I didnt want to

Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

I didn’t want to do any posts this weekend. But this article by Chris Caldwell in the New York Press merits an exception. It’s simply devastating and the most apt statement of the White House’s predicament I’ve yet read. Every word of it practically is worth reading and reading again.

There’s always an element of unmerited, guilty pleasure you feel when you hear someone on the other side making your side’s case for you. But it’s equally true that sometimes a political point can only be made clearly by someone who has to say it with an element of regret, whose words are free of the dross of wishful-thinking and mindless overstatement.

Consider this peerless paragraph, which comes after Caldwell argues that no actual illegality was likely involved in Bush’s Harken stock sale …

What kills the President is that every time Harken comes up, Democrats get to retell the story of how he made his money. And this, basically, is the story of the spectacular unfairness with which moneymaking opportunities are lavished on the politically connected. It is the story of a man who has been rewarded for repeated failures by having money shot at him through a fire hose. It is the story of a man who talks with a straight face about having “earned” a fortune of tens of millions of dollars, without having ever done an honest day’s work in his life.

More than anyone else thus far, Caldwell gets bracingly to the heart of the matter.

What’s so damning about this current round of revelations isn’t so much the law-breaking. Nor is it that people make the wrong choice when forced to choose between playing by the rules and taking shortcuts to cash in big. What’s so damning is that there is apparently a whole class of people who never have to face that tough decision, the sort of decision that defines most people’s lives.

The insiders’ we hear about never seem to have broken any law. Or they never knew the key inculpating fact at the key moment. But somehow they manage to cash out at the right time and everything works out okay.

One group of people seems to live in a world where the economic god comes out of the theology of John Calvin, while the other lives in a world with a god of ever-abiding love, universal salvation, endless second chances, and never having to say you’re sorry …

Welcome to the responsibility era

Latest Editors' Blog
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: