Land of the Lost

.
My fellow Americans,

I’d like to take this moment to talk to you about an incident involving president Obama and the Democratic party that you may have missed.

It seems that the Obama administration sent Bill Clinton over to Pennsylvania to bribe Rep. Joe Sestak with an unnamed position in the administration if he would only give up his challenge to Sen. Arlen Specter for the senate nomination.  The reason is clear: the democrats obviously understand that in the general election in November the republican candidate would beat this Sestak guy like an evangelical christian in a mohammedan prison riot.


This isn’t any stupendous feat of political insight.  Arlen Specter is still a fixture in Pennsylvania, and has considerable appeal for the center.  And, in this climate of anti-incumbency and ambivalence toward the spirit of “hope” it’s probably a good idea to have someone who is palatable to the dim-witted Orthogonians.  Besides, Specter is familiar enough in PA so that, if nothing else, the nostalgia vote may be enough to put him over the top.


And top everything off with the fact Obama owes a significant debt to Specter for changing sides in 2009, giving the democrats a super-majority of 60 seats.  So when it became clear that this Sestak guy would be a genuine threat, the administration was faced with an unexpected and very delicate problem: how to ensure their preferred candidate would get the nomination without appearing to meddle in local politics.


That's no small problem, and back in the 1970 mid-term elections I was faced with a similar dilemma.  The junior senator from New York up for re-election was Charles Goodell, a republican, who was appointed by Gov. Nelson Rockefeller to fill Bobby Kennedy’s seat in '68.  However, although Goodell was a member of my party, he was an agitating bleeding-heart who consistently opposed my strategies for Vietnam and the country.  Just like that damned Rockefeller, he was a Franklin and a republican in name only, and needed to be purged.  After meeting with my trusted inner-circle, I decided that James L. Buckley, (brother of noted conservative gasbag William F. Buckley and a very vocal hawk on Vietnam and opponent of the anti-war hippies), would be a trusted ally, and one on whom I could count in my growing battles against complacency, subversion, and appeasement.


Unfortunately, as leader of the party, it would not be seemly for me to actively campaign against one of my own - even if he was soft.  Goodell, while undependable, was a republican after all, so it was a very delicate matter that required finesse and, above all, no evidence of overt tampering by the president. So, rather than my usual course of action (like sending a squad of hired goons to rough him up, or spending good slush-fund cash to bribe him), I opted for a more delicate maneuver: using Spiro Agnew as a foil to erode his support and to turn the people against him. Remember, by that time Agnew had become something of a minor-celebrity among conservative fanboys and hard-hats who wanted nothing more than to believe that their government was out there busting the nuts of liberal peaceniks.  Agnew’s inflammatory rhetoric and bombastic attitude were the perfect way to whip up hysteria, so I sent him to campaign throughout New York urging people to vote for the candidate who would “support the president.”


Agnew never mentioned any names.  He didn't need to.  His heavy implication and pointed remarks made it clear who we preferred.


And as expected, in '70 Goodell lost his election.  But this Sestak fellow won the recent primary.  Why?  Because Obama’s clumsy bribe of offering Sestak some sort of administration position was played far too ham-handedly.  Even worse, the president offered very little incentive and even less threat.  A good political power play always has a tempting carrot so when the rube does sell out he can salve his conscience by telling himself he made the right choice.  But these offers also carry an ominous stick, so that if the candidate stubbornly clings to something as quaint as ethics, there is a clear and real menace as consequence to his intransigence.  And to top it all off, there was no subtlety in this.  Where was the subterfuge or the coverup?  Since when is the assassination of a political career done without deniability?  This would never have flown in my time.  Not only would the operative tasked with getting Sestak out of the race been hidden beneath layers and layers of cover, but we would have given the entire operation a cool name.  All my dirty tricks were fully covert and had codenames.  That sort of minor attention to detail promotes an esprit de corps and sense of gravity.


If this is how the Obama team handles a problem within their own ranks, how on earth are they going to manage the North Koreans?







Nixon is: Amused