Ethics has always been a strong point for President Obama, but Republicans are looking to knock the halo off his reformer image, taking advantage of two stories this week raising questions about whether the White House exerted pressure to give major donors a boost.
White House press secretary Jay Carney received a barrage of questions on Thursday about the recent collapse of Solyndra, a solar company that received $534 million in loan guarantees from the administration. The Washington Post reported this week on emails from the White House in 2009 in which they repeatedly asked OMB how quickly the loan could be approved and mentioned that Vice President Joe BIden wanted to announce its approval at a September event with the company. One of Solyndra’s major investors, billionaire George Kaiser, is a major fundraiser for Obama. Republicans pounced, with RNC chair Reince Priebus calling the loan “the kind of taxpayer-funded cronyism this White House said it would eliminate.”
Then on Thursday, The Daily Beast reported that an Air Force General, William Shelton, told lawmakers in a classified hearing that he had been asked to alter his testimony on a company whose head has fundraising ties to the administration. The company, LightSquared, is trying to secure FCC approval to use a part of the broadband spectrum that the Department of Defense has cautioned could interfere with the military’s GPS equipment. Republicans are calling for an investigation and connecting the story to Solyndra.
“We can’t afford to have federal telecommunications policy where it affects national security to be made in the same way the White House parceled out a half billion dollars in loan guarantees to a failed corporation, a large campaign contributor to the president,” Rep. Michael Turner (R-OH) said in a hearing Thursday.
The White House denies any wrongdoing in either case, saying the Solyndra loan was merit-based and that questions as to its timing were about trying to plan their events schedule, not about exerting pressure. Regarding LightSquared, both White House officials and the chair of the FCC, Julius Genachowski, say there was no attempt by the administration to influence the decision.
For the moment, both stories are still smoke without fire. But they raise uncomfortable questions in the press and could offer an unusually strong challenge to what has been one of the most resilient features of the Obama brand: his incorruptibility. A survey taken by Quinnipiac University last month showed 58% of respondents said Obama is “honest and trustworthy,” a majority that held across independents and all ages and races. He ran on operating a transparent and “honest” White House, and while he’s taken licks on both scores since becoming president, the numbers suggest most in the public still consider his stewardship mostly above-board.
This is, of course, despite unending attempts by his opponents to drag him down into the mud of corrupt politics. Obama shook off negative headlines surrounding Chicago real estate mogul Tony Rezko back during the election and more recently deflected Republican attempts to label his bus tour into a taxpayer-funded political boondoggle. He’s been so immune to serious scandal versus recent presidents that one political scientist recently argued in a study that he’s statistically “due” for one based on statistics alone.
But Republicans really think they’re onto something when it comes to the Solyndra and LightSquared, the stories of which they say will turn Americans on to what they’ve been saying all along: Obama is not to keeping his promise to clean up Washington.
“Americans are starting to see that in addition to his failed promise to turn the economy around, the president has also on his promise to change the way Washington works,” RNC spokesperson Kirsten Kukowski told TPM.
“Republicans have been pointing at warning signs for years from the Blue Room meeting to hidden lobbyist meetings at Jackson Place,” she added. “This time around, the White House’s refusal to be transparent and answer questions has raised red flags for the public. Simply put, the White House’s involvement with Solyndra smells bad and the longer the president attempts to sweep it under the rug, the more damage it will do.”
Will it work? In conversations with TPM, Democratic consultants didn’t deny the obvious that a stimulus-backed company going down in flames right as jobs are at the forefront of the White House message is bad optics for the White House. But that’s a far cry from proof of any ethical wrongdoing and the hope is the Solyndra case stays a relatively isolated example of stimulus funding gone wrong.
And the RNC’s decision to make the Solyndra case an issue of ethics instead of competence also leaves them open to counterattack. Their efforts to secure a loan date back to the last administration and one of the company’s top investors is the Walton family, which owns Wal-Mart and has donated millions to GOP candidates.
“The process for this particular loan guarantee began under President Bush,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz told TPM. “Private sector investors – who put more than $1 billion of their own money on the line – also saw great potential in the company. As the Department of Energy has made clear, they have always recognized that not every one of the innovative companies helped would succeed, but we can’t stop investing in game-changing technologies that are key to America’s leadership in the global economy.”
He added that, while the White House is “disappointed” by Solyndra’s failings, “we continue to believe the clean energy jobs race is one that America can, must and will win.”
