“The Chicago Way” [Update]

Is now the American Way, apparently. [See my update at the end of the article about the "way" of the Obama administration that is antithetical to America.] Note this from Kimberley Strassel’s column, “The Chicago Way,” in today’s Wall Street Journal:

They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way. – Jim Malone, The Untouchables

When Barack Obama promised to deliver “a new kind of politics” to Washington, most folk didn’t picture Rahm Emanuel with a baseball bat. These days, the capital would make David Mamet, who wrote Malone’s memorable movie dialogue, proud.

A White House set on kneecapping its opponents isn’t, of course, entirely new. (See: Nixon*) What is a little novel is the public and bare-knuckle way in which the Obama team is waging these campaigns against the other side.

Then I turned to Memeorandum.com, a favorite source for the hot political news, and see these disturbing posts and stories about the Obama administration’s anti-democratic tactics:

• “It’s come to this: White House tries to bar Fox News from interviewing pay czar” (Hot Air)
• “Unprecedented: White House Tries to Ban Fox from Press Pool” (Directorblue) — “Today the White House stepped up its attack on Fox News, announcing that the network would no longer be able to conduct interviews with officials as a member of the Press Pool. …”
• “W.H. attacks worry moderate Dems” (The Politico), and
• “Jake Tapper, And The Press Pool, Stand Together” here at NoQuarter, written by Reverend Amy

There’s another Mafia reference in today’s Charles Krauthammer column with “The ‘post-partisan’ president makes an enemies list“:

Rahm Emanuel once sent a dead fish to a live pollster. Now he’s put a horse’s head in Roger Ailes’s bed.

Krauthammer points out the frightening implications of the White House’s tactics for advertisers and other media, and then recounts the admirable behavior of other media:

Meaning? If Fox runs a story critical of the administration — from exposing “green jobs” czar Van Jones as a loony 9/11 “truther” to exhaustively examining the mathematical chicanery and hidden loopholes in proposed health-care legislation — the other news organizations should think twice before following the lead.

The signal to corporations is equally clear: You might have dealings with a federal behemoth that not only disburses more than $3 trillion every year but is extending its reach ever deeper into private industry — finance, autos, soon health care and energy. Think twice before you run an ad on Fox.

At first, there was little reaction from other media. Then on Thursday, the administration tried to make them complicit in an actual boycott of Fox. The Treasury Department made available Ken Feinberg, the executive pay czar, for interviews with the White House “pool” news organizations — except Fox. The other networks admirably refused, saying they would not interview Feinberg unless Fox was permitted to as well. The administration backed down.

Krauthammer explains why this is such an important issue for the citizenry of the United States:

This was an important defeat because there’s a principle at stake here. While government can and should debate and criticize opposition voices, the current White House goes beyond that. It wants to delegitimize any significant dissent. The objective is no secret. White House aides openly told Politico that they’re engaged in a deliberate campaign to marginalize and ostracize recalcitrants, from Fox to health insurers to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

There’s nothing illegal about such search-and-destroy tactics. Nor unconstitutional. But our politics are defined not just by limits of legality or constitutionality. We have norms, Madisonian norms.

Madison argued that the safety of a great republic, its defense against tyranny, requires the contest between factions or interests. His insight was to understand “the greater security afforded by a greater variety of parties.” They would help guarantee liberty by checking and balancing and restraining each other — and an otherwise imperious government.

Factions should compete, but they should also recognize the legitimacy of other factions and, indeed, their necessity for a vigorous self-regulating democracy. Seeking to deliberately undermine, delegitimize and destroy is not Madisonian. It is Nixonian. …

I remember the days when I mocked “Faux News.” That was before my experience as a supporter of Hillary Clinton’s presidential run. Then I was stunned to discover that Fox News was the sole news outlet that gave fair-minded coverage of Clinton and her campaign. And I was shocked by how leftie bloggers abused both Clinton and ANY of us who dared to support her.

It is my hope that, even in those days when I derided Fox News, I would never have supported the Obama administration’s anti-democratic abuses of power and strong-arming tactics towards the media.

While Lefties preen before a reflection of themselves as idealistic and humane, the truth about the Left is that there is a vicious Mob element to their methods.

Kim Strassel’s column ends like this:

The Oval Office might be more concerned with the long term. It is 10 months in; more than three long years to go. The strategy to play dirty now and triangulate later is risky. One day, say when immigration reform comes due, the Chamber might come in handy. That is if the Chamber isn’t too far gone.

White House targets also aren’t dopes. The corporate community is realizing that playing nice doesn’t guarantee safety. The health executives signed up for reform, only to remain the president’s political piñatas. It surely grates that the unions—now running their own ads against ObamaCare—haven’t been targeted. If the choice is cooperate and get nailed, or oppose and possibly win, some might take that bet.

There’s also the little fact that many Americans voted for this president in thrall to his vow to bring the country together. It’s hard to do that amid gunfire, and voters might just notice.

(“I do not approve of your methods! Yeah, well . . . You’re not from Chicago.”)

As a devotee of the ideals of the Fourth Estate, what is left of it, I pray that the citizenry do not fall for Mob Rule.

(For more on Nixon and his relationship to the press here, here, and here .)

…………………………………………………

UPDATE: I’ve been thinking about what Krauthammer wrote:

The signal to corporations is equally clear: You might have dealings with a federal behemoth that not only disburses more than $3 trillion every year but is extending its reach ever deeper into private industry — finance, autos, soon health care and energy. Think twice before you run an ad on Fox. …

I just wrote this to a friend:

The attacks on Fox are, quite frankly, attacks on capitalism.

These are attacks on the freedom of a news organization, which is a profit-making enterprise, to deliver its own style of news and opinion.

These are attacks on and intimidation of advertisers, all of whom seek profits from their ads.

Obama’s Maoist-inspired cadre — and I state this calmly, rationally, and without hyperbole — is anti-capitalism and anti-profits. Ask the health insurance companies that got screwed after their, what they supposed were, successful (albeit secret) meetings at the White House months ago. Maybe making profits off health care is objected by many, but if there are no inducements for profit (which help to control costs), we end up with Medicare which has how many trillions in debt?