Watching the mess in Washington DC these days reminds me of the song from the Thomas Crown Affair, “The Windmills of Your Mind.” A couple of the lines seem very appropriate to describe the current Washington Merry-go-round:
Round like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning reel
Like a tunnel that you follow
To a tunnel of its own
Down a hollow to a cavern
Where the sun has never shone
Barack Obama appears to be caught in a time warp. He can neither move forward or backward. He desperately needs to fire Eric Holder, but he also desperately needs Holder to stay in office.
The investigation of Eric Holder has been assigned to Eric Holder. If there is to be a Special Counsel, he or she would be appointed by Holder. The FBI probe of the IRS scandal was ordered by Holder. The one man we must be able to trust is the one man who cannot be trusted.
Did Holder commit perjury? I don’t know. It depends on how generous one wants to be in parsing his testimony. Could a skilled lawyer make an argument that this wasn’t precisely perjury? The answer is yes. It is similar to when Bill Clinton tried to explain his lie by saying it depends on the meaning of the word “is.” The sad reality is that the testimony Holder gave was extremely deceptive. We are left to wonder whether this was the result of mere incompetence or perjury. Ultimately it doesn’t matter. In either case, this is not someone we can trust.
Michael Gerson nailed this in his May 29, 2013 opinion in the Washington Post:
Forcing Holder to resign really matters. It is not that getting rid of Holder would solve all problems. It won’t. It is rather that Holder is the one person in the administration who probably knows where the bodies are buried.
If Holder goes Obama will have to appoint someone acceptable to both parties as a replacement. He will have to appoint someone with a reputation for honesty and integrity. Even if he appoints someone like Deval Patrick, which is the latest rumor, that may really change things. Deval Patrick is a liberal Democrat and a strong supporter of Obama, but unlike Obama he is a man of legitimate accomplishment. Patrick actually has the kind of academic credentials that are falsely attributed to Obama.
I don’t know if Patrick would be the choice to replace Holder, but that is at least a rumor.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/05/report-obama-eyes-deval-patrick-to-replace-holder/
If you want to understand Deval Patrick, you need to look at the case of Benjamin LaGuer.
Patrick even contributed $5,000 for DNA testing that most people thought would clear LaGuer. Instead the DNA evidence confirmed his guilt. Significantly, Patrick stopped supporting the release of LaGuer when he learned the facts.
He has also done something Eric Holder could never do, he has admitted mistakes. He made a call on behalf of Citigroup,and at first tried to defend it by saying he was calling as a private citizen, not a governor. He later backed down and said: ”I appreciate that I should not have made the call. I regret the mistake.” The point is that at least with Patrick there appears to be a line he simply will not cross. There is no such line with Holder.
In the meantime we are caught in the Windmills of the Mind always circling back to Eric Holder. Almost any alternative would be better than this.
TDM