The impending nomination of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State has caused a complete mental breakdown among the usually punctilious ethicists in the media. Suddenly, there is no conflict of interest worth investigating, especially Bill Clinton’s multiplicitous foreign connections through the Clinton Global Initiative. Listen to the bow-to-our-king tone coming from NPR "news analyst" Daniel Schorr on Weekend Edition Saturday:
SCOTT SIMON, host: Does Bill Clinton become a complicating factor? Because he not only has financial interests all over the world one way or another, but in some ways, he's been conducting his own foreign policy campaign.
SCHORR: Well, somewhat. Well, he could be a problem but apparently he has satisfied Mr. Obama that he will not be a problem. He has surfaced everything that he got in the way of money from Arab and other countries for his library and for himself. He apparently has given promise that in the future, he will not do anything in his own travels around the world that will interfere with his wife as secretary of state. And if the president-elect is satisfied, I suppose we must all be.
Schorr sounds like the butler to Obama's Batman. Speaking of deference, on Friday night's All Things Considered, pseudo-conservative David Brooks offered high praise to the Clinton cabinet picks:
ROBERT SIEGEL, host: In today's New York Times, you said this is a team that looks like America, or that part of America that got 800 on both your SATs.
BROOKS: Yes, they all have gone to Harvard and Yale. It seems that E.J. would be under educated in this group. (Laughter) My line was that if someone attacks this country during the Harvard-Yale game we're in big trouble because they're all going to be there. But, it is a very impressive group and I would say just to generalize about them, they tend to be Washington insiders, but they also tend to be very change-oriented, they also tend to be very evidence-based. So, even if you disagree with them they are people you can talk to and who Republicans can respect and I think that includes Geithner. I think it includes a supposed budget director Peter Orszag, it even includes Clinton on foreign affairs.
Predictably, liberal Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne – who’s supposed to be a conservative’s sparring partner, but you would need someone throwing jabs from the right to make that metaphor work – says the Republican Party must embrace Big Government or be consigned to the ash heap of history:
DIONNE: I think, unless they fundamentally rethink conservatism and present themselves as a more moderately conservative party, and accept the fact that they're going to run a big government whether they like it or not, they are going to be in the wilderness for a much longer time.
SIEGEL: That's your kind of party, a big government conservative party.
BROOKS: Well, don't insult me here, Robert. (laughter) I'd like to think a Hamiltonian, limited but energetic government.
Something tells me that the average liberal NPR staff doesn't think a limited government is "change-oriented" or "evidence-based."
NPR still needs to try an authentic conservative pundit if it's seeking more than phony balance. Brooks make Alan Colmes on Fox look like a raging lion of dissent.
