just don't say anything about the EARS!!!
Posted on 12/23/2006 12:35:49 PM PST by Chi-townChief
Finally, Barack Obama has a scandal. It’s small–a mere sapling next to its towering twentieth-century predecessors–but, with enough time and a little more attention, it could blossom into a White House Travel Office, or maybe even a Whitewater. The junior senator’s youthful drug habit (and his adult nicotine addiction) just never had legs, so if you need a cocktail-party reason to predict trouble for Obama’s candidacy, look no further than his business dealings with Antoin “Tony” Rezko, the indicted Chicago real-estate developer that sold the senator a sliver of his yard.
Of course, there’s just one problem with the scandal (Baragate? Obamawater?): No one is seriously accusing Obama of any wrongdoing. A minor hurdle. The accusation bar for titans like Obama is low, and a more slippery charge is readily available: Obama has created the appearance of having done something wrong. This, in turn, creates “questions about his judgment” that “could” come up at some point down the road. Slate’s John Dickerson charges that guys like Obama “have to think a little harder about appearances,” and the editorial page of the hometown Chicago Tribune says he would look “more genuine” if he stayed away from the Windy City sleaze. It’s an interesting charge–just not for the right reasons. And that’s because it says almost nothing about Obama but speaks volumes about the press.
What happened with Rezko? The details are annoying and complicated, but not impossible to follow: In June of 2005, Obama used money from a book advance to purchase a house (”Georgian revival,” “four fireplaces”) in a ritzy neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side for $1.65 million–$300,000 below the asking price. The same day, Tony Rezko’s wife, Rita, purchased the neighboring plot for $625,000 dollars–the asking price. Rezko, who has been friendly with Obama since the latter was in law school, was under criminal investigation, a fact that was known, but not widely. Seven months after the purchase, the Obamas approached the Rezkos about buying a piece of Rita’s plot to preserve what the Tribune called the “aesthetic balance” of the land–since once upon a time the house and neighboring property were a single package–and the Rezkos agreed. Land was sold (Obama paid well above the appraised value), a fence was built (Rezko supposedly paid), and lawns were mowed (Obama paid). Things were neighborly as punch until October 2006, when Rezko was indicted and pleaded not guilty to unrelated charges of influence-peddling.
This story certainly raises lots of interesting questions about Obama’s relationship with Rezko. Why did Obama get the house at below-market value when Rita Rezko paid the asking price? Why were both deals closed on the same day? And–most scandalously–did Obama and Rezko have a pay-for-play deal of the sort that can get you an indictment and lose you a career? Disappointingly, these questions have answers that are boring, uncontroversial, and well-known: The house had been on the market for months, the seller required that the sales be closed on the same day, and there still isn’t any evidence that Obama has ridden to Rezko’s rescue–he actually opposed gambling interests that would have made Rezko a pretty penny, and, since the indictment, he has donated the developer’s campaign contributions to charity.
Which is why everyone resorts to talk about “judgment” and “appearance.” And, sure, appearances can actually be useful, insofar as the appearance of impropriety is sometimes evidence of a real-live, slam-dunk, actual impropriety (if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, et cetera). And, of course, presidential candidates should be held to a higher level of scrutiny. But a higher level of scrutiny does not mean a different standard of guilt: In this case, journalists have followed the smoke and haven’t found the fire. At that point, accusing someone of something that looks wrong stops making sense.
So when Obama apologizes for having created the appearance of wrongdoing, he isn’t apologizing for anything meaningful–and rightly so. He’s apologizing for a public misperception. The same holds true for the way in which the events “raise questions” about Obama’s judgment: Without pundits there to misinterpret them, Obama’s actions are trivial. By itself, the Rezko deal couldn’t have been a “boneheaded” lapse (Obama’s word), because the wrongdoing depends on circularity: The Rezko deal was stupid only to the extent that observers arrive at the mistaken conclusion that Obama was doing something wrong. As Michel Kinsley once pointed out, that makes the appearance-of-impropriety charge self-fulfilling–the accusation helps create the perception it complains about.
The role of the press in all this should be to put perceptions in line with the facts as they stand, not inflate the perceptions and raise the distant possibility that the facts might line up behind them. Instead, the story, like the universe, has been expanding slowly outward ever since the Chicago Tribune reported the sale last month. Three days after the original report, a Tribune editorial raised the issue as something that could leave Obama “hoisted by his ethics petard.” The next day, Obama hosted a press conference to explain himself, and nothing he said then has been challenged. But the snowball was halfway down the mountain. Later in the month, the Associated Press picked up the story as part of a longer campaign profile. Last week, Slate gave the story a front-page write-up, and, this Sunday, The Washington Post gave it major play. There was no value added here: It’s just one great big piggyback in which the problem remains vague and the facts remain the same.
