The Scandal that Tells Us All We Need to Know About McCain and Palin

Is it possible to empty a presidential election of all political content? The economy is crashing, the climate is unraveling, Iraq and Afghanistan are hemorrhaging -- and the debate in the mainstream US media about who should be the most powerful man in the world was fixated for weeks on burbling trivia. Barack Obama called Sarah Palin a pig! (No, he didn't.) Obama wanted to tell toddlers about sex! (No, he wanted to warn them about pedophiles). The critics of Palin are sexist! (McCain voted against the Equal Pay Act. That's sexism.)

Can the collapse of Lehman Brothers ram a rare taste of reality into the campaign? The facts are plain. John McCain enthusiastically backed every one of George Bush's moves to deregulate the banks and the mortgage industry that caused this collapse, while Barack Obama opposed them. This isn't just a credit crunch; it's a conservatism crunch. The right got their dream of a totally unregulated 'shadow' banking sector -- and it swiftly imploded, bringing the world economy down with it.

Yet McCain's indignant promises to "close this casino" are being reported straight, without even bothering to look at this record - or noticing that he is cashing cheques from Wall Street lobbyists as fast as they can be written. They know their man: McCain's mantra even after this collapse began was "I am always for less regulation." Indeed, McCain's current adverts saying he will not let the "recklessness" that led to Lehman Brothers happen again are in part funded by left-over donations from... Lehman Brothers.

McCain knows his stances on the economy and foreign policy are opposed by 80 percent of the population as barely-trimmed Bush. So he needs to toss up a confetti of distraction-issues instead - and Palin was the biggest distraction of all. This attempt to run out the clock was working with slick efficiency until the stock exchange's opening bell started to sound like a death-knell. He is gathering fistfuls more of confetti as we speak.

The best key to unlocking these tactics may lie in a story that might seem at first glance a yellowing old scandal, but it is actually as fresh as tomorrow's Google News. By 1920, the oil age had revved into first gear. Cars were being bought all over America, so the petrol price was at an all-time high. The bosses of Big Oil were desperate for new oilfields -- and there was one in particular they coveted. In Wyoming, there was a vast oil field called the Teapot Dome reserve, shaped like a teapot and containing more oil than the whole of California. But the oilmen were shut out: it had been set aside to supply the navy with oil if there was ever a national emergency.

So Big Oil thought of a solution. They decided to buy the presidency. A consortium led by Jake Hamon -- a J.R. Ewing for the Jazz Age -- started to buy the delegates to the 1920 Republican Convention with brown-envelope bribes, one-by-one. Once they owned a hefty block, they approached the initial front-runner -- General Leonard Wood -- and said they would make him the Republican nominee if in return he had to promise to make Hamon Secretary of the Interior -- and therefore boss of Teapot Dome. Wood yelled: "I am an American soldier. I'll be damned if I'll betray my country! Get the hell out of here."

So Big Oil picked a different candidate instead: an obscure, bumbling Senator called Warren G. Harding, who had been a forty-to-one shot at the start of the convention. He had barely been out of Ohio and had only fuzzy ideas about politics -- but he could be marketed as Mr. Normal, the 1920s equivalent of a hockey mom. Big Oil lavishly funded a PR campaign selling him to ordinary Americans as One of You. He was pictured at baseball games eating hot dogs with his sweet family -- while his opponent was presented as arid and "elitist."

As soon as he won, Harding began the payback to the real elite. Teapot Dome was handed over to Big Oil. He even sent in the marines to clear the land. Eventually, the scandal broke, and Harding only stayed ahead of the investigators by dying. There's a consequential coda to this story. Not long after the scandal, Big Oil shifted tactics -- but only by a few inches. They decided that instead of under-the-table bribes, they would start giving "campaign donations." This time, they would give to all sides, Democrat or Republican, and they would make their demands through "lobbyists." A scandal suddenly turned into standard practice: almost the entire American political class became an oil-igarchy. The other big interests -- especially Wall Street -- followed close behind with an open cheque-book.

Until now. Barack Obama is the first major presidential candidate since Teapot Dome to refuse to take money from Big Oil or lobbyists, with 93 percent of his funding coming from small donors giving $200 or less. Every other leading candidate (even Al Gore) took their cash and saw the world through the bottom of an oil-barrel. Not him.

