OneJerusalem.org Conference Call: Dick Morris - (4) The "Dominant Scandal" Of the 2008 Presidential Election
The man who helped sustain the political fortunes of a President who was eventually impeached (and so is no stranger to the dynamics of political scandals) announced that a suspicious business arrangement involving a former President, an oil sheik, and a creepy billionaire will be the "dominant scandal" in the candidacy of the presumptive Democratic nominee. Untangling all of the tangled players in all of their opaque roles is way too much to write about when you can just go and listen to his description. There's two parts to this scandal, each alone really bad for the Clintons - together they combine in all of the wrong ways for the Democrats.
The first scandal is about Bill's close relationship with the Emir of the United Arab Emirates, Sheik Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum. We're not going to say that the UAE is a theocracy, because self-declared sophisticates get very huffy when that happens - so how about we all agree that for the purposes of a Presidential campaign, any distinctions between "radical Muslim theocracy" and "complicated multi-layered state where a fully-functioning and state-supported sharia court system just happens to control several layers" are totally irrelevant? It is easy to all but prove that Bill Clinton seems to exercise a strong influence on how the Emir tries to financially influence US policy-making. It is also undeniable that the Emir has given Clinton and Clinton's organizations significant financial disbursements. It would significantly help Hillary if anyone would ever believe that these two things are unrelated.
The most immediately suspicious evidence involves the attempt by the UAE firm to take over day to day operations for a number of US ports - the US firm that Dubai hired to guide them through the process just happened to be the one that provides Clinton with the only thing that can be reasonably called regular employment (and below we'll get to how Morris transforms this potential awkwardness into the makings of a career-ending scandal - but right now, just focus on Clinton and the Emir's connections). It was noted by not a few people at the time that while Hillary was threatening to take legislative action to shut down the UAE takeover on national security grounds, her husband was advising the Emir on how to navigate the scandal (and Hillary's initial claim of ignorance on that point became all the more untenable when someone pointed out that she had just finished disclosing that her husband was paid almost half a million dollars to give speeches in Dubai).
And after the ports deal fell through, the Emir didn't give up on acquiring US assets. He then targeted two US defense firms. This time, he hired a new firm to steer him through the deal. So instead of the company that Clinton de facto works for, he choose... another company that Clinton has incredibly deep ties to. The Glover Park Group is a consulting firm of / club-house for Clinton administration ex-pats. It's headed by Joe Lockhart, it has lots of late Clinton staffers throughout the ranks, etc). So some eyebrows were raised when the Emir choose this firm to help him acquire the US defense firms. We imagine that said eyebrows will arch a little bit higher if/when connections are established - as Morris implies they will be - between this second deal and Clinton familial relations. At the very least, this is an obvious public relations disaster and a genuine public policy problem - as Morris said, Hillary would be running under the shadow of a foreign head of state paying enormous sums of money to husband of then-sitting Senator, and the husband then directing that foreign head of state's excess largess toward financial and professional friends.
Now the other distinct scandal that may not be distinct much longer: the connections between the Clintons and disgraced supermarket billionaire Ron Burkle. Burkle's Yucaipa firm provides Clinton with the only thing that he has that can really count as employment, and he's supposed to get them donors. We'll talk about what kinds of donors in a second, but by now you see where this could end up. But the Clinton/Burkle connections are damaging even without the media folding in dealing a foreign billionaire easily caricatured as a de facto representative of militant Islam. As Mickey Kaus and almost no one else repeatedly pointed out, the Burkle/Clinton relationship stinks plenty on its own. We never really read a comprehensive investigative roundup (we don't really think one was ever produced), but there were plenty of hints of Democratic cronyism - a trend that seems to be developing across these scandals which will not make them harder to fold into each other.
But the real nightmare scenario for Hillary occurs if it turns out that there is a real and demonstrable connection between these two already very shady financial / personal / political relationships. Bill Clinton gets paid a lot to get the very creepy Burkle financers and in return Burkle distributes money to Clinton's friends - damaging but spinnable as right-wing conspiracy mongering. Bill Clinton gets paid a lot to handle the UAE Emir's domestic political palm greasing and in return the Emir distributes money to Clinton's friends - damaging but spinnable as reactionary Arab-baiting.
But if you combine the two scandals, then Hillary is facing the prospect of a politically disastrous scandal that has the relatively singular virtue of being more or less grounded in fact. The connection isn't even particularly convoluted: at some point after Clinton became employed by Burkle's Yucaipa company, it so worked out that Clinton's good friend the Emir ("good friend" being "pays him $450,000 for a couple speeches good") hired Yucaipa to run his financial investments... including, obviously, the port buyout deal. You could argue that these two events were unconnected, but you'd have a tough time actually convincing anyone (Morris: they're "not coincidental"). This would be the same port buyout deal that Hillary opposed as a major terrorist risk.
The perfect storm: Bill Clinton was willing to put a company that his wife more or less called a terrorist risk in charge of US ports because he was being paid to do so by Ron Burkle on one hand and the Emir of the UAE on the other. The ways this impacts campaign strategies are staggering: it super-charges Republican attempts to paint the Democrats as a War on Terror disaster, it super-charges claims that the Clintons are corrupt, it super-charges claims that Hillary can't be relied on to tell the truth / reveal her genuine personal beliefs. Even Hillary's increasingly strong anti-terrorism credentials now become the frightened overcompensation of a candidate for her spouse's politically damaging connections to people she brands potential terrorists. Above all else, it's so ugly and tangled that Hillary couldn't talk her way out of it - the public sense that some kind of massive impropriety that's been covered up has occurred is the definition of a scandal that a politician can't disprove.
