Would you like to be “vetted”?

The other day at the unveiling of the top cabinet nominees, some reporter asked President Elect Obama (PEO) If the campaign hyperbole wasn’t now biting him in the ass. BHO grinned that grin and said, “I know you’re having fun but…" and then he went on to say that “outside of the heat of the campaign” we have had good solid discussions and we are very much on the same page vis a vis the big issues that we are now concerned with. Which seems to The Jacket a tacit admission of the bullshit that goes on inside the holy hell of a campaign that absolutely requires the precision parsing of the opponents words to turn them on themselves only to be revealed later as “just kiddin’.” This isn’t news as in “new” but it is in the news that Hilary said this or that about the Senator before he was PEO and before he whupped her ass. And you may remember for his part he had reduced her touted “diplomatic missions” to “having attended some tea parties” in various world capitals.

Now AG Elect Eric Holder, who hopes to head Justice is being held to a different standard than he was when he was number two there and helped to pardon Marc Rich – but do we care? They’re all a bunch of scoundrels and probably the worst thing we can presently say about PEO is that he “palled around with terrorists” and he failed to leave church when he disagreed with his pastor’s theatrics. One could argue that he shouldn’t have been in the church in the first place. But that argument holds no water in that this is a nation of christian convenience, meaning that most of the voters are some sort of adherent to that religious philosophy if only because it looks good on their resume. So, go to church the candidate must.

PEO, when he was just plain BHO, played the hand that was dealt when he horned in on the game. He attended a popular black church so he could be seen with the people with whom he wished to rub elbows. And it works until you try to explain the Rev. Wright clips to the huge swath of guns & religion clingers. It isn’t up to those voters to fathom how the intricacies of politics works. They are supposed to take you at your word when they see you on TV. Or not.

Nobody is now holding McCain responsible for some of the dumb or desperate things he said back in September and October. Of course it doesn’t really matter now, at all. And his confessional concession speech that showed the best side of old McNasty is what most people will remember about him. It’s just the way it seems to work.

Holder was doubtlessly doing the Presidential bidding of the boss. Marc “Filthy” Rich was a fugitive of justice for twenty years making himself even richer by investing, illegally of course, in Iranian contracts and eventually enriching the Clinton Library with his ill-gotten lucre. Part of that joke is that Rich fled the US because he was convicted for not paying taxes. He couldn’t pay his taxes but he could contribute to the First Bank of Clinton Library. And the reason he gave for not paying is because (he says) he was innocent. That the over zealous prosecutor, one Rudolph Giuliani (Rudy? Overzealous?), tried him criminally when, Rich says, “it should have been treated as a civil matter.” Memo to Mark: Pay the damn taxes!

Anygate, AG Elect Holder, who had nothing to gain, except the ire of the Commander in Thief, did as he was bid. Conversations he was supposed to have had about the matter in the two years prior to the hurried pardoning process seem innocent if you’re not looking for trouble, and the opposite if you are.

Here’s my understanding of the “vetting process”: If I want to buy a horse, I take him to a veterinarian to look in his mouth and ears, test his feet and legs and stick fingers in every orifice to make sure there is nothing wrong with the horse before the sale. That is probably less painful and embarrassing than a political vetting at the cabinet level.

Christopher Hitchen’s assessment of Hilary Clinton not withstanding she will be confirmed easily as it is almost too embarrassing for colleagues to ask: “If you could lie about being shot at in Bosnia, telling the same story three times, how do we know you wouldn’t lie to us when reporting on matters of State?”

Politics is a gas but it often gives us gas. I have seen at the Selectmen level in tiny NH towns the cheating, lying and even stealing that goes on. It starts there and works its way up. However cynical we think we are, the general public is way too trusting. That’s why our Sheriff got away with charging new suits to the taxpayer and why Bill Clinton got away with getting a beanie in the oval office. If he could be whinnying amonst us, I’m sure Kurt Vonnegut would want to say, “And so it goes.”