Most of the recent disasters of US policy are due not to the will of its unfairly-maligned people, but to this oil-slick over Capitol Hill. What has been the price of Big Oil owning American politicians? The US government has vandalised all attempts to stop global warming, even censoring its own scientists' reports. It invaded Iraq killing hundreds of thousands of people because, as Dick Cheney put it in 1990: "We're there because... that part of the world controls the world supply of oil." And it fawns over the House of Saud, which exports a toxic brand of Wahabbism -- all the way to the Twin Towers. What has been the cost of Big Banks owning American politicians? Watch the front pages for daily updates.

Obama offers a rare chance to begin to dismantle the petrol pump and the Wall Street cash-dispenser in the Oval Office. Yes, he would still have to work with an oil-and-bank-funded Democratic Congress, but the long-term public interest would at least be able to get a few lungfuls of air.

Yet the people who brought us Warren Harding and George Bush are now expertly packaging McCain-Palin as defenders of Main Street -- and they are outspending Obama's small donors for the first time. They are even paying for adverts which claim McCain and Palin "stand up to Big Oil." True, McCain did once flirt with campaign finance reform, but only after being caught taking money from a fraudster and in return lobbying on his behalf. Today, he's back to his gut instincts, with the Republican convention breaking into a chant of "drill, baby, drill!" led by McCain's men, and the delegates whooping and hollering for the men who caused this deregulation-crash. He is even committed to giving his Big Oil donors a $4bn tax cut -- at a time of record profits.

Jake Hamon couldn't have asked for more -- and he would be delighted to see us revert to distraction-blather about Palin's cute kids and her ability to shoot moose for the next fifty days. Unless Obama and his army of citizen-donors can break through this wall of white noise, it would appear we all live in Teapot Dome now.

Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent. You can read more of his articles at here.

Comments

[jcoppo]

Well put!! The GOP has been the GREEDY OIL PARTY since oil took center stage as an energy source. PLEASE continue to tell people... this party is only about money for their oil buddies, even if it means destroying our economy, and in the end, our globe. Talk about greedy shortsighted people!!

[Sseb]

We only have to go back 20 years to revisit another financial travesty eerily echoed today, and includes a disgrace Senator repackaged as "war hero". The S&L Crisis was a relative bargain, costing taxpayers $24B and 121,000 elderly their life savings. Out of the ashes of Lincoln S&L came Charles Keating who "convinced" John McCain to lobby for him because he didn't want to serve his richly deserved prison term. Cindy McCain was a partner with Keating in a shopping center.

Fast forward 11 years. McCain's economic advisor Phil Gramm crafts a law to gut the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 that was designed to curtail the speculation that brought on the Great Depression. Next month taxpayers will open their retirement statements, receiving the first of many bills for reckless republican greed.

The country that gets to alternative energy first secures its place as the world leader, guaranteeing good livelihoods and infrastructure for its citizens. It will be the death-knell for oil. Regardless which country wins the alternative energy race, Big Oil is dead in a matter of years. If Oil cared about the U.S., it would help develop the alternative energies. Big Oil does not care which country (China, Russia or even Iran) wins, as long as it can still sell the U.S. out to the highest bidder.

In their single-minded concern for the welfare of Big Oil, conservatives are being grossly unpatriotic. It is patriotic to re-power the USA first.

[LeftRight]

Big oil doesn't have to die with alternative energies. If they would just realize that they can't keep up as OIL companies, and would translate themselves into real ENERGY companies (like they are claiming they are now!!!) they would be in on the ground floor. However, that would require a LARGE investment in the future, and they are too shortsighted to see that, and so they won't do it!

[M4DN3SS]

Great article. Too bad most Americans don't read. Is there a way to make this article into a coloring book or something?

[Whinger]

Clearly GOP patriotism is for profit and not for America but some people simpy don't care!

In the end, the majority will have the President they deserve, one way or the other!

[dRwOOD]

Wow, this needs to be circulated big time - I'll do my part

[Ohg]

Have we had enough of corruption in the White House? Have we have enough of economic terrorism. ....................
http://thefiresidepost.com/2008/09/18/wall-street-terrorizes-america/

[getoffthecross]

Way to lay it out. I'm going to send this to virtually everyone on my contact list. Perspective is something sorely missing from our politics these last several years.

