There are so many vastly important things going on in America and the world. But the reality is that everything is being overshadowed by the Gulf oil disaster and the ongoing repercussions from the misbegotten Israeli commando raid on an activist flotilla seeking to break the blockade of Gaza.
And yet ... We have this ongoing spectacle of Congressman Darrell Issa, from my home state of California, insisting that President Barack Obama is a legitimate target of impeachment proceedings.
For, ironically, the very sort of thing that Issa himself endorses, right here in the present politics of the erstwhile Golden State. Issa's candidate for governor, billionaire Meg Whitman, also tried to clear her Republican primary with promises of a political position. And, beyond that, with threats of retribution.
Let's review.
Well, actually, in point of fact, not Obama -- since he has no idea what Obama himself did or did not do -- but Obama's associates. In trying to discourage a couple of candidates in contested Democratic primaries.
Naturally, Issa -- who I got to know in 2003 when he funded the effort to qualify the California recall of then Governor Gray Davis -- is spinning wildly off the mark. After all, he thought his funding of the recall effort would result in him becoming governor. Er, no, as was obvious all along. As Issa tearfully found out on his own.
Yet I digress, for a moment.
Here's Issa on last Sunday's Foxfest:
ISSA: It's clearly a crime. Anyone can go online and read 18 USC 600 and see that this -- that what the White House is now saying happened falls under the statute.
WALLACE: But let me ask you, because -- we're going to look at the relevant statute, which is Section 600 of the Federal Criminal Code.
After clearing out all the excess verbiage -- and let me tell you, folks, there's plenty -- it's -- this is what it says. "Whoever promises any employment position to any person as consideration, favor, or reward for any political activity, or for the support of or opposition to any candidate, shall be fined or imprisoned."
But, Congressman, both Michael Mukasey, the last attorney general of the United States under President George W. Bush, and also the chief ethics officer in the Bush White House both say that this is not a violation of the law, that that law was in effect for the spoil system, and to prohibit people from offering jobs to someone to go out and support a political candidate.
ISSA: You know what's amazing is...
WALLACE: This is...
ISSA: No, what -- what...
WALLACE: This is -- you smile, but this is Attorney General Mukasey saying this.
ISSA: Right. Well, what's amazing is that this administration wants to talk about not doing business as usual, and then this is clearly business as usual. ...
WALLACE: ... Congressman Issa.
We've got about a minute left. I'll give you the last word.
ISSA: It's very simple. If the American people care about a lot of things including corruption in government, then, in fact, if you use the power to appoint in order to do political business, to clear fields, to save your party money and so on, if it's not a crime -- and I believe it is -- it certainly is business as usual, politics of corruption.
Very dramatic on the part of Congressman Issa, who made a centimillionaire fortune as a car alarm magnate, so he knows about tooting horns. And very ironic, as he countenances, in the biggest race in the country, the very thing he decries with regard to Obama.
In the real world, as distinguished from the whacked out cable "news" world, Issa is a big backer of billionaire Meg Whitman's corporate conservative campaign for governor of California.
In fact, Issa did a press conference as one of Whitman's biggest backers a few months ago at the California Republican Party convention. He had no problem whatsoever with Whitman engaging in the most blatant of efforts to entice and coerce a clearing of the primary field on her behalf.
Whitman engaged in a very messy and unsuccessful attempt to clear the Republican primary field, something which Democrat Jerry Brown succeeded in doing on the Democratic side last fall, without any such gross blandishments and coercions.
At the beginning of February, super-rich state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, who devised the GPS technology in your mobile phone, charged that Whitman's chief strategist Mike Murphy broke the law by threatening him with personal destruction if he filed for governor and offered him the inducement of a U.S. Senate nomination if he dropped out of the race.
Poizner produced an e-mail from Murphy to one of Poizner's top hands threatening to spend $40 million assassinating Poizner's character if he files next month for governor. Alternatively, he offered Poizner the 2012 Republican nomination against Senator Dianne Feinstein, reasoning that "2012 could be a good GOP year and DiFi will be 78 or 79 years old."
Which is not an especially clever thing to say about California's senior senator.
As I'm reminded of Mr. Dooley's ancient dictum that "politics ain't beanbag," I don't know that this is actually illegal.
I do know that it is certainly, let's say, unwise.
I called Murphy -- the ex-John McCain advisor dismissed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as his chief political strategist after the 2005 special election debacle that nearly ended his governorship -- on Murphy's mobile phone for comment. But he didn't pick up.
Needless to say, Poizner, who said that various threatening phone calls have also been made, did not drop out of the race. In fact, he forced her to spend an astonishing $90 million on her primary campaign, merely $40 million over budget.
Needless to say, if you are going to threaten someone, the Murphy technique really is not how you do it.
Unless you want the opposite effect.
Sometimes the most controlling personalities, and political operations, are those which are not in control.
Whitman, incidentally, admitted on a talk show that she knew exactly what the misbegotten Murphy was up to in both his threats and his blandishments.
Darrell Issa supported all this stuff, which is far more blatant than anything he is charging about the Obama White House.
Thanks, Congressman, for wasting the time of America -- or at least that part that still pays attention to cable news nonsense -- in this most serious of times with this most errant of nonsense.
Incidentally, Issa did play a major role in the famous 2003 California recall.
He contributed the $2 million which finally qualified the popular recall of Governor Gray Davis, after a host of self-serving right-wing radio talk show hosts and political consultants played their non-serious games.
Then Issa proceeded to run for governor. Which, predictably, did not go well, as he was far too conservative for the state and had a rough background.
Yet he insisted on going through with his filing of candidacy for governor. Right up till the moment when he showed up outside the registrar's office. At which point he tearfully stated that he wasn't going through with it, after all.
Which was no surprise to me, as Arnold Schwarzenegger -- that supposedly clueless movie star as many on the right and left would have it -- had told me would happen.
"He's a nice guy; he won't run in the end," Schwarzenegger told me of Issa. As he said, well, of a number of other potential candidates. But, you know, what did Schwarzenegger know? He was just a clueless muscle-bound movie star, right?
Well, moving back to reality, Issa liked what I wrote about all this, even though I was clearly not extolling his right-wing politics. I didn't stoop to calling him a fascist, for one thing. And, as chief political writer for the LA Weekly, I was one of the first to realize that the recall was a real phenomenon, even if its initial backers were more suited to a clown show.
The weekend before the recall passed in a landslide, and Schwarzenegger was elected governor in a landslide, Issa presented me with one of his Congressional medallions for what he deemed my independent coverage. Although Gray Davis was an old friend, it had occurred to me that, for a variety of reasons, he was finding it very difficult to govern. (As, frankly, any California governor does these days.)
So, Congressman, in that independent spirit, let me remind you that you are caught in a massive contradiction.
The only thing surprising about this, or perhaps it is not surprising at all, is that the cable news bookers who are fostering this fantasy crusade of Issa's against Obama have not bothered to inform themselves in the least.
So it goes ...