In an interview with CNN, Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA), the incoming chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was asked about his pre-election comments that President Obama was among the “most corrupt presidents” in modern times. Here’s what he said:
I corrected what I meant to say. … In saying that this is one of the most corrupt administrations, which is what I meant to say there, when you hand out $1 trillion in TARP just before this president came in, most of it unspent, $1 trillion nearly in stimulus that this president asked for, plus this huge expansion in health care and government, it has a corrupting effect. When I look at waste, fraud and abuse in the bureaucracy and in the government, this is like steroids to pump up the muscles of waste.
Criticisms of the president and his policies are certainly warranted. Still, Mr. Issa needs to be careful not to toss around the term “corruption” in a promiscuous manner. Corruption is commonly understood to mean extremely immoral, dishonest, or depraved; susceptible to bribery; crooked, and the like. What Richard Nixon did in Watergate and what Bill Clinton did to cover up his affair with Monica Lewinski was corrupt.
The Obama administration, whatever its errors, has not approached the level of corruption or criminality of either the Nixon or Clinton administration. And citing TARP as key evidence to prove the corruption of the Obama administration is discrediting. (For a good account of the merits of TARP, see this Washington Post editorial.)
If lawmakers hope to increase public confidence in Congress, they need to speak in measured, judicious, and precise ways. They need to resist resorting to incendiary charges. And they can’t let their rhetoric get ahead of the evidence. That was true when George W. Bush was president, and it should be true when Barack Obama is president.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to go after Mr. Obama and his administration. Charging them with being the most liberal administration in our history, or even as among the more pernicious in our lifetime, is, I think, fair. But charging them with being among the most corrupt isn’t.
Our only hope is the professionalism of our armed forces. I would add the CIA except I don’t trust their professionalism. They have gotten too far into policy during the Bush years and they were consistently disloyal although most of it was simply trying to cover for their incompetence. If you read Bob Baer’s first book and Gary Berntsen’s first book, Jawbreaker, you do not get a feeling for the CIA’s competence.
As far as economics is concerned, I don’t think Obama understands capitalism but maybe Volker can keep him out of the worst trouble. Bush let us down badly here as he allowed interest rates to stay low while the Wall Street speculation in sub-prime mortgages resembled 1929 and the Latin American bonds that led the way to the crash. The comparisons of Obama to FDR are not reassuring to anyone who has read the history of the Depression.
One accomplishment that Obama has is winning the presidential election.
He has now started his campaign for re-election in 2012.
Power may be about influencing people, but it is decidedly not about winning friends!
The unknown about Obama is does he have a moral compass? My guess is no, but I hope and pray that I will be disappointed.
“”He out-Clintoned Hillary and followed Bill’s 1992 formula: “”
Except that
1. Bill Clinton was elected Arkansas Attorney General in 1976.
2. Clinton was Governor of Arkansas in 1979-1981 and then again
1983-1992
And when Bill Clinton run in 1992 he was a policy wonk and
had put out extensive policy documents he knew back and
forth in detail as a candidate: he owned the words he spoke.
On the other hand, Barack Obama ….. I still have no clue.
I think we are getting a little bit ahead of ourselves in concluding that Obama believes in nothing (not a thought I take comfort in) and that everything he has done in the past 47 years is a sham.
I am sorry to see that events are outpacing the neocon right’s ability to comprehend them.
Obama simply does not fit into your scelerotic conception of how leaders should arrange themselves along an ideological spectrum. You don’t even know what you yourselves believe in at this point. Your politics are in total disarray.
Obama has been icily consistent since he started his run for president. You are holding him to false standards that you created in order to discredit him during the campaign. Meanwhile, he will continue to provide mature leadership that is practical and anchored in a basic belief in justice.
Above all, his presidency will be oriented toward competence and educated decision-making that takes the widest array of expertise into account.
franglosaxon doesn’t see any of the inconsistencies of Obama, because he doesn’t want to.
In fact, Obama ran to the left before the election, promising to end the Iraq war in 16 months, and now has reneged on that. He said everything would be new in Washington, and, to his credit, has brought in old Washington hands.
If Obama remains unanimated by principle, which would be consistent with his past, we would get another Bill Clinton – perhaps without the scandals. That’s a lot better than a hard leftist Obama, but unless the polity shifts towards the right, it would be the 1993-1994 Clinton, not the other one.
Don’t sweat it if you are struggling to understand Obama, Abe. To most of us, it’s obvious Obama has a plan, and he’s been clear on his positions. You couldn’t even tell the difference between Obama and a radical socialist, so why should it be a surprise that you can’t get a bead on his thinking? Unlike most Americans, you aren’t wired to understand him. Your readers should look elsewhere for insight into Obama. They won’t get it from Commentary.
Y’all are hilarious. Of course Obama choose to move to the middle after the primaries — just like McCain tried to do. Somehow you folks never chose to see McCain’s sudden lurch to the right as dishonest and phony. Only Obama is a phony to you. Guess what? They are both mainstream politicians. Only idiots who seriously thought Obama was a secret Muslim socialist are surprised that he is a moderate. The rest of us were counting on it.