[PierreLeClerke]

Help Promote the 8 Point Plan

[PierreLeClerke]

We nationalized the largest mortgage companies on the planet, (Freddie & Fannie) and the largest insurance company in the world, (AIG). Fannie and Freddie own 5-6 trillion in mortgages, if we as a nation get lucky with an average value correction in the real estate the value market of 20% minimum, that is a 1 TRILLION $$$$$$$ loss in collateral value on its face. Not what I call wise investment strategy. No private financial bailout of AIG could be struck, because the financials of that institution are a convoluted mess.
All these government bailouts are shortsighted bandaids on the hemorrhaging capital wound that continues to bleed out our economy.
In the last eight years, our direct energy costs have exceeded 5 TRILLION $$$$$$, in addition to that direct cost, every product we touch has risen in cost as a result of its energy ingredient it cannot escape. These unrestricted, constant, invasive, ever expanding, unpredictable, burdens on our foundational economy are the disease we must treat now, or watch our future, disappear!
The political will to take back our own National natural resources from the hands of the few has been bought off by the controllers of same.
The largest oil producing countries in the world have recognized the ruthless drain and plunder of their resources, most have rejected private monopolies over their collective destinies. When we will finally recognize the man behind the curtain and at long last break this grip of greed from the neck of our Nation!

[Opsimath44]

Harding's story is one of the least told and least understood tales in American history.

First time as tragedy, second time as farce...

[elbzee]

Excellent post. I especially appreciate this phrase, "this oil-slick over Capitol Hill." Absolutely the best description of our administration I've read!

[rwe]

Oh and the ACORN community organiser from the most taxed , most corrupt state in the country is qualified?

[LeftRight]

Really? Most taxed, most corrupt state in the nation....? I live here in IL. I will admit that because of the latest COUNTY sales tax increase, Chicago has the highest sales tax of any city in America. It's just around 10%. Of course, if you allow for the REST of the taxes, which are actually quite low, you will find that IL sits right in the middle.

And as far as corrupt goes. I will grant that Chicago has its issues. So does Cook County. But the STATE is just fine, thank you very much!!!!!!!!!!

[Blivet]

If you want an example of corruption and taxation, look to the smallest state in the nation.

[BBackSoon]

Beats the Old politician and the vindictive beauty Queen.

[bayviking]

Apparently Mr. Hari hasn't read Mr. Obama's donor list. The Oligarchy bets on both sides. Wall Street was his first backer.

[LeftRight]

Apparently bayviking hasn't read the fact that Obama's donor list includes more than 90% of his money coming from average people paying less than the maximum amount!

[blueshield]

Anyone looking for clear evidence can substitute "offshore oil" for "Teapot Dome".

Offshore oil deposits are assets owned by the American public. The longer they sit untapped, the more valuable an asset they become, as oil prices will only rise.

The hysterical rush to turn these fields over to oil companies has everything to do with their getting the leases cheaply today from the oilmen in the WH. None of the interested oil corporations is pretending - in fact, they are disputing - the notion that drilling will have any impact on American gas prices.

That argument is purely a con advanced by Republicans, so that today's oil barons can grab the taxpayer's oil on the cheap.

"Drill, drill, drill" is just the mantra of corruption.

[Dynamohum]

One huge difference here. Obama and we, his supporters are not about to be quiet or let this type of assault go unchecked or unchallenged. THAT IS A HUGE DIFFERENCE.

First read about and studied the Teapot Dome in middle school, 7th grade if I remember correctly.
It does astound me however, how many Americans have no clue about current events let alone history. I am reminded of Jay Leno going to the streets to ask average Americans questions about politics and government. Are there really that many stupid people?

[tyrdofwaitin]

Yes!

[MadOzbo]

Yes. there ARE that many STUPID PEOPLE, and MORE.

That is why we need to keep pounding the McCain lies into the dirt as the lies they are.
Hopefully at least SOME stupid people will get smarter.
The SMART people need to be reminded constantly until Election Day, so that EVERYONE VOTES!

Please vote. For yourself, for your families, for the rest of this great Nation. Please.
And take someone with you to vote at the polls, too!