Scandals Drag on Obama's Reelection Bid

As Obama Corruption continues to be exposed it's not helping Obama try to launch a reelection campaign....He looks more corrupt and incompetent by the day...

Third Scandal Drags on Obama Campaign

"The optics of a Solyndra default will be bad… The timing will likely coincide with the 2012 campaign season heating up."

-- Prophetic Jan. 31 email from an official in the White House Office of Management and Budget released Thursday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

First there was Fast and Furious, then there was Solyndra and now there is LightSquared -- three high-level scandals that involve allegations of cover-ups inside the Obama administration.

For a president who is already dragging an unpopular agenda and low marks on his handling of the economy along the campaign trail, this scandal troika is seriously bad news.

Obama is working desperately to prove to voters that he’s more interested in getting results than playing politics. He took a break from his series of campaign stops in battleground states (Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, back to Ohio next week) on Thursday and was wooing big-dollar donors in Washington. He explained that while it might look like he is engaged in his own re-election campaign, his is merely involved in “governance” by working to pass a new stimulus package.

“There’s a time for governance and there’s a time for making a political case,” Obama told donors. “My hope is, is that we’re going to keep on seeing some governance out of Washington over the next several months, because the American people can’t afford to wait for an election to actually see us start doing something serious about our jobs.”

This is a central part of Obama’s 2012 political pitch: That he is above politics, while his adversaries are unpatriotically grubbing for votes.

It takes chutzpah to make that case in the midst of a swing-state tour and at a dinner for political donors, but it’s an argument that Obama relied on during his remarkable political rise. It is understandable that he would want to use the same tool now that he is seeking to revive his fortunes.

The scandals, though, make the task harder.

The latest one involves confidential testimony from Gen. William Shelton, head of the Air Force’s Space Command, whom congressional sources say told a House Armed Services subcommittee that he was pressured to change his prepared remarks in a way that would benefit a major Democratic donor.

Philip Falcone is one of the big backers of LightSquared, a telecommunications company that wants to develop a nationwide satellite phone network. Falcone is a billionaire hedge-fund manager who is known as “the Midas of misery” for his skills at exploiting economic failure. He is also a big political campaign contributor, usually to Democrats.

His LightSquared venture requires federal authorization because of concerns that it would interfere with the satellite-driven GPS system that guides the U.S. military. Shelton reportedly said he was pressured to change his conclusion that the LightSquared plan was too risky. If the plan is nixed, Falcone and his partners stand to lose big.

A motive for trying to get Shelton to shade his testimony might also be found in the fact that the Obama administration has long been pushing for the idea of a national wireless broadband system, the very thing that Falcone and Co. are selling. If the generals say no to LightSquared it could permanently derail the pet project. But the involvement of a Democratic donor casts the pall of cronyism on the whole mess.

Only three entities review a general’s prepared testimony: Department of Defense, the White House, and the Office Management and Budget, so Shelton’s accusation is potent stuff.

This comes as new emails reveal that White House officials who were supposed to be vetting failed solar panel maker Solyndra, also run by a major Democratic donor, for a half-billion-dollar subsidized loan were very much interested in “optics” and political ramifications of their decisions.

Politics were at play when the White House revived the idea that had been tabled during the Bush administration and at play again as Obama officials fretted over how to manage the firm’s collapse in the least damaging way for the president’s re-election.

As evidence piles up in the Solyndra case, new details continue to emerge on the Fast and Furious probe that show a much larger scale for the Justice Department’s botched gunrunning sting, which encouraged illegal gun trafficking to drug gangs and then lost track of the weapons.

Here, there is no claim of cronyism, but there is the strong allegation from Republicans in Congress that the administration has withheld details of the operation now linked to the murder of a Border Patrol agent and other crimes in order to spare the administration further political embarrassment.

As Obama works to revive his brand as a man beyond petty politics, these three slow-burning political scandals will continue to undercut his claim.