Triskelion

So, according to White House Counsel Robert Bauer, when Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel recruited President Clinton to offer Joe Sestak a presidential or senior executive branch advisory board job in exchange for dropping out of his primary race with everyone’s favorite Republican’t, Arlen Spectre, there was nothing illegal about it. Never the less, Republicans in both houses are calling for special investigations to be conducted by the Attorney General and the FBI.

I followed this story on numerous media outlets for the last few days, and most of the politicos and former prosecutors who’ve been paid to comment seem to feel that this issue is either a non-starter, or that it opens a huge can of worms which would be devastating to both parties, because this kind of stuff happens all the time. It’s especially common after redistricting, when party leadership may offer the newly unseated Representatives jobs of various types in order to keep them from running against incumbents in neighboring districts. In essence, this is business as usual, and the Republican attempt to represent it as a prosecutable offense is simply political maneuvering, with little or no teeth. After a brief media storm, this will fall off the radar of the major media outlets, only to resurface briefly when Sestak wins Spectre’s seat in Pennsylvania.

If you’re a regular visiter here, you know that this is the point at which I usually ramp up to a solid froth, pull the arm off of the nearest Republican and beat him to death with the wet end. In this case, however, the problem doesn’t reside on that side of the aisle. No, the Dems really screwed the pooch on this one, and I’m not above pointing and laughing while they try to pull their pants back up.

Putting a stop to the shady, backroom dealings of “Washington as usual” was supposed to be part of that “Change We Can Believe In” stuff, right? Didn’t he get elected on a message of transparency and open processes?

All of that high-minded rhetoric makes it even more repulsive when the curtain is pulled back to reveal that this country really is run by largely invisible men in smoke-filled rooms, betting quatloos on their favorite thralls. Star Trek nerdery aside, the comparison is an apt one. No one wants an oligarchy to run the show, to choose who fights whom and who lives and dies, and yet it is clear that unelected power brokers continuously wrangle to make political outcomes about as unscripted as pro wrestling.

If this issue beats the odds and manages to get some traction with the Justice Department, I hope that the man responsible does the right thing. Just like Scooter Libby and John Poindexter before him, Rahm Emanuel should jump on the grenade. I have long suspected that he is nothing more than a Karl Rove in Democrat’s clothing, so I kind of hope this comes to pass. In fact, I hope the soothsayers from both parties are able to read the take-home message in his scattered political entrails. As much as the American Public hates the political process, they hate seeing its inner workings even more…