Letter from the Left Coast: The Cabinet, the Legacy and the Law

Ian Bowater with a Christmas Special from the Left Coast

Here’s change you’re gonna have to put up with… Barack Obama ran on the left to beat Hillary in the Primary. At the general election conventional wisdom dictates that he would move to the centre to get elected. When in office he will naturally drift back to the left. The Republicans forced change on him by playing the Pinko, Commie, Socialist card. Instead of running to the middle, he stayed left because it worked for him and none of the calumnies heaped on him by the McCain campaign worked for them. Now in the transition we are learning what sort politician he will be. He is governing from the right, appeasing some pretty nasty folks while he builds his big tent. Instead of ringing the change bell there’s a load of old Clinton clangers in his first Cabinet.

Hillary was an obvious choice – that deal was probably struck well before the Convention. The idea being it’s better having her inside the tent pissing out rather than outside pissing in. Goes to show Obama doesn’t know squat. Hillary and all the other women in his Big Tent can sit on their haunches and piss right where they are.

His Attorney General is an old Clinton appointee. A nice, well-meaning team player, he may well be the Colin Powell of the Justice Department. He signed off on one of Bill’s more egregious pardons.  Robert Gates, an old Republican spy tainted with Iran/Contra and torture, stays at the Pentagon. Another Clintonite gets Commerce. In fact, Bill Richardson took a hit on this one. He sold his Clinton soul to back Obama and even told Bill to his face. All he gets is Commerce even after he’d been U.N. Ambassador. Barack can be a tough guy when he wants. Only the strong survive. Richardson and Biden were both weak Primary opponents, so they get sinecures and no influence. Remember Biden was picked for his foreign policy chops; so why is Hillary Secretary of State? Biden said little during the campaign and even less since. The rest of them are a rainbow nation of ethnic and gender picks or regional timeservers. He’s a bit short on Gays but a transsexual Undersecretary for Health would fix that and be a nice two-fer. There’s probably some party hack chomping on hormone replacement tabs right now. The new Agricultural Secretary repays Barack’s Iowa debt. Unfortunately Tom Vilsack doesn’t like growing food unless it is intend to feed an internal combustion engine. That’s Farm Aid not Climate Change dollars. The new Energy Secretary is a Nobel Prize winner so at least there is a return to science in the White House. After Bush creationist nut-job appointees, a little science will go a long way. In fact, all of them are accomplished to some extent but after the last eight years an amoeba on life support would seem accomplished.

Not good enough for the new left though – the sweaty herberts who came to the table riding a boogey board on the wave of hope – have suddenly found their whiney complaining voices. “Too many Clinton people – where’s the change in that?” Hell, if he could get elected with hordes of inexperienced voters dipping their toes in the warm current along this bank and shoal of time, he can govern with a bunch of well-meaning neophytes. Can’t he? Huh? Fortunately, Obama is smarter than that. There is a desperate need for competence and he is filling the void. To be honest he has barely put a foot wrong with the Cabinet, which is more than can be said for his Senate seat replacement in Illinois and the Inauguration guest list.

Let’s start with Governor Blagojevich of the great State of Illinois. If a President-elect whose Senate seat was up for grabs had not held meaningful discussions with the person about to bestow the gift, it would be at best remiss and almost certainly politically inept. In an attempt to jump out ahead of the brewing scandal, Obama’s transition team in the shape of his Chief Political Adviser, Axelrod, said they had not spoken to the recently arrested Governor. Given that his proposed White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, holds the House Seat that the Blagojevich gave up to become Governor, you have to ask who is talking to whom in the Windy City? Anybody? Nobody? Bullshit! In fact, they had spoken and now Team Obama has had to back track. How do we know they spoke? It is on tape. When Blagojevich says, “All they want to f---ing give me is f---ing appreciation”, the “they” is Obama’s people. The too hasty denial stuck an Axelrod in the wheel spokes of the clean machine. And now they are learning a lesson that Blagojevich could have taught them, if they had wanted to listen to him instead of just giving it the “Big I am!” It’s never the crime that gets you, it’s always the covered up. Blagojevich knows this and that’s why he is happy to be taped in all his “expletive deleted” glory. Profanity is not a crime – ask Richard Nixon. You’ll never get a conviction with what’s on the tape unless the defendant is an asshole NFL running back who once got away with murdering his wife.

When the Honorable Governor says, “I’ve got something that’s f---ing gold and I’m not giving it away for f---ing nothing.” He is expressing his faith in the time-honored political tradition called quid pro quo, otherwise known as “pay to play” if your opponent is doing it and you want to make him sound sleazy. In Chicago, like everywhere else in politics, “appreciation” means thanks but “f---ing appreciation,” means a big, fat sweetener.

Other “crimes”, he is supposed to have committed include threatening to pull the plug on the Chicago Cubs deal to sell Wrigley Field unless the parent company’s Chicago Tribune starts giving him better ink on its editorial page. This charge caused outrage among the journalists in PunditWorld. However, their shock and horror does ring a little hollow. A multi-million dollar stadium deal for a bit of opinion page sweet talk? Come on! Journalists are way cheaper than that. A bottle of warm Coors, some peanuts and Crackerjack would have done it. What you hear on the tapes is bravado, chutzpah and the sort of tough-guy talk that apparently warms up the Governor’s realtor wife. You knew the case against him was thin when the press went after his hair. In a slaphead world, Governor Blagojevich has just a bit too much hair. He’s the victim of follicle envy. And President-elect Obama has pronounced him guilty by saying he’s unfit to govern. I guess he missed the “innocent until proven guilty” seminar at Harvard Law.

