Obama - The Unpleasent Side of Life at the Top
President Elect Barack Obama is now finding that life ‘at the top’ is tough and not always manageable with his considerable charisma and intellect. Last week the outrageous story of Illinois governor Rod R. Blagojevich was accused of trying to sell the Illinois Senate seat that Obama vacated with his presidential win. It didn’t take long before the media started to question what, if any, contact and/or participation Obama himself or his staff may have had with Blagojevich in the process.
Now it would seem that there would be some conversation by someone on Obama’s staff that could be entirely innocent but as Obama and his organization are learning the hard way, the stench often sticks to everyone.
What’s more interesting than this potential scandal for Blagojevich and anyone he may have included in his schemes (even the innocents) is that how Obama and his staff were so unprepared for handling the scandal. Now for any other president elect, this would have been unheard of. But in this writer’s opinion, Obama was largely untouched by anything unpleasent during the campaign. Aside from the brief rucus over his choice of church with it’s contraversial pastor, Obama was left alone. Kind of weird.
Case in point is the purchase of his family home and the entwined sale of part of the property to a questionable ally from a political perspective. While I won’t bother to recap all the details of the transaction here, suffice it to say that it had far more damage power than Senator McCain having to admit to ownership in 7 homes. McCain got slaughtered and Obama got nothing.
It was only a matter of time after Obama won the election that something would come up. This has nothing to do with Obama and his integrity but the reality of running a huge staff in which it’s impossible to know, much less direct every action of every person. And it has to do with the large number of news outlets and this country’s love of ‘dishing up the dirt’ on people.
Ironically Obama who ran on the premise of the best of America is now going to have to learn how to deal with the worst. As I stated at the top, LIfe at the top does have its unpleasent side.