And, at each stage in the game, the pundits pass the buck. Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz writes forthrightly that this “may not be a big deal in the larger scheme of things.” In fact, he “mentions” the issue only because his reading and “sense of political dynamics” tells him the story “is about to break out of the Chicago media and go national.” By “go national,” Kurtz apparently means something other than receive 1,500-word treatment from The Washington Post, the seventh-biggest paper in the country. Slate commits basically the same offense. Dickerson writes that “we’re going to hear a lot more” about Rezko if Obama runs for president–though he also insists that “this is not Obama’s Whitewater” and “there’s nothing here so far that seems politically life threatening.” But we’re already reading plenty about Rezko: We’re reading about it in Slate, which titles Dickerson’s piece “Barackwater” and lures you toward the link with a promise to bring you “inside Obama’s shady land deal.”
It really does matter how the press treats these things. In March of 1992, The New York Times published an article that was critical of the Clintons’ Whitewater real-estate dealings–the first time most people had heard of the issue. It would not be the last. Eight years and 80 million public dollars later, we had a pornographic novel masquerading as the Starr Report, “insufficient” evidence to prove any presidential wrongdoing, and 15 convictions unrelated to the original investigation. If new facts come out that reveal actual wrongdoing, then, by all means, go nuts. But stop pretending that the appearance of a wrong is a crime worth more than an inch of newsprint. Give Obama all the scrutiny in the world–just not a different standard of guilt.
Conor Clarke is a writer in Washington, D.C.
https://ssl.tnr.com/p/docsub.mhtml?i=w061218&s=clarke122006
It's a dirty deal and the liberal media will dumb their way through it as if it was just a simple mistake.
"but, with enough time and a little more attention, it could blossom into a White House Travel Office, or maybe even a Whitewater."
This sentence is the only thing you need to know about the author....
Yeah, Democrats are pure as the driven snow but if Republicans fart then it's gavel-to-gavel coverage.
just don't say anything about the EARS!!!
And of course, this only happens when the alledged wrongdoer is a democrat, right?
I mean you MSM nitwitted idiots don't ever, ever paint the picture of "guilty until proven innocent" with a republican, now do you?
Hypocritical bastards.
Hussein Obama is a gun-grabbing, welfare-for-all, tax-and-spend liberal POS anyway.
Nobody has to invent anything.
He's already toast in a large portion of the US, anyway.
And since he's already told me that I'm a racist ('cause I ain't gonna vote for him) then I see no point in further discussion of his viability as a candidate.
He has none.
Yeah... and the DBM swept that away faster than Hillary could say “Bye-bye Billy Dale!”
Obviously you don't understand liberal logic.
Republicans are against crime. Therefore, if a Republican is caught tearing the tag off an box-spring, he should be hounded to the end of the earth.
Democrats, on the other hand, are for releasing murderers on weekend furloughs, or letting them off scot-free to play golf. Therefore, when a Democrat gets caught with his hand in the till, he should be let off too. Only logical. No-brainer.
How come I never get deals like this????
The Clintons bought influence from their witnesses with highpaying underqualified jobs but the public yawns at such discussions.
The Democrats want power and have never made a play at being moral.
Conservatives won't stand firm behind immoral politicians. Democrats smear Republicans with bogus charges (like that Foley was molesting 16 year olds) who will find enough slime (a homosexual soliticing young men who he met through the intern program, but who were adult and out of the program at the time he made his move) that they are revolted.
Look at the openly corrupt Democrats in Louisiana (including the evil William Jefferson who used National Guard troops to make a personal trip to his home during the Katrina aftermath to get cash). David Duke should never have risen as high as he did and was the only "grace" that Republicans used in saying "vote for the other guy" who was Edwin Edwards who was convicted AGAIN on corruption while in office and at least until recently (maybe still) serving time in Federal prison in Texas.
I want to know what Nancy Pelosi will do about this since SHE claimed an ethical Congress. Obama is in Congress. Address this issue NOW, not in 2008.
Your computer skills are unquestionable, but couldn't you have depicted him in a more appropriate setting, especially during this season?
There's no there...there.
If this is the worst they can get on Obama, he's home free.
Because you never buy properties in the million-plus range?
Democrats are seemingly impervious to scandal.
Yes, there is a double standard. This represents the
deepening cultural divsion in this country. Liberals find
some comfort with deeply disturbed and perverted
people. As long as the mission is carried forward honesr and integrity are meaningless.
Of course Bush's supposed coke habit, with zero corroboration, zero witnesses, zero context, zero credibility, that had legs to these same media simps. And it was based on little more than some unseemly whisper campaign started by Ann Richards campaign back in the 90s, may she rest in pieces.
Sounds like a Clinton set up to me.
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