Friday, December 9, 2011
The Politician and the Mistress
Politicians [are] a set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people and who, to say the most of them, are, taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men.
— Abraham Lincoln, Speech in Ill. Legislature 1837
Recent events create an awareness that too little guidance has been given politicians on the proper way to deal with problems that arise when the non-politically ambitious partner in an illicit affair with the politically ambitious partner decides to share news of the affair with the public and the politically ambitious partner hopes to keep that from happening or seeks to mitigate the damage. Herewith four examples of how politicians have dealt with the issue. The first two involve using strangers’ money. They are demonstrated by Bill Richardson and John Edwards.
In 2007 a former state employee threatened to sue then Governor Bill Richardson because of an affair they allegedly had. A meeting of his campaign team and his “inner circle” reportedly took place to determine how to settle the threatened suit before it became public. The solution they hit upon was that Mr. Richardson’s supporters would pay the accuser $250,000 to keep the matter quiet. Mr. Richardson, who was then considering a run for the presidency, is now the target of a grand jury probe over whether there may have been campaign contribution violations in connection with those payments. According to a report in the Albuquerque Journal the grand jury is trying to determine whether that money came from money that had been raised to enable the governor to fund his presidential aspirations which would have violated campaign finance laws, or whether the money paid to the mistress came from wealthy friends of the candidate as gifts.
Mr. Richardson’s supporters may have been using the example set by John Edwards although Mr. Edwards’ problems were more complex since his liaison had produced a tiny Edwards. According to reports, Mr. Edwards received more than $725,000 from a wealthy old (she is 100) friend, Bunny Mellon, that he used to buy the silence of his girlfriend. The question that will be answered by a federal jury next January is whether those payments were campaign contributions that should have been reported or gifts that did not need to be reported. (Bunny reportedly filed gift tax returns reflecting the gift.) Mr. Edwards initially claimed to know nothing of the money (or the baby) and being now aware of both, says the money was not a disguised form of campaign support that should have been reported to the government but simply a gift. The government disagrees. Because of the differing perceptions of what the payments represented, a 12-person jury will decide whether the government or the candidate has the proper understanding of the facts.
Another way of dealing with his kind of problem was shown by former Senator John Ensign. When the senator’s affair with the wife of his long time aide became public in 2009, he asked his parents for help, and they wrote out a check to her, her husband and their two children for $96,000. As a result, there was no grand jury inquiry into the source of the money. Indeed, Mr. Ensign’s lawyer, Paul Coggins, specifically said that “None of the gifts came from campaign or official funds nor were they related to any campaign or official duties. Senator Ensign has complied with all applicable laws and Senate ethics rules.” The money was not hush money since the affair was already public. Mr. Coggins said the payment was made “out of concern for the well-being of long-time family friends during a difficult time.” Of course not all parents are able or willing to pay off their children’s mistresses so that example is probably less useful for the run of the mill politician.
Herman Cain had a different approach. When Mr. Cain learned that a woman who claimed to have had a 12-year affair with him was going public, he beat her to the punch by publicly denying the affair before she had a chance to disclose it. He paid her no money thus avoiding campaign finance laws proscriptions He simply called her a liar. This made good sense since he had already called three women who weeks earlier had accused him of sexual harassment, liars. People who believed him when he said the first three accusers were liars probably believed the final accuser was a liar. Those who did not believe the first three were liars would probably not believe the fourth accuser was a liar. In short, no one’s opinion of Herman Cain was changed by the final allegation. Mr. Cain’s approach was obviously better than trying to buy the silence of the fourth accuser. He avoided an investigation of his finances.
It is too early to know how Messrs. Edwards and Richardson will fare when the dust settles. We do know that Mr. Ensign resigned his senate seat and that Mr. Cain abandoned his quest for the White House. Both results were more of a sacrifice for them than for the country.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
The Newest Newt
Democracies cannot dispense with hypocrisy any more than dictatorships can with cynicism.
— Georges Bernanos, We French
The endorsement of Newt Gingrich in the Republican primary fight by the New Hampshire Union Leader was enlightening for reasons other than the endorsement. It was the explanation the paper gave that helped this writer understand the motives of liberals like himself. We are, said the paper, “belittling the Republican candidates because they [liberals] don’t want any of them to be taken as a serious challenger to their man, Obama.” I had thought liberals were belittling, among others, Perry because he believes in neither evolution nor global warming, Bachman because she shares his beliefs and adds to that a dislike of gays in the military, Romney because he is disappointed that with respect to most issues he has confronted as governor and candidate, there are only two sides he can take and having taken them both, there is little left for him to say. I had no idea that by expecting more from any of these (or the other) candidates I was belittling them for selfish reasons. Admonished, I direct my attention to the newly installed frontrunner and the New Hampshire Union Leader’s endorsee, Newt Gingrich and will try not to belittle him. .
To not belittle him, I will ignore the fact that Mr. Gingrich told his first wife when she was in hospital undergoing cancer treatment that he was leaving her for his soon-to- be second wife whom he would later leave in favor of his soon-to-be third wife, with whom he was carrying on an affair while urging the impeachment of Bill Clinton for sexual improprieties similar to those in which he was engaging. The reason for not bringing up those episodes is that following his marriage to his third wife he converted to Catholicism where all his sins were forgiven and if it’s good enough for the Church, it’s good enough for me. (It was not good enough for Marianne, Mr. Gingrich’s second wife who told Esquire magazine in September 2010 that while their marriage was dissolving Newt returned from Erie Pennsylvania where he had addressed a crowd on “family values.” When she asked him how he could give such a speech in light of his personal life he replied, “It doesn’t matter what I do. People need to hear what I have to say. There’s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn’t matter what I live.” Instead of dwelling on the foregoing as a lesser man might, I will describe what we can look forward to as his campaign progresses. We learn this from interviews and a recently published book by him.
