Can you believe who Barack Obama has nominated to be the new
head of the World Bank? The nominee, a major corporate executive,
has seriously weird antipathy toward Eastern Europeans.
When Solidarity was making progress against the Soviet puppet
regime in 1987, the nominee opposed American aid to the union,
saying “Let the Poles pay for their own damn fax machines.”
That same year, when the Pope visited New Orleans and called for
“spiritual support of our brothers yearning for freedom,” the
nominee warned that “a bunch of Catholic senators are likely now to
kowtow to the Vatican lobby.”
Two years later, with student demonstrations beginning against
Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania, Obama’s man complained about “this
bunch of gypsies posing a threat to world peace.” And when the
Serbs in the 1990s practiced ethnic cleansing against other
populations in the former Yugoslavia, this executive focused on
economics, saying “it’s not worth American involvement to save a
bunch of folks whose major contribution is a second-class car like
the Yugo.”
In 2004, as the Orange Revolution in Ukraine began in support of
the pro-western leader Viktor Yushchenko, this executive again
spoke up, accusing the demonstrators of seeking to impose
“apartheid against ethnic Russians.” Earlier that year, he blamed
what he called the “Bronkowski brigades” of blue-collar workers in
Ohio for handing re-election to President George W. Bush, saying
they voted against John Kerry because of social-issue concerns born
of their “Papist upbringings.”
And upon Martina Navratilova’s retirement in 2006, an ESPN
retrospective on her career quoted this man, whose company’s
products used Navratilova as a major endorser, as follows: “She was
brawny, she’s Slavic, and she just used brute force to
dominate tennis for years, but she’s been a surprisingly
intelligent and articulate voice off the court for important social
causes [emphasis added].”
Nonetheless, the nominee is known to share Obama’s strong views
in favor of third-world debt relief, and his supporters say he’s
actually a particular friend of Eastern Europeans because, when he
backed Obama’s gutting of missile defense for Poland and the Czech
Republic, he explained that “This is the best thing for those
nations to stay on the good side of Vladimir Putin and thus benefit
from Russian economic support rather than exacerbating Putin’s
reasonable fears. In the long run, they’ll thank us.”
Meanwhile, Obama doesn’t seem fazed by the fact that in a
post-nomination interview with the New York Times, his
nominee admitted he would “need to study up more on the World Bank,
because there’s lots I don’t know enough about when it comes to
derivatives and stuff.” In an NPR radio interview, he likewise
stumbled over whether or not the United States currently is
imposing an economic embargo or other sanctions against Iran and
Cuba. Shortly after those two interviews were aired, however, the
administration seems to have put somewhat of a gag order on the
nominee, and also has refused to make public his tax returns from
five years ago, when he went on a major Third World speaking tour
while his company made unprecedented investments in Africa.
So far, not a single Democratic senator has broken ranks and
opposed the nomination – not even Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, who
represents those blue-collar workers the nominee described as the
“Bronkowski brigades.” Republicans, meanwhile, who had threatened a
lengthy filibuster, now say they don’t want to upset Senate
tradition by using a parliamentary tactic to deny the president his
choice of a nominee.
OF COURSE, THIS IS ALL fictional. There is no World Bank
nominee. And if such a nomination had been made, surely it wouldn’t
have survived even two weeks. The nominee’s obvious hostility to a
particular ethnic group (or conglomeration of ethnic groups) would
surely have sunk him, almost immediately.
But when the ethnic group so badly insulted is Jewish, I guess,
the usual strictures don’t apply. Every fictional example above
mirrors things Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has said and done with
regard to Jews and/or Israel – which he seems to conflate as if
they are one and the same, as if the latter’s advocates are
speaking not out of geopolitical principle but instead acting
merely as a “Jewish lobby.”
The American public knows better. The more it sees of Chuck
Hagel, the more it dislikes him. Those senators who stand against
him
will see net political benefits. And this is a fight the
political right can win, which would help
reinvigorate right-leaning supporters and help them overcome
despair.
If Hagel is confirmed, once again the Republicans in the Senate
will have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, and will have
failed to realize when a stand on principle should supersede the
usual niceties of the Senate – niceties the Left never observes
when it comes to opposing conservatives, even if, unlike in the
Hagel case, the opposition is based on smears rather than on
legitimate concerns.
I mean, really: Can you believe who Barack Obama has
nominated to be Secretary of Defense?
