Third party validation is always welcome, especially when supporters of certain candidates willfully ignore their particular candidate’s shortcomings. This is why I am so elated with this article published today in the Washington Post. Highlighting Obama’s trajectory from community activist to machine politician, this article puts to rest the myth that Obama is a political outsider. A product and a supporter of the Chicago political machine, Obama and his prevaricating rhetoric give this voter a reason to question his integrity. In other words, Obama’s mendacity creates the cynicism he so vacuously criticizes in all of his campaign speeches.
Obama claims his lack of experience in Washington is an asset, as he is not a product of the various establishment politicians in that troubled city. But in Chicago Richard Daley, the incumbent mayor who is the epitome of dirty machine politics, is not surprisingly beset with his own problems: allegations of nepotism have clouded Daley’s office, particularly in respect to hiring practices and to city contracts. Obama has acknowledged these problems, stating that it gave him “huge pause,” but he nonetheless endorsed Daley, claiming somewhat disingenously that Daley had addressed these problems.
Why the switch? Why is Obama equivocating? Why did Obama endorse Daley for his reelection on 22 January? Is it the result of Daley’s impetuous endorsement of Obama on 20 December, an endorsement that required Obama to meet with Daley for 2.5 hours before the endorsement? Is this another quid pro quo? It certainly is, for Bill Daley, Richard’s brother, who was former U.S. Commerce Secretary and Al Gore’s campaign chairman in 2000, is now a chairman of Obama’s campaign. And Daley’s other brothers will also hop onto the bandwagon: quid pro quo.
And local Chicago machine politicians agree. Here are some of the more damaging quotes from the Washington Post article:
Attorney Gery Chico, the Daley former chief of staff who lost to Obama in the 2004 Senate primary, said Obama has been under increasing pressure to play a role in local races and it’s smart for him to get in the mix.
“You don’t want to go the route of Al Gore,” Chico said. Gore famously didn’t win his home state of Tennessee in his failed bid for president in 2000.
“He understands … about politics and how you make friends in politics,” said Rep. Bobby Rush, who Obama unsuccessfully challenged in 2000 for his seat in Congress.
Rush said Daley, for one, can be helpful to Obama because of his national reputation. Daley’s brother, William, who headed Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 2000, has already signed on as an Obama adviser.
Rush is also backing Obama’s bid for the White House.
Nothing about Obama’s endorsement of Daley is sincere. Obama was first concerned about Daley’s corruption to only ignore it when Obama realized Daley and his machine connections could be a benefit to his camapaign. And Obama also does not mind the support of candidates such as Bobby Rush, who is a bought and bossed opponent of net neutrality. If Obama was truly committed to a “new tone” in politics and to his status as an ostensible “outsider” who wants to change how government works, why would he collude with those he and his supporters claim he challenged during the early years of his political life? Why would he claim current politics have made Americans cynical, only to embrace it when it comes to his Presidential ambitions?
And why would he endorse an incumbent Mayor who has two challengers in his reelection bid, especially when the corrupt incumbent Mayor vetoed an ordinance that would force merchants such as Wal-Mart to pay workers a living wage? Labor supports a living wage, and community organizers and progressive organizations support a living wage for Chicago workers. Why would someone who was, as it were, a community organizer support a Mayor whose policies hurt community development? Is this also set aside when the power of a political machine can be mobilized for an ambitious Presidential campaign?
But Obama’s willful ignorance when it comes to machine politics does not end here. Witness Alexi Giannoulias, a thirty year old political novice whose only qualification for State Treasurer was his inheritance of his father’s bank, for which he serves as Vice-President. The Giannoulias family was an early supporter of Obama during his 2004 Senate campaign, and Obama had to reciprocate the favor. But the reciprocation was far from innocent, and Obama’s rationalization of Giannoulias’s questionable ethics are eerily similar to the equivocations he provides when confronted with Daley’s unsavory politics. Read the following:
Alexi Giannoulias won a hotly contested Democratic primary for state treasurer last month by campaigning, in part, on the financial expertise he said he gained as a top banking executive.
Both before and after the election, Giannoulias claimed to know little or nothing about $15.4 million in loans his family’s privately owned Broadway Bank granted to Michael Giorango, who’s been convicted of running gambling and prostitution rings.
