The sordid Sestak affair

Let's keep this Boy Scout simple.

U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., who just defeated incumbent Arlen Specter for his party's nomination to the U.S. Senate, blurted an inconvenient truth that has now cascaded into one inescapable conclusion:

The Obama White House, which wants people to think that it is the most transparent administration ever, has for more than a year peed on our leg and told us it's raining.

Sorry to be so earthy, but that's the way it is.

This potentially indictable affair began to unravel in February, when Sestak blurted that the White House had asked him to abandon his Senate bid in return for a job.

Sestak repeated the allegation last week, insisting that he has consistently told the truth, adding, "Anything that goes beyond that is for others to talk about."

Meanwhile, the "others" to which Sestak referred clammed up. The transparently sleazy Obama administration did an excellent impression of the Nixon administration.

For example, consider this bit of truth-hiding by White House spokesman Robert "Stonewall" Gibbs, as reported by The New York Times:

" 'But you never really explained what the conversation was,' Jake Tapper of ABC News told Gibbs.

" 'And I don't have anything to add today,' Mr. Gibbs said.

" 'But,' Mr. Tapper continued, 'if the White House offers a congressman a position in the administration in order to convince that congressman not to run for office ...'

" 'I don't have anything to add to that,' Mr. Gibbs said.

"Mr. Tapper persisted: 'But do you really think the American people don't have a right to know about what exactly the conversation was?'

" 'I don't have anything to add to what I said in March,' Mr. Gibbs said."

Then, on Friday, the White House suddenly did have something to add. The president's lawyers said they thoroughly investigated and found no felony tempering of a federal primary election.

No one at the White House talked with Rep. Sestak about getting out of the race, they said. Instead, the White House asked former President Bill Clinton to talk to Rep. Sestak about getting out of the race in return for an advisory appointment by the president.

That's a classic distinction without a difference. Yet the president's men now tell us to move along.

This whole deal is nothing more than a bad "Casablanca" parody. We ought not be shocked, they coo, that there's horse trading going on in Washington, D.C.

It's an interesting defense. May Republican Sen. John Ensign use it to explain the allegations against him? Somehow, I don't think Senate Democrats, or the Obama Justice Department, will drop the Ensign case on that basis anytime soon.

So let's get serious, shall we? Sestak told the inconvenient truth and the White House now scrambles (pathetically, I might add) to get the stories straight.

Don't buy it.

That's not rain.

Sherman Frederick (sfrederick@ reviewjournal.com) is publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and president of Stephens Media.