In an interview with National Review Online, Newt said that President Obama follows a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview. Although I don’t know what that is, it seems like a pretty good reason to support Newt over the other Republican candidates, none of whom has uttered anything half as profound as that. He went on to say, that the president “Is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con as a result of which he is now president. I think he worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating-none of which was true . . . . He was authentically dishonest.”
His views are further expounded on in his book published in the summer of 2010 with the catchy title: “To save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine.” The title tells you a lot about its contents which isn’t true of many books. In a brief description of the book’s content (and I confess to not having read the book and am, therefore, forced to rely on reports such as this) one reviewer says Gingrich sounds the alarm that the America the secular-socialist left wants to recreate is vastly different from the one in which Newt grew up. If the left stays in power it will “transform America into a radically different nation-a union dominated, bureaucratically controlled, high-tax, low-growth country in which powerful politicians impose their will on an exhausted, submissive citizenry.” He says “Americans have always respected hard work, entrepreneurship, innovation, and merit-based upward mobility and the “Leftist”machine punishes overachievers. He probably thinks that if the Leftist machine had its way his entrepreneurial company, Gingrich Group, could not have earned nearly $2 million for advice Newt gave Freddie Mac and $300,00 he received while serving as its in house historian. The book also explains that health care reform was passed “on a narrow partisan basis with extraordinary corruption and bribery.” Newt says that Obama’s “secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did.”
At the press conference in which he announced his retirement, Barney Frank said: “I did not think I lived a good enough life to see Newt Gingrich as the Republican nominee. He would be the best thing to happen to Democrats since Barry Goldwater.” Mr. Frank may be right about the Democrats. It will clearly not be the best thing for what little remains of civility in this country.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Arms and Bahrain
Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.
— Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man
The question is why the United States was even thinking of selling arms to Bahrain. The answer can be found in the fact that the United States is the number one arms supplier in the world and to maintain its status it cannot be judgmental about the conduct of its customers. If standards of conduct were the operable criteria, the United States’ customer base would be reduced if not eliminated. As it is, sales of arms simply jeopardize the lives of some who live in the customers’ countries as well as those with which they may come into armed conflict, conflicts that might not take place were the adversaries not armed by the United States and other weapons supplying countries.
On March 19, 2011protestors took over Pearl Square in Manama, Bahrain. Two days before the take over and acting under orders from King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, the army had used live ammunition to crack down on the Shiite dissidents who were demanding changes in how the country was governed. Unlike Egypt or Tunisia, where the revolts against the establishment were quick and successful, in Bahrain the monarchy brutally put down the revolt, assisted by its neighbor, Saudi Arabia. (As reported in the Los Angeles Times, on March 15 “hundreds of troops from Saudi Arabia and police officers from the nearby United Arab Emirates . . . entered Bahrain at the request of the ruling family. . . .”) Thanks to his own quick, if brutal response, and the assistance of Saudi Arabia, King Hamad continues to rule.
In Egypt and Libya and more recently Syria, the Obama administration said the conduct of their respective leaders had resulted in the loss of their right to rule. In Bahrain, home of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, the Obama administration urged the Kahlifa family and the demonstrators to negotiate their differences. The fact that Bahrain is the headquarters for the U.S. 5th Fleet was probably not the reason for the different approach.
Although King Hamad successfully put down the revolt he was sufficiently concerned about reports of brutality by government forces that four moths after the events took place he appointed a commission to investigate. The commission was headed by Professor Cherif Bassiounim a professor of international criminal law and a former member of U.N. human rights panels. The report was released on November 23, 2011. According to the Associated Press, in the press conference at which the results of the commission’s findings were announced, Mr. Bassiouni said when the revolt began, the government undertook midnight raids to create fear and engaged in purges from workplaces and universities. A number of Shiite mosques were destroyed. Those jailed were blindfolded, whipped, kicked, given electric shocks and threatened with rape to extract confessions. The Bahrain Center for Human Rights said more than 40 deaths of protestors occurred.
Although it is likely that someone in the United States government was aware of the appointment of the commission, it did not wait to find out what the commission would discover. Instead, on September 14 the Pentagon told Congress it intended to sell more than 44 armored Humvees and 300 TOW missiles to Bahrain. Some outside the administration who had followed events in Bahrain were alarmed.
Shortly after the notice was sent out Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) wrote the Secretary of State and observed what she might have observed without his prompting. He wrote that: “Proceeding with the announced arms sale to Bahrain without modification under the current circumstances weakens U.S. credibility at a critical time of political transition in the Middle East.” In what might be described as an “oops” moment, the administration said it was delaying the arms sale until the Bassiouni commission report was released and it had had a chance to review the report. Some might wonder why it took a letter from a Senator to get the State Department to delay its actions. The answer can be found in more than the zeal of the United States to stay in first place in the arms sale business. It can be found in a government audit that was released on November 19, 2011, The audit found “inadequate monitoring of American weapons sales to Persian Gulf countries with questionable human rights records or recent clashes with protesters.” According to the Washington Post, the GAO’s report expressed concern about “how the U.S. government ensures the proper use of military equipment” sold to, among other countries, Bahrain. It observed that “[s]uch vetting is especially critical given Bahrain’s use of its security forces to quell public demonstrations.”
Commenting on the GAO report, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, said: “We need to ensure that the equipment is not being diverted to third parties, and that those groups and units who are the intended recipients are not implicated in human rights violations.” Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen got it right. The disturbing thing is that the State Department didn’t.