Of those mob-connected enterprises, Giannoulias said in a prepared statement::
“What they did was wrong…inexcusable. If I had known…I do not believe…we would have approved those loans. (But) there was nothing illegal. I admit…I mishandled some questions.”His most prominent supporter, Sen. Barack Obama, wants answers, but is still on board.
“I continue to believe Alexi is a person of good character and his experience will serve him in good stead as treasurer,” Obama said.
Sen. Obama told CBS 2’s Mike Flannery that he’s advised Giannoulias that he needs to be sure the public statements he makes are accurate.
So an underqualified candidate who calls himself an outsider but runs a bank that bankrolled mobsters can be accepted only because Obama believes he is someone of good character. But how can he be someone of good character, especially when his explanations fail to cut the mustard? For Giannoulias avoided making public statements on the issue for weeks after its revelation, which to me is a sign that Giannoulias could not answer the questions pertaining to this egregious breach of ethics. Can it be that the Giannoulias family, besides contributing to the national GOP, also contributed heavily to Obama’s campaign in 2004? Just review the following and judge for yourself:
Contributions to Political Committees
GIANNOULIAS, ALEX
CHICAGO, IL 60660
BROADWAY BANK/PRESIDENTSCHAKOWSKY, JANICE D
VIA SCHAKOWSKY FOR CONGRESS
03/25/2003 250.00 23990699018GIANNOULIAS, ALEXANDER
CHICAGO, IL 60611
BROADWAY BANKBAYH, EVAN
VIA EVAN BAYH COMMITTEE
05/18/2005 1000.00 25020241969GIANNOULIAS, ALEXANDER A
CHICAGO, IL 60611
BROADWAY BANKOBAMA, BARACK
VIA OBAMA FOR ILLINOIS INC
09/10/2003 300.00 23020380619
09/18/2003 300.00 23020380620GIANNOULIAS, ALEXANDER A
CHICAGO, IL 60611
BROADWAY BANK/SENIOR LOAN OFFICERASCOT, JAMES
VIA ASCOT FOR CONGRESS
06/23/2005 250.00 25970592787GIANNOULIAS, ALEXANDER A
CHICAGO, IL 60660
BROADWAY BANK/SENIOR VPKERRY, JOHN F
VIA JOHN KERRY FOR PRESIDENT, INC
04/14/2004 1000.00 24961465324GIANNOULIAS, ALEXI
CHICAGO, IL 60660
BROADWAY BANKOBAMA, BARACK
VIA OBAMA FOR ILLINOIS INC
12/19/2003 5000.00 24020030099GIANNOULIAS, ALEXIS
CHICAGO, IL 60660
BROADWAY BANKOBAMA, BARACK
VIA OBAMA FOR ILLINOIS INC
07/23/2004 1000.00 24020792046
08/09/2004 1000.00 24020792046GIANNOULIAS, ALEXIS
CHICAGO, IL 60660
BROADWAY BANK/PRESIDENTJACKSON, JESSE LOUIS JR
VIA JESSE JACKSON JR. FOR CONGRESS
03/19/2006 1000.00 26960033067NATIONAL REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE
01/23/2003 500.00 23990422591GIANNOULIAS, ALEXIS A MR.
CHICAGO, IL 60660
BROADWAY BANK/CHAIRMAN OF THE BOANATIONAL REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE
09/19/2003 5000.00 23992172190
02/05/2004 1500.00 24990810761GIANNOULIAS, ALEXIS A MR.
