Let me begin my comments by making it clear that I do not think that President-Elect Obama is guilty of any wrongdoing in the Governor Soprano affair. Until concrete evidence is produced showing a link, I will accept his word that neither he nor his staff offered to pay for the Senate appointment.
However his reaction to the scandal has struck me with a couple of observations. The first has to do with how he reacts to potential scandals touching his campaign and/or administration. Obviously most politicians have a system for dealing with bad news and most tend to follow the same basic patterns. But with Obama it is strikingly organized and quite similar whether it is Reverend Wright or Bill Ayers or Governor Soprano.
The first stage is to simply ignore the subject, to make no comment on it at all and hope that it goes away. This stage lasts for as long as possible but, unless the problem vanishes, then we move on to stage two. In stage two Obama will have some member of his staff leak something to the press on deep background, expressing his dismay over the problem but without any direct connection to the event.
Stage three is where he has a staff member comment directly over the scandal, more forcefully expressing the President-Elect’s unhappiness with the situation and his hope that things will be resolved properly. Obama may be directly or indirectly quoted at this stage.
Stage four is where we were yesterday when Obama makes some minor public comments himself but then moves quickly on to other subjects (as happened at the Gore meeting press conference). Stage Five is the final stage where he takes the event on directly and forcefully (as was the case here when he called for Blago to quit).
Again most politicians do have a somewhat similar system but, if you look over how Obama has reacted to the various bumps along the road over the last year, it is striking how precise they are in moving from stage to stage in the process.
On a bit of a side note I was also struck by the way Obama spoke on the scandal this morning. While he is normally fairly eloquent and articulate this time he seemed to be hemming and hawing far more with many ‘Uh, Um, etc’ during his statement. I don’t fault him for this as it is a difficult situation and hardly one that he wanted to be dealing with during the transition.
But one does wonder why reporters who would comment on this if it were any other politician have failed to do so with Obama. Perhaps the SNL syndrome strikes again ?
Cartoon by Gary McCoy, Cagle Cartoons