Somehow, when it rains Yazoo City, it pours Yazoo City. After learning from Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour that race relations in Yazoo City were not that big of a deal during the Jim Crow era, I come to realize that former Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy was raised on the other side of the tracks down there. Whatever the hardships of being black during the 1960’s in Yazoo City, Espy has recovered enough to have actually endorsed Haley Barbour for governor. You probably don’t remember Espy, but if you do you probably remember him for being the subject of a $20 million witchhunt by a prosecutor who was even more unscrupulous and inept than Kenneth Starr. In any case, Tyson Foods and Sun Diamond showered him with gifts and there was some question about whether the whole thing was kosher. A jury found him innocent of any wrongdoing. That’s the last I heard of Mike Espy until he turned up in Ivory Coast as a shill for President Laurent Gbagbo. Mr. Gbagbo has need of shills.
By all international accounts, Mr. Gbagbo was defeated by Alassane Ouattara in the Nov. 28 runoff vote for president, but Mr. Gbagbo has disputed the election results.
So, in other words, ‘President Gbagbo’ is intent on becoming ‘His Excellency Gbagbo.’ And this is not something that our government looks kindly upon.
Mr. Obama telephoned President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria on Wednesday to reinforce the message that the United States wants to see African leaders — who have been working to dislodge Mr. Gbagbo — out front in the international campaign to oust him.
Now, the situation is serious enough that France has advised its 13,000 citizens who live in Ivory Coast to leave the country. But Mr. Espy doesn’t seem to be on the same page.
Mr. Espy, who was traveling Wednesday and could not be reached for comment, had been in Ivory Coast this week making appearances on state television in support of Mr. Gbagbo’s administration.
I wonder what they’ll make of that down in Yazoo City. In any case, Mr. Espy ought to be ashamed of himself. And so should another Clintonista who knows no moral scruple. Not content to take a paycheck from the Business Council of Latin America to back their Honduran coup, Lanny Davis is now working for Mr. Gbagbo’s coup campaign.
Mr. Davis, who helped defend President Clinton against impeachment, registered with the Justice Department earlier this month as an agent for Ivory Coast who would be paid $100,000 a month to “present the facts and the law as to why there is substantial documentary evidence that President Laurent Gbagbo is the duly elected president as a result of the Nov. 28 elections.” But he insisted in an interview on Wednesday that he viewed himself not as an advocate but as a “conveyor belt” to pass information about Mr. Gbagbo to the administration and the world.
He’s a conveyor of bullshit, is what he is. There is no documentary evidence that Mr. Gbagbo won the election. Lanny Davis is a paid liar for a dictator. And he knows just what that dictator needs to do.
Of Mr. Gbagbo, Mr. Davis said he was working through liaisons to “try to persuade him to move to the middle” and to begin an international dialogue about the election. He said that a speech Mr. Gbagbo gave earlier this week, in which he appeared open to international mediation, was a sign of his progress in pushing that agenda.
Mr. Davis said he regards himself as a “paid George Mitchell,” referring to the former senator who negotiated the Northern Ireland peace accord.
Reading that, I’m not even sure how many ways there are to feel insulted. It’s a barrage. But I have to give him points for using the “move to the middle” rhetoric. Why change rhetoric just because you’ve changed clients? I wonder if Doug Schoen does the polling for Obagbo. I’d be almost shocked if he doesn’t.
I can tell you honestly that the main reason I was so opposed to Hilary Clinton’s candidacy was not ideological. That was a part of it, but the main reason I opposed her is because of who they surrounded themselves with while they were in the White House the first time. People like Lanny Davis and Mike Espy, but also people like James Carville and Mark Penn and Doug Schoen and Dick Morris. These are not good people. They’re not even really Democrats. They are more like mercenaries, and morals and ideals don’t enter into it.