CHICAGO, IL 60660
BROADWAY BANK/PRESIDENTNATIONAL REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE
12/17/2004 5000.00 25980410289
01/19/2005 5000.00 25990087518GIANNOULIAS, DEMETRIS
CHICAGO, IL 60660
BROADWAY BANKOBAMA, BARACK
VIA OBAMA FOR ILLINOIS INC
07/09/2003 2000.00 23020380620GIANNOULIAS, DEMETRIS
CHICAGO, IL 60660
BROADWAY BANK/CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFSCHAKOWSKY, JANICE D
VIA SCHAKOWSKY FOR CONGRESS
12/14/2005 225.00 26990124188GIANNOULIAS, GEORGE
CHICAGO, IL 60611
BROADWAY BANKOBAMA, BARACK
VIA OBAMA FOR ILLINOIS INC
07/23/2004 1000.00 24020792047GIANNOULIAS, GEORGE
CHICAGO, IL 60611
UNITED INVESTORS INC./INVESTMENTJACKSON, JESSE LOUIS JR
VIA JESSE JACKSON JR. FOR CONGRESS
08/31/2006 1000.00 26950526702Total Contributions: 32325.00
Obama states he met Giannoulias on the basketball court, where he was immediately impressed, which in itself begs questions about Obama’s political judgment. But what was this basketball court, and what types of dealings occurred there? And why did Obama fail to mention Giannoulias’s support? Why not state that his endorsement of an ethically challenged banker with no political experience whatsoever was just another quid pro quo? And why does Obama continue to ignore the ethical lapses of his sleazy supporters? Why all this machine politics? And why is Giannoulias, himself a Democratic candidate for State Treasurer in 2006, donating to the GOP in the same cycle? Is he trying to convince a rival party to not investigate his family’s corrupt bank? Obama really knows how to choose his friends on the basketball court. And no, my friends, this basketball court is not the local court on the south side with young African-American boys; this is an indoor court in a private club on the north side where one literally has to pay to play.
But Giannoulias was not the only canidate Obama endorsed during the 2006 primary season; he also endorsed Tammy Duckworth, a machine candidate who carpetbagged into Illinois District 6 just weeks before the election at the behest of Rahm Emanuel and Dick Durbin. Obama attached his photograph to Duckworth’s mailers, and he appeared in her campaign commercials during the primary. This lack of respect for grassroots organization and community activism, which Obama ostensibly supports, did raise the ire of Democracy for America and Cegelis supporters. Here is a quote from one article that illustrates my point:
“There’s no respect now for grassroots support,” the source close to Cegelis’s campaign said, adding that Dean was the only national Democratic leader to call her after the race ended.
In the absence of a strong local party, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), handpicked Duckworth as the establishment choice. Illinois’s U.S. senators, Democrats Barack Obama and Dick Durbin, as well as Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), aided Duckworth’s campaign by recording phone calls to voters, endorsing her in direct mailings and raising money.
Illinois Democrats say that they are not worried about Cegelis’s decision not to endorse Duckworth because most Democrats, even if upset by the outcome, will choose Duckworth over Roskam.
Jim Dean, chairman of Democracy for America, told The Hill, “We’ve seen plenty of reaction in the past when Washington Democrats involved themselves in a race. I’m seeing a different reaction here. It’s not reversed itself into a Kumbaya moment.”
“I don’t sense a recrimination mode. The tenor of rhetoric from the DCCC is one of ‘well, that’s politics,’” he added.
So Obama joined hands with Clinton, Kerry, Emanuel and Durbin in order to lock out a community activist and grassroots candidate from the political process. Machine politics at its worst, this is yet another example of how Obama is a machine politician through and through. And this has not been lost on Illinois voters. To quote from the article with which I broached my diary:
Obama’s decision to support Daley turned off voter Alan Dobry, who’s part of a Chicago independent-voters group.
“He’s trying to play with the machine,” Dobry said. “I’m very unhappy about it.”
There is no “new tone” to Obama’s politics, as Obama has become yet another cog in the Democratic machine that has made party activists such as myself somewhat cycnical about beltway politics. If Obama truly wants to “change the tone” of politics, he must change his political affiliations. But he will not. Instead, he will publicly disavow while simultaneously embracing his friends’ ethical lapses in order to continue to benefit from their shady dealings. I do not want this type of politics, and I will not sit idly by and watch others endorse a candidate whose rhetoric in no way corresponds with their political practices. Is it too much to demand integrity from Presidential candidates, especially when they present themselves as outsiders who want to disrupt the establishment? Is it too much to ask someone to truly mean what they say? Obama is a machine candidate, and I cannot trust him as he cynically takes advantage of the American public’s willingness to embrace his campaign’s vapid rhetoric and false hope for a different future. For all Obama offers is just more of the same.