The first scandal is about Bill's close relationship with the Emir of the United Arab Emirates, Sheik Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum. We're not going to say that the UAE is a theocracy, because self-declared sophisticates get very huffy when that happens - so how about we all agree that for the purposes of a Presidential campaign, any distinctions between "radical Muslim theocracy" and "complicated multi-layered state where a fully-functioning and state-supported sharia court system just happens to control several layers" are totally irrelevant? It is easy to all but prove that Bill Clinton seems to exercise a strong influence on how the Emir tries to financially influence US policy-making. It is also undeniable that the Emir has given Clinton and Clinton's organizations significant financial disbursements. It would significantly help Hillary if anyone would ever believe that these two things are unrelated.
The most immediately suspicious evidence involves the attempt by the UAE firm to take over day to day operations for a number of US ports - the US firm that Dubai hired to guide them through the process just happened to be the one that provides Clinton with the only thing that can be reasonably called regular employment (and below we'll get to how Morris transforms this potential awkwardness into the makings of a career-ending scandal - but right now, just focus on Clinton and the Emir's connections). It was noted by not a few people at the time that while Hillary was threatening to take legislative action to shut down the UAE takeover on national security grounds, her husband was advising the Emir on how to navigate the scandal (and Hillary's initial claim of ignorance on that point became all the more untenable when someone pointed out that she had just finished disclosing that her husband was paid almost half a million dollars to give speeches in Dubai).
And after the ports deal fell through, the Emir didn't give up on acquiring US assets. He then targeted two US defense firms. This time, he hired a new firm to steer him through the deal. So instead of the company that Clinton de facto works for, he choose... another company that Clinton has incredibly deep ties to. The Glover Park Group is a consulting firm of / club-house for Clinton administration ex-pats. It's headed by Joe Lockhart, it has lots of late Clinton staffers throughout the ranks, etc). So some eyebrows were raised when the Emir choose this firm to help him acquire the US defense firms. We imagine that said eyebrows will arch a little bit higher if/when connections are established - as Morris implies they will be - between this second deal and Clinton familial relations. At the very least, this is an obvious public relations disaster and a genuine public policy problem - as Morris said, Hillary would be running under the shadow of a foreign head of state paying enormous sums of money to husband of then-sitting Senator, and the husband then directing that foreign head of state's excess largess toward financial and professional friends.
Now the other distinct scandal that may not be distinct much longer: the connections between the Clintons and disgraced supermarket billionaire Ron Burkle. Burkle's Yucaipa firm provides Clinton with the only thing that he has that can really count as employment, and he's supposed to get them donors. We'll talk about what kinds of donors in a second, but by now you see where this could end up. But the Clinton/Burkle connections are damaging even without the media folding in dealing a foreign billionaire easily caricatured as a de facto representative of militant Islam. As Mickey Kaus and almost no one else repeatedly pointed out, the Burkle/Clinton relationship stinks plenty on its own. We never really read a comprehensive investigative roundup (we don't really think one was ever produced), but there were plenty of hints of Democratic cronyism - a trend that seems to be developing across these scandals which will not make them harder to fold into each other.
But the real nightmare scenario for Hillary occurs if it turns out that there is a real and demonstrable connection between these two already very shady financial / personal / political relationships. Bill Clinton gets paid a lot to get the very creepy Burkle financers and in return Burkle distributes money to Clinton's friends - damaging but spinnable as right-wing conspiracy mongering. Bill Clinton gets paid a lot to handle the UAE Emir's domestic political palm greasing and in return the Emir distributes money to Clinton's friends - damaging but spinnable as reactionary Arab-baiting.
But if you combine the two scandals, then Hillary is facing the prospect of a politically disastrous scandal that has the relatively singular virtue of being more or less grounded in fact. The connection isn't even particularly convoluted: at some point after Clinton became employed by Burkle's Yucaipa company, it so worked out that Clinton's good friend the Emir ("good friend" being "pays him $450,000 for a couple speeches good") hired Yucaipa to run his financial investments... including, obviously, the port buyout deal. You could argue that these two events were unconnected, but you'd have a tough time actually convincing anyone (Morris: they're "not coincidental"). This would be the same port buyout deal that Hillary opposed as a major terrorist risk.
The perfect storm: Bill Clinton was willing to put a company that his wife more or less called a terrorist risk in charge of US ports because he was being paid to do so by Ron Burkle on one hand and the Emir of the UAE on the other. The ways this impacts campaign strategies are staggering: it super-charges Republican attempts to paint the Democrats as a War on Terror disaster, it super-charges claims that the Clintons are corrupt, it super-charges claims that Hillary can't be relied on to tell the truth / reveal her genuine personal beliefs. Even Hillary's increasingly strong anti-terrorism credentials now become the frightened overcompensation of a candidate for her spouse's politically damaging connections to people she brands potential terrorists. Above all else, it's so ugly and tangled that Hillary couldn't talk her way out of it - the public sense that some kind of massive impropriety that's been covered up has occurred is the definition of a scandal that a politician can't disprove.