Besides the missteps across the swamp of Illinois politics, Obama has already had his Sista Souljah moment and blew it. He’s chosen a right wing bigot, Pastor Rick Warren, to give the Invocation at his Inauguration. This is another right wing holy-roller who doesn’t believe in abortion or stem cell research. He may be worried about global warming and Darfur but he doesn’t put the fun back in Fundamentalism. Still hurting from the Black Vote’s support of the ban on Gay marriage and Barack’s personal antipathy towards same sex marriages, the Gay and Lesbian Community are outraged.  Rick Warren equates same sex marriage with pedophilia, incest and polygamy. Obama has not only invited him to the national celebration but selected him to ask for the blessing of his God on the shenanigans. It’s another Obama big tent idea. That marquee he hopes to stretch the length of Pennsylvania Avenue turns out to be a Field Hospital in the front line of the Culture War. Whatever his personal beliefs, which he seems to subsume for the greater good in so many other areas, this choice stands out as an insult to everyone left of centre. A sizable community who worked hard for his election has been wounded. And Obama doesn’t seem to mind whose toes he steps on or how hard he stamps. He reminds me of that other doe-eyed soft-soap peddler who went out of his way to act tough with his base. Tony Blair rode the same ticket of hope over despair and look at him now. Watch out Obama, things can only get bitter.

Oblivious of this and any other maelstroms, Bush and Co are out on the Legacy Tour. Take a look again at that Iraqi shoe tossing footage. That was no lame duck. Bush actually seemed to be enjoying it. He dodged both shoes. Take another look, this time at the “journalist” in the olive green suit and red shirt. He is one row in front of the shoemeister. First he puts up his hand to stop the assault. They he gets up to confront the man and tries to overpower him. But the Secret Service get there first to take him down. Mr. Olive Green Suit quickly goes back to pretending to be a journalist. Can someone find out who he really is, please? These Iraqi press conferences are full of plants, the Fourth Estate acting as the Fifth Column again. These “journalists” are the ones feeding us all that crap about everything going so well. Not one good gentleman of the Press or TV commentator here picked up on this guy. He has a major role of that short film. But there has not been one interview, not one question about his view as the closest eyewitness. Surely someone would want to know what were his thoughts. Perhaps he declined because he didn’t want to make the story about him. Or maybe the shoes were just too funny, rather like the Governor’s hair.

Buoyed by his audition as a coconut shy, the outgoing President has given a number of interviews, explaining, mitigating or just plain waffling on the subject his Presidency. His main theme being that he is proud not to have implemented any policies simply to be popular. Disingenuous maybe but isn’t that really the ingenuity of the truth. He is without trying the least popular president in history. He makes Hoover look hands-on and Nixon, a lovable rogue. Bush thinks he’s a success because he didn’t want to curry favour with the American public? What a prince!

The support acts on the Legacy Roadshow include Dick Cheney who is publicly boasting about his involvement in ushering through the extreme interrogation measures. He is proudly admitting to being responsible for the implementation of torture. Regardless of how he sees it, the man is indictable. And if he is, so is Condoleeza Rice. She is talking wistfully of her years in government and looking forward to returning to the Hoover Institute on the campus of Stanford University. The axis of evil is now located along San Francisco’s Bay Bridge. At one end, in Berkeley, sits John Yoo the infamous author of the so-called “torture memos” and at the other end, out on the peninsula is Lady Marmalade. It was as the former National Security Adviser that she needed Yoo to come up with the dirty talk and the form of words to make torture sound oh so legal. And the Geneva Convention sound oh so quaint. They are both indictable and they are sitting ducks in the most liberal state in the union. Time for a couple citizens’ arrests, I think.

That’s where the Democrats went wrong by impeaching Nixon. He got a pardon. They should have let him hang in office and arrested him as a civilian. But no one is talking of such scorched earth tactics this time around. Obama has publicly stated that he doesn’t see any indictments. He’d prefer to throw a petty shyster like Blagojevich in the can. His big tent is not going to be a kangaroo court. Bush could even pardon these war criminals before he leaves office. Constitutionally, he could even pardon himself. All they would have to do is admit the wrongdoing. That would make them immune in the USA but the European mainland would become a no-go area. Britain is a different matter. Condy Rice could be our next General Pinochet if she pops over for tummy tuck on the NHS. Then we’ll see if Jacqui Smith has got any balls.

Yes, I know there was all that outrage when the cops raided the House of Commons without a warrant. But warrants should only be needed for a private dwellings or places of business. The Palace of Westminster is the people’s house and therefore public domain. I think we should send the cops in to arrest a few slackers on a regular basis. It will, at least, keep the bastards on their toes. If you think that is a troublesome Fascistic thought, just wait to see what our old chum Kenneth Starr has got in store. The Clintons’ nemesis from the nineties is back. He is preparing a case to forcibly divorce the 18,000 Gays who got married in California this past year.  Perhaps Starr can turn up at the Inauguration and hold Obama’s bible for him.

Next time the Big Tent Inauguration – until then, A Happy New Year to all our readers.

Comments

[sabre460]

What a maroon!!!