No Surprises: Obama Lied to the American People

Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama's selection as White House chief of staff, was in contact with Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich regarding the appointment of Obama's replacement to the Senate.

The Swamp has the details:

Rahm Emanuel, President-elect Barack Obama's pick to be White House chief of staff, had conversations with Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration about who would replace Obama in the U.S. Senate, the Chicago Tribune has learned.

The revelation does not suggest Obama's new gatekeeper was involved in any talk of dealmaking involving the seat. But it does help fill in the gaps surrounding a question that Obama was unable or unwilling to answer this week: Did anyone on his staff have contact with Blagojevich about his choice for the Senate seat?

Blagojevich and John Harris, his former chief of staff, face federal charges in an alleged shakedown involving the vacant Senate seat, which Illinois law grants the governor sole authority to fill.

Obama said Thursday he had never spoken to Blagojevich about the Senate vacancy and was "confident that no representatives" of his had engaged in any dealmaking over the seat with the governor or his team. He also pledged Thursday that in the "next few days" he would explain what contacts his staff may have had with the governor's office about the Senate vacancy.
Emanuel, who has long been close to both Blagojevich and Obama, has refused to respond to questions about any involvement he may have had with the Blagojevich camp over the Senate pick. A spokeswoman for Emanuel also declined to comment Friday.

A.J. Strata puts the incoming administration's deceit in context:

The big dominos seem to be falling already, less than a week from the news breaking. I simply cannot fathom the damage Barack Obama and Rahm Emmanuel have done to their incoming administration, a month before it takes office. But I do know they dealt hit a critical blow this week. Barack Obama has just been exposed as a liar to the American people. He lied to us in a manner that puts him in the same league as Bill Clinton, Senator Ted Stevens, Senator Robert Torricelli, Rep Randy “Duke” Cunningham and Rep William Jefferson. We have yet to know what, if any, crimes Obama has committed. But the fact is this week he went out and lied straight to the American people. He tried to cover his tracks ....

Obama won the election by gaining the trust of the majority of the voters. He was preparing to take office with the added trust of many like me who were willing to give him a chance to prove us wrong. There are no perfect politicians. I was more than willing to give Obama a shot. But his followers were living a dream come true - or so they thought.

I will not be lied to and right now my view of Obama is totally shattered. But my blowback on Obama is going to be mild compared to all those true believers who voted for ‘change we can believe in’. The entire Obama administration is now in a shambles because it’s load bearing characteristic has failed in a devastating manner. Obama is not only just like all other pols, he is inexperienced klutz as well.

Obama could not trust the American people to simply tell them he exchanged information with Blagojevich on the matter of the vacant senate seat. All of us would have been shocked at his ineptitude if he hadn’t been pre-planning his transition. But Obama failed America by failing to trust us with obvious details. So he lied and tried sell the idea his ‘office’ had nothing to do with ‘the issue’ (his office of course being his senate office, not his transition team).

Actually, I'm not surprised at all.

Throughout the campaign, a few writers, especially Stanley Kurtz, examined in detail Barack Obama's long acculturation and political grooming in Chicago's corrupt Democratic Party machine. Further, in response to Ryan Lizza's New Yorker essay, with the famous cover cartoon of the radical Islamist fist-bump from heaven, I wrote this:

If Barack Obama's elected in November, we'll see the accession of a machine-style party boss to the Oval Office ...

Well, we're seeing it now, the dark side of Obama's machine-style politics, and his administration's not even taken office yet. Obama's scale of corruption's going to put Richard Nixon and Watergate in the shade.