word on it. This is an [internal] investigation from the Obama team. So it should be no surprise that tomorrow, it's very likely for this report to say, yes, there was some contact between the Obama and Blagojevich's team but nothing illegal, nothing improper.

But we still have to see down the road what the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, says. That's going to be more important than an [internal] investigation, Betty.

Oh my no, this won't be finished once Obama does what they all said he had to do in order to finish it. Each revelation "raises more questions," goalposts are moved, new angles explored. There's never any resolution.

And more and more people begin to just "feel" that something untoward must have happened. After all, where there's smoke there's fire, right?


Update: Countyfair notes that the Wall Stret Journal spells it out explicitly. no matter what the report says, they aren't going to let up:

...

the Journal, on behalf of the Beltway press corps, announces that it already has a back-up plan in order to hype the non-scandal [emphasis added]:

Regardless of how clean the Obama camp is, the release of the report isn't likely to be clean. Thursday, former President Bill Clinton released a list of 205,000 donors -- many of them foreign governments -- to his foundation, which he had promised to do as a condition for his wife Sen. Hillary Clinton's nomination as secretary of state. That set off a scramble to tie donors to policy predicaments facing the Obama administration.

See, similar to Isikoff, the Journal suggests Obama's just like Clinton.

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digby 12/22/2008 04:30:00 PM |