Patterico's Pontifications

5/28/2010

Bill Clinton to the Rescue

Filed under: Obama — DRJ @ 4:24 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

Former President Bill Clinton was the conduit between the White House and Pennsylvania Senate candidate Joe Sestak:

“At the urging of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, former President Bill Clinton spoke to Rep. Joe Sestak about an unpaid position in the administration if he dropped out of the Senate Democratic primary in Pennsylvania, the White House confirmed Friday.

The executive branch position would have been made available to Sestak under the assumption that Sestak would stay in his House seat, White House counsel Bob Bauer said in a two-page memo released Friday morning.

Bauer asserted that the discussions were “fully consistent with the relevant law and ethical requirements.”

The crucial provision is Clinton offered Sestak an “unpaid” position. Everyone who believes that, raise your hand.

I see no hands.

After his “success” with Sestak, Clinton has been given a new assignment to support Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln:

“Maybe Clinton will have more luck with his next political rescue mission — saving embattled Democrat Sen. Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas, the state they both call home. Democratic Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, backed by the unions and liberal advocacy groups like moveon.org, is surging as the two head for the finish line in the June 8 primary.”

I don’t see how lurching to the left will help the Democrats win in red states like Arkansas. But Arkansans like their Democratic Governor so maybe they will vote for Halter, too.

— DRJ

29 Responses to “Bill Clinton to the Rescue”

  1. So totally implausible that it’s laughable.

    GeneralMalaise (4e741b)

  2. He does our country so effing proud.

    happyfeet (c8caab)

  3. This whole thing is the most unconvincing performance since Richard Gere played King David.

    Glen Wishard (2167a4)

  4. If you’re gonna lay a whopper on the American people, might as well go with our own Perjurer Laureate.

    Matador (ac73ca)

  5. The reason no one believes this is that it took so long to come up with it. Aaaand it beggars reason that an ex-president would be called in to “play” if it was only an unpaid advisory role being offered–unless that unpaid advisory role was only the first step in a promised slow-mo quid pro quo to Sestak. I find it extremely interesting that this all finally came to a head the week Rahm and his family are traveling in Israel. I believe there is some meaning about the timing related to Rahm’s absence from the WH.

    elissa (7fa716)

  6. This blog has gone bizarro (technically) in almost all web browsers. The comments are definitely not loading correctly.

    Chris Hooten (e4cd44)

  7. That was a clever move. Getting someone with unquestioned veracity to vouch for Sestak and the White House.

    Bill Clinton would never lie about something like this.

    orcadrvr (04bb24)

  8. It’s amazing that their stories matched, independently, after all these months.

    daleyrocks (1d0d98)

  9. As if! You can fool some of the people, etc, etc,.

    PatAZ (9d1bb3)

  10. Greetings:

    Smart, that sending a perjurer to deliver your verbal message. The ultimate in deniability I suppose.

    11B40 (49fbeb)

  11. Quid pro quo?

    We know what Bill Clinton did for Barack Obama, what we don’t know is what Obama promised Bill Clinton in return.

    ropelight (667d14)

  12. Maybe they should have offered him an ambassadorship. It has great monetary value, considering how much money people donate to political campaigns to get one.
    An ambassadorship is so much a thing of value that you could probably put a dollar-figure price on it….sometimes a lot.
    I forget, which ambassadorship did St. Reagan offer to try to get someone to pull out of a senate race in Hawaii? If it was for like Tierra del Fuego or something like that, then neither harm nor foul: the value wouldn’t be above the cost of a decent meal and thus not corruption or graft.
    But if was to some cool place, well, then maybe St. Reagan should be investigated posthumously.
    Doncha think?
    Sorry. Go back to strokin’ each other.

    Larry Reilly (fadcab)

  13. Why did Obama pick Clinton in the first place, with Hillary wanting to be prez?

    I think Bill could be suspected of bringing about this whole crisis in the first place.

    Patricia (160852)

  14. This all makes perfect sense to me. Sestak was toxic to Obama and his presidency, no?
    I believe that Obama has a few million left of the TARP funds, and this no doubt was applied to the pockets of the Clintons to engage in some toxic asset relief.

    Dencouch (935f74)

  15. the week Rahm and his family are traveling in Israel.

    I’m surprised they let him enter the country.

