When it came time for President Bush to accede to political reality and consent to the formation of a commission to investigate the 9/11 attacks, he thought it would be a great idea for Henry Kissinger to chair the thing but it didn’t work out because Kissinger wouldn’t divulge his contractual relationships to Saudi princes or anyone else. When it came to selecting Democrats, that was fairly easy. Lee Hamilton had helped Dick Cheney bury the Iran-Contra investigation in the House way back in the 1980’s. Tim Roehmer had distinguished himself by creating “a key swing bloc of votes against liberal Democrats” during the presidency of Bill Clinton. Former Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska was always game for bashing some hippies and accusing liberals of engaging in “class warfare.” Richard Ben-Veniste had surface credibility from his time as chief of the Watergate Task Force. And then there was Jamie Gorelick, who had served as Deputy Attorney General from 1994 to 1997, during the Clinton administration. In that role, she authored a memo that some later said had the effect of restricting the flow of intelligence communications. The right then blamed Gorelick for preventing the CIA and FBI from coordinating effectively enough to thwart the 9/11 attacks. From the Bush administration’s perspective, this made her an attractive candidate for the commission. They probably also sensed that she was the kind of person who would lobby against student loan reform and serve as Jared Kushner’s attorney, explaining to rubes like us why “although officials leading federal agencies are barred from hiring relatives, the White House is not an agency and thus exempt.”
I don’t know how good her legal advice really is, considering that her client managed to bungle his paperwork:
When Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, sought the top-secret security clearance that would give him access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets, he was required to disclose all encounters with foreign government officials over the last seven years.
But Mr. Kushner did not mention dozens of contacts with foreign leaders or officials in recent months. They include a December meeting with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, and one with the head of a Russian state-owned bank, Vnesheconombank, arranged at Mr. Kislyak’s behest…
…The Senate Intelligence Committee informed the White House weeks ago that, as part of its inquiry, it planned to question Mr. Kushner about the meetings he arranged with Mr. Kislyak, including the one with Sergey N. Gorkov, a graduate of Russia’s spy school who now heads Vnesheconombank…
…While officials can lose access to intelligence, or worse, for failing to disclose foreign contacts, the forms are often amended to address lapses. Jamie Gorelick, Mr. Kushner’s lawyer, said that the questionnaire was submitted prematurely on Jan. 18, and that the next day, Mr. Kushner’s office told the F.B.I. that he would provide supplemental information.
As Charles Pierce astutely asks, “who among us hasn’t forgotten about the times we met Russian spies who own banks?”
It would have been nice if the election of Donald Trump actually signaled an end to the kind of incestuous relationships that allow the Democratic nominee for president to praise the man who committed war crimes for Nixon, or for Jared Kushner to hire a Cheney-approved “Democratic” 9/11 commissioner as his personal pro-nepotism representative who will cover for his high-level national security lapses.
Alas, that was not the case.
There’s a swamp to be drained, certainly. Trump and Kushner just aren’t the ones to do it.
“There’s a swamp to be drained, certainly. Trump and Kushner just aren’t the ones to do it.”
Understatement of the year so far.
Look, be fair. With the Trump Family’s recent acquisition of the presidency, they have a lot to do to integrate this in their other operations. If they’re going to put some serious shade on Harding’s Ohio Gang they’re going to be tied up with other things than draining the swamp.
Like cross-promoting the brand every single day.
Thanks for telling us more about that swamp. I had not known Lee Hamilton’s doings with Iran-Contra, just that it fizzled. Nor Jamie Gorelick’s current law practice.
Any hints on how to drain that swamp? That and fuller documentation of names and institutions to make available to the public that shows the bi-partisan nature of the corruption are long overdue.
One’s feeling that in 2016 we were had again despite knowing we were being had is kinda inescapable at the moment.
An authentic grassroots movement to drain the swamp (if such is ever possible in US political culture) is what is most needed right now.
I don’t think the swamp will ever be drained as long as we have two and only two political parties, both of which are bought and paid for the the same gang of plutocrats who own the swamp.
…both of which are bought and paid for BY the same gang…
There are more than two political parties.
Of course, if you vote for any of the other ones, you’ll have to endure a lot of sneering about “unicorns”. But sometimes one’s civic duty demands sacrifice.
But won’t there always be effectively two? Isn’t that how coalition governments in parliamentary systems work? I mean, I know it’s a stretch but there’s always gonna be a governing coalition side and an opposition side. We just did away with the pretension that the coalition pieces have distinct identities.
It depends.
With proportional representation you usually end up with a number of parties. But depending on such things as threshold to enter parliament, distribution formula for seats, size of districts and existence or non-existence of over-hang seats and success of party building you end up with different sizes of parties, which together with rules for forming government, passing budgets, deposing governments and political culture, gives you anything from two parties in practice to two competing blocs of parties, to it’s all open to negotiation after the election.
So it depends.
Per Duverger’s law our electoral system militates toward two parties. Minority parties may rise and fall but they are unstable and can only play a spoiler role for their ideological neighbor majority party.
Parliamentary Democracies with proportional representation allow for multiple parties to form governing coalitions post-election. Governing coalitions in presidential democracies with first past the post voting are formed before elections under umbrella parties. Per Linz(pdf) Presidential Democracies are significantly less stable.
Will Jared save us when the governmnet shut down happens in 18 days?