The Joe Sestak “scandal” is nothing but garden-variety politics routinely practiced by both parties. Yet as Rome burns, such quid pro quo is what is consuming the Republican Party’s bobbleheads. The signal dishonor of which Obama operatives stand accused, via Sam Stein, is offering a job to “Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Penn) in exchange for him not entering the Pennsylvania Senate primary.” The act has “seasoned political observers, historians, and lawyers responding with veritable yawns”:
American presidential history is littered with quid pro quos, implicit and explicit secret job offers, and backroom deals, so much so that the Sestak offer may be more the norm than the exception to it.
“It is completely unexceptional,” said Dr. Russell Riley, associate professor and chair of the Miller Center’s Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia. “I read some place today that this is evidently illegal, which was shocking news to me. I don’t know what the statutes are that would bear on this… it just doesn’t seem to me to particularly rise to the level of being newsworthy in the first place and the fact that it’s spun out into a scandal has been surprising.”
George Edwards, a Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Jordan Chair in Presidential Studies at Texas A&M University, says: “There is no question whatsoever that presidents have often offered people positions to encourage them not to do something or make it awkward for them to do it. Presidents have also offered people back-ups if they ran for an office and lost. All this is old news historically.”
The complete column is HERE.
Note, this is not to say the shenanigans of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and President Bill Clinton were legal. They could very well be illegal. They are certainly morally dubious. But politicians are by definition immoral. By blowing the scandal du jour out of proportion, an unspeakably crooked class is made to sweat the small stuff only.
I guess Republicans have a stake in perpetuating this state-of-affairs.