    Unless something is real unseemly, this does not seem like a big deal to me. The President is seen as the political leader of his/her party whether a repub or dem, right? It seems to me reasonable that the leader of the political party would do things good for the party, as long as he doesn’t give posts to incompetent people (um, at least not to people that he thinks are incompetent). There is plenty more to worry about, I think.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  16. As Michelle Malkin noted on her blog today, you know who’s laughing right now, BLAGO, that’s who.

    Since I can’t see all the comments. I don’t know whether somebody already pointed that out.

    daleyrocks (1d0d98)

  17. I bet Clinton had no idea who Sestak was before Rahm came up with the idea this week to use Billy as a buffer.

    MU789 (bf47e4)

  18. What is scary are the stories they rejected as too implausible to feed to the press.

    I guess they ruled out blaming everything on Bigfoot or martians.

    MU789 (bf47e4)

  19. I love it. L O L he didn’t inhale, it isn’t s** and hahahhha it wasn’t really a job with money…what is pathetic is how the alphabet press will pretend the emperor is wearing clothes…

    drone (9156d2)

  20. I forget, which ambassadorship did St. Reagan offer to try to get someone to pull out of a senate race in Hawaii?

    You referring to the former senator from California — not Hawaii — back in the late 1970s-early 1980s named SI Hayakawa?! Well, if you are, a crucial difference is whether such an offer involved a payment of some kind — such as a salary associated with a job that a person is invited to glom onto — which would make the quid-pro-quo illegal, and, most crucially, whether both parties clearly and formerly confronted one another with the outlines of a deal.

    Unlike Sestak, Hayakawa apparently heard about the wishes of the Reagan White House through the grapevine, but said he never had been approached directly by anyone from the administration.

    Chicago-style politicing definitely wouldn’t seem too tacky and sleazy to the current bunch in the White House. But Reagan and his people must have had enough sense (and courtesy) to realize the poor etiquette of approaching an elderly senator like Hayakawa and wrangling with him.

    Meanwhile, since President “Goddamn America” is so ass-backwards that he’ll bow like a servant before the king of Saudi Arabia and the emperor of Japan, I definitely don’t trust him to understand what is appropriate or inappropriate about things like etiquette. So I can easily imagine him saying: “Hey, let’s offer Joe Sestak a deal he can’t refuse! Screw the finer points, and whether he’ll feel pressured or not. And screw the legality. We are of the hood and proud of it! And when you’re of the hood, you friggin’ play by the rules of the hood!”

    Mark (411533)

  21. OPffering something to a candidate to drop out of a race is illegal. It amounts to bribery.

    There is a judge who has been indicted in LA for doing the same thing. It not such a far fetched crime.

    I am surprised that there is not a bigger uproar. But the media is its favorites and we know who it is.

    But the public knows that the media is in on the cover up. In the long run, it will cause the media to lose even more credibility.

    Arizona Bob (e8af2b)

  22. Let’s get this straight, BHO or agents there of tries to bribe Romanoff in Colorado, then using Clinton as his agent in a conspiracy tries to bribe Sestak in Pennsylvania.

    Because he involved an impeached, disbarred ex-POTUS, its not a crime.

    So the conspiracy doesn’t matter, the bribery doesn’t matter, the witness tampering (calling Sestak to coordinate stories), Obstruction of Justice doesn’t matter….

    Why are we still bothering to pay taxes to this corrupt band of moronic thieves? We would get more service and fewer lies from the mafia or the criminal alien gangsters of MS13.

    Impeach Obama NOW!!!

    MaaddMaaxx (b91eb0)

  23. On June 30, 2010 Clinton bagman Hassan Nemazee will be sentenced for his 2009 felony Citibank Fraud conviction. Hassan is a longtime Clinton fundraiser and friend. He raised tens of thousands for Clinton’s Lewinskty legal fund and served as Hillary Clinton’s 2008 National Campaign Finance Chair.

    I wonder if Clinton is going to bat to get Nemazee off the hook. Maybe he is twisting Obama’s arm to get a commutation or pardon. Obama pet stooge Holder could easily be persuaded to recommend a light sentence.

    Nemazee has strong ties to various elite bigs in DC and NY including Valerie Jarrett who was born in a Nemazee hospital in Iran in 1956. Nemazee raised millions for the Clintons, Kerry, Gore and Obama.

