"I didn't do it, no one saw me do it, there's no way you can prove anything!" -- Bart Simpson
Ah, if only Bart Simpson had a staff and was as shameless as the man in the White House. Oh, the things he could have gotten away with! Just ask Barack Obama, who has blamed his staff for just about everything under the sun at one point or another.
There are more than a dozen examples of Barack's fickle finger pointing towards his employees when he got his hand caught in the cookie jar, but there are a few capers that our "I didn't do it" President pulled off that deserve some extra special attention.
5) Early on in the campaign, when Barack Obama was heavily relying on his reputation as a racial healer, the late, great Tim Russert called out Obama for a memo his campaign released that was entitled, "MUST READ: Key S.C. figure takes issue with Clintons' SHUCK AND JIVE."
Here's the HuffPo description of the memo,
Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign has prepared a detailed memo listing various instances in which it perceived Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign to have deliberately played the race card in the Democratic primary....The document provides an indication that, in private, the Obama campaign is seeking to capitalize on the view - and push the narrative - that the Clintons are using race-related issues for political leverage. In public, the Obama campaign has denied that they are trying to propagate such a perception, noting that the document never was sent to the press.
...In putting together a memo on these comments, the Obama campaign is seemingly implying that they are part of a larger, ugly pattern of the Clintons trying to politicize the issue of race.
You've got to love the chutzpah of a political campaign putting out a memo accusing their opponents of being racists and then implying that their opponents are "trying to politicize the issue of race."
So what was Obama's response to this memo that his campaign had slyly managed to get into the hands of the press?
"Our supporters, our staff get overzealous. They start saying things that I would not say, and it is my responsibility to make sure that we're setting a clear tone in our campaign."
By the end of the Democratic primary campaign, the black vote was breaking towards Obama and against the wife of the "first black President" by a better than 80/20 margin. Thank heavens for "overzealous" staffers or we might have been forced to see someone other than Barack Obama on the cover of a magazine in the last few months.
4) Back in 2006, Barack Obama told the Chicago Sun-Times that he had never been, "asked to do anything to advance (Tony) Rezko's business interests." However, once the presidential campaign got underway, it came out that Obama "wrote to city and state housing officials on behalf of a housing project for seniors that" his crooked pal was working on.
Obama's response? It was a form letter -- and by the way, not only did I not know that Rezko was associated with the project, I didn't even know my staff sent out the letter.
Incidentally, since Obama's original answer, he gave back $160,000 in Rezko campaign contributions -- and that's aside from the shady deal Obama made to get land for his house from Rezko at a below market rate. If you believe Obama, all that earned Rezko were some lousy form letters that he wasn't even aware his staff had sent out. If you buy into that, I've got a Senate seat in Illinois to sell you.
3) Right out of the gate, after Obama was elected, he became enmeshed in scandal as Rod Blagojevich got caught trying to sell his Senate seat. So, what to do? Well, you know our President: he blamed Rahm Emanuel.
Sure, Rahm Emanuel was talking about filling Obama's Senate seat with Obama's friend Valerie Jarrett, but certainly Barack Obama had no idea that was going on. At first glance, that might seem implausible, but Obama's claim was that Rahm was acting without his blessing because he "had ruled out communicating a preference for any one candidate."
The fevered logic for that unlikely claim was undoubtedly that you can't be accused of discussing a bribe to put a particular politician in office if you don't have a favorite candidate. But, there's nothing to worry about since Obama's lawyers prepared a report exonerating their client of all wrongdoing in the case. And if you can't trust what Obama's lawyers say about Obama, then who can you trust, right?
2) Way back in 1996, Barack Obama said that, yes, he wanted to "ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns." That answer wasn't problematic for him in a run at the state Senate in Illinois, but hewing to that position would have made it impossible for him to get elected as President.
So, Obama claimed a staffer filled out the questionnaire for him and got the answer wrong. One problem: his handwritten notes were "on the front page of the questionnaire."
Incidentally, it's still legal to buy a handgun and it seems unlikely that the Democrats could try to put a ban in place unless they padded their margins even further in 2010. There may even be a gun shop in your area open right now. Just saying.
1) The AIG Bonuses: Ironically, despite the fact that he has been publicly flogging the AIG executives who took bonuses, it was Barack Obama's administration, in concert with Chris Dodd, that ""amended language to the economic stimulus plan so that such bonuses could continue to be paid."." Of course, it's also worth noting that clause was in the stimulus bill that Barack Obama signed into law.
Yet, if you believe Barack Obama, Tim Geithner and Company failed to inform him of the bonuses until the day before they were paid out despite the fact that the Treasury Department had been informed well before then and was told the bonuses "were a hot-button issue." No wonder Obama doesn't want to fire Geithner. The economy is melting down, Obama is making it worse at every turn, and could there be a better patsy to blame it all on at this point than Geithner?