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05-30-2010, 08:29 PM
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From the Chicago Tribune....
"The Obama administration insists that, as political scandals go, this is pretty skimpy stuff. Contrary to rumors that Sestak, a retired admiral, was offered the job of secretary of the Navy, he was wooed with an unpaid position that, it turns out, he could not have taken without resigning his House seat.
Or, as the White House statement put it, he was provided "an opportunity for additional service to the public." Nothing illegal there, the White House counsel concluded.
That may very well be true, though some congressional Republicans are calling for a special prosecutor to investigate. Rod Blagojevich must be wondering how he can introduce the Sestak affair into his upcoming trial on charges of, um, trying to barter a U.S. Senate seat.
If this episode looks something short of brazenly corrupt and illegal, it doesn't leave the president looking like a shining agent of change, either. In the first place, it involved the kind of grubby deal-making that has to be kept out of sight because it would offend the public. In the second, the goal was to deny voters a reasonable option at the polls.
The president further tarnished his knightly armor by deciding to stonewall the whole issue. Sestak said back in February that the administration had offered him a job to withdraw, but the White House stubbornly refused to address the issue for months — on the apparent premise that what the citizens don't know can't hurt them.
Candidate Obama promised to transcend the pettiness of our politics. But this gambit makes him look small … and like an old hand at the Chicago way.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/o...,6197294.story
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