Tk — You say:
“Only idiots who seriously thought Obama was a secret Muslim socialist are surprised that he is a moderate. The rest of us were counting on it.”
On what basis were you counting on Obama to be a moderate? An equally informative answer from you would be what it is you conceive a moderate to be.
Non-partisanship, competence and expertise has been the liberal line since the Dukakis campaign. It’s philosophical shallowness is evident to anyone who gives it a moment’s thought: ends and goods can’t be determined by “expertise.” The evocation of expertise as a basis for policy positions is an attempt to distract attention from the real basis of your decisions, which must come from what you consider, in the broadest sense (including nominally secular values), sacred. In a sense, though, liberals and Leftists consider expertise sacred, because they believe that the basic problems of society have been solved–we all want more safety, security and material possession–and so all questions can now be safely left up to the experts, who best know how to attain such goals. Liberals can never say this explicitly, because then their tyrannical intentions and contempt for freedom and the majority would become obvious. This probably is the world-view Obama takes for granted, and it will inevitably collapse as soon as urgent situations emerge that experts can resolve, or that various experts contradict each other on, or that experts try to solve but only make worse… Then we will find out what, if anything, Obama believes.
Adam, first man, I would begin an answer to the question “what does Obama believe” by saying that for many of his supporters, these core values are obvious and apparent, and contributed to the devotion that has accrued to him (loyalty which dismays his detractors).
It begins with the foundational ideas of human rights and self-realization laid out in the 18th century, notably in the declaration of independence.
Add the prudence and faith in process laid out by the constitution. The nobility of our legal foundations.
A christian passion for justice, tempered by humility.
Finally, the deeply conservative idea that progress, the health of society, originates at the most local level possible. the slogan “change from the bottom up.”
Finally, the preservation and shepherding of human dignity as a motor of international relations (this refers back to humility). Nonetheless there is always the knowledge that generosity begins from a position of strength.
I’d start there anyway… perhaps it is time for thoughtful conservatives to embrace the good and act in a constructive way (for themselves, for their political parties’ health as well)…
Well, his long term associations with cynics and/or psychopaths like Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright becomes puzzling, in that case, as does his participation in an organization bent on fraudulently deforming the American political system like ACORN. Or his remalrks on the unfortunate limitations the US Constitution places on wealth redistribution. These are the acts and statements of someone who either believes nothing, or believes that the American system is fundamentally flawed and needs to be radically transformed, by hook or crook. At any rate, now that you have cleared up the question of Obama’s beliefs, I look forward to his preservation of our defense of freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan, his extension of the principle of spreading freedom and dignity through the Middle East and his rejection of tyannical practices at home, like union “card check” regulation and the “Fairness Doctrine.”
One more question, though–why did he never really say what you are saying here, or establish these principles as the basis of the “CHANGE” he was seeking? If they are so obvious and apparent that they need not be spoken, perhaps Obama is really a blank screen, and others are projecting other obvious and apparent things onto them.
Adam, you’ll never hear because you can’t listen. Because you are still stuck in the campaign. If you let go of the campaign and all the BS you swallowed and reveled in, maybe you’ll be able to see and evaluate the new administration clearly.
It’s all there, in plain sight. Rush Limbaugh is entertaining but he distorts reality so he can continue to sit alone with his cats in his $70 million dollar mansion. You should judge for yourself instead.
Just as an example– the “Fairness doctrine” is not even on anyone’s radar except for right-wing talk show hosts. Obama has never proposed reinstating it. There is no legislation up for a vote. It’s all paranoid, victimization BS from talk show hosts. Wake up.
Well, that’s a focused, or perhaps, “cherry picked” response. Anyway, I’ll believe that the Democrats don’t want to silence their opponents in talk radio in particular when I see it. I know that the left line now is that no one has ever considered such a thing. Problem is the Left lies all the time–go back 10 years or so and they all forswore any interest in anything as crzy as gay marriage. Then we woke up one morning and anyone critical of gay marriage was a homophobe. There are plenty of more subtle approaches than the Fairness Doctrine, and we will see what happens when it becomes convenient to blame some act of violence on talk radio (like Clinton did with Oklahoma City). Then, all of a sudden it will be necessary to “do something.” The Left is always trying things out–Obama having his allies threaten critics with possible legal action, letters sent by leftist groups threatening conservative fund-raising efforts with legal action, attempts by columnists to present McCain-Plain rallies as neo-Nazi affairs that were borderline “incitement”–it would certainly be naive to get stuck on any particular tactic the Left might use, since they just go with what works. And then, once they have muzzled conservatives using a dozen different lawsuits and some law about “localism,” etc., they’ll pile on by laughing about how paranoid conservatives were to fear the Fairness Doctrine. I’ve seen it all before, and I don’t expect the Left to stop now, especially since things seem to be working rather well.