    Clinton helps solve Obama’s Sestak problem in return for Obama solving Clinton’s Nemazee problem. Criss-cross. At least people be paying attention when Nemazee is sentenced.

    LaFong (ee4829)

  24. Here is the White House statement.

    If we assume that Mr Bauer is telling us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, why did this take so long? Representative Sestak made his allegation last February, in the middle of his primary campaign against Senator Specter. The issue blew up again a week ago.

    The memo has some weaknesses: just because the position of Secretary of the Navy was speculated upon in public does not mean it was the only position which could have been offered or hinted at, nor that the existence of a confirmed Secretary of the Navy was an insurmountable obstacle.

    The memo states that uncompensated advisory board positions were suggested, positions which would have allowed Mr Sestak to continue to hold his seat in the House of Representatives, that such positions were floated to Mr Sestak indirectly, via former President Clinton, and that such were completely legal. But there is no explicit statement that Mr Sestak was never offered any other positions, either directly or indirectly.

    I wonder why. That would have been a very simple statement to add, one which would have closed the door. I’m not a lawyer, but it didn’t take me long to notice that it wasn’t there; why didn’t Mr Bauer (or his staff), who took an entire week to put together a one-page memo, think of it or include it?

    The amused Dana (474dfc)

  25. I wonder if Hillary’s campaign debt will magically disappear now.

    tim (faab10)

  26. Will the lamestream media remain in its current position as official stenographer, or????

    Tune in next week, for another episode of “As America Crumbles”.

    GeneralMalaise (4e741b)

  27. Technically Sestak wasn’t even eligible for that post

    ian cormac (ee040c)

  28. Sleaze Rule #1: When you realize that you’re betting on the wrong horse in the race, what do you do? Fix the race, of course.

    Icy Texan (f6dd9c)

  29. Who is the genius that brought Bill “Slick Willie” Clinton into the loop? (If that in fact even did occur?) Not a smart move. Clever by half.

    When it comes to the truth, the Clintons (both Bill & Hill) have repeatedly demonstrated that they are simply radioactive. The truth to them, is like sunlight to a Vampire, Kryptonite to Supreman, oil & water.

    Recall the tapes that Gennifer Flowers released, with BC suggesting they both LIE? Then in an unprecedneted fashion, when his run in the 92 Dem primary was in the toilet, 60 Minutes preempted regular scheduling and improperly gave them the forum to tell further lies – and they did; Don Hewitt even telling them what to say? BC & HC went on and told whoppers, that BC never had an affair with GF – when almost all of Arkansas knew that was fals, as they clearly had an affair for years – hence part of the reason for the moniler Slick Willie.

    A few more examples (illustrative, not exhaustive): Whitwater, 800+ FBI files in the Whitehouse (Chuck Colson went to prison for having 1 file in his WH office), Billy Dale (WH Travel Office), the miracle of HC’s billing records appearing out of nowhere in the WH, HC calining she ducked fire in Yugoslavia when in fact there was none and in fact HC was given flowers by children; Monica Lewinsky (“I did not have sex with that woman” – note finger pointing and BC’s contrive coreographed attempt to act outraged & victimized – when in fact all false and BC was lying; HC’s claim that ML did not happen & that it was a vast right wing conspiracy (BC also sent Al Gore, Diane Feinstein & others, out to lie for him – “The president told me and I believe him it did not happen.”); initial attempt to paint ML as crazy & a stalker, until the famous stained Blue Dress surfaced; BC thus committed perjury, but finally was forced to admit that he lied & then his losing his law licnese; BC adamantly denying the charges of Paula Jones – but in the end paying her over $900K to settle her case; HC turning $1K into $100K on commodities furtures with Red Bone; Chinese & Indonesian foreigners & their money in the Whitehouse & Dem party; the Marc Rich pardon.

    Washington & American politics are a cesspool. Lying has become our currrency and it is killing us. And now this thin feeble trick.

    Barack Obama and Chicago politics have been exposed. The Blago incident, the Walpin I.G. firing incident, the Colorado U.S. senate/Bennett seat race deal, and now this. So much for a new type of politics and transparency. So much for hope & change. GLZ.

    Gary L. Zerman (8a40d9)


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