Federalist Managing Editor: Obama is the Godfather (spoiler alert: he isn't)

Today we turn to Joy Pullman, managing editor of the Federalist, who has a simple thesis: the Obama government is being run "mafia style." It's a fairly straightforward premise, and she tackles it head-on.  Washington politics, she says, follow at least four standard mafia tropes: racketeering and extortion, people "wind up mysteriously dead," "no one talks," and the boss doesn't know what's going on.

Say what?

Let's walk through it.

Chicago is a home base of the American mafia, and it seems to have sent a satellite office to run the country from Washington, DC. In major respects, our government has morphed from a guard of our natural liberties into a hierarchical system of cronies that dispenses limited freedoms only in exchange for following its tight-fisted rules.

Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, has called where we’re headed feudalism. That’s a system of patronage in which the amount of leverage you have depends on your wealth and Rolodex. Another way to look at our country’s situation is by comparing how the Obama administration and its progressive allies operate to the global and American mafia.

The similarities are striking. Let’s consider a few.

Well, this is an unsubtle (and less than promising) beginning.  President Obama, you see, was from Chicago.  The mafia has featured prominently in Chicago.  And our government has changed - it used to guard our natural liberties, but now it's a "hierachical system of cronies that dispenses limited freedoms ..."  It's hard to avoid the inference Ms. Pullman wants you to draw, and makes express in her next paragraphs: Obama brought "mafia-style" governance to the White House!

Except that he didn't.  Leave aside, for the moment, whether the characterization Pullman is making is a fair one (it isn't, and we'll get to that).  The reality is, the issues she is complaining about here extend back long before President Obama was first elected.  The most significant intrusion on American freedoms in recent memory was the Patriot Act passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Republican President.  The "hierarchical system of cronies" has embedded itself in American politics along with the permanent campaign, which traces back to the rise of the 24 hour cable news cycle, talk radio, and internet pundits.  Until relatively recently, the Republicans were the party of party discipline, not the Democrats.  And it's laughable to suggest that wealth and connections only recently became the keys to the Washington kingdom. 

It's fair to argue whether the tradeoffs between security and liberty embodied in the Patriot Act were wise ones.  And it's absolutely crucial to recognize the corrosive effect today's politics and parties have on American democracy.  But it's unfair to suggest there has been a fundamental change in the nature of government since President Obama arrived.  To the contrary, Obama's biggest flaw was his failure to be the "change" he promised in his first campaign.  It's not that he brought something new and awful; it's that he continued something old and awful.

As for those "striking" similarities to mafia rule:

Racketeering And Extortion

At the heart of every mafia enterprise is a racketeering operation, in which businesses and private citizens are forced to pay the mafia to protect themselves from harm. Potential harm includes both what The Mob inflicts and that from outside sources, such as gangs or swindlers. Often, a protection racket arises in areas where the rule of law is weak, because in those areas the police and judiciary cannot or will not provide the protection from criminals everyone needs.

OK, with you so far . . .

The analogies to government should be obvious, but one includes the pervasive feelings among business executives that, if they don’t donate to political campaigns or “nonprofit organizations” run by ex-government officials or other political cronies, their industry or even specific business is likely to wind up on the wrong side of some business-crushing regulation pretty quickly.

Wait, no, lost you here.  The analogy between government and a protection racket aren't obvious. For one thing, an effective "police and judiciary" - which Pullman identifies as necessary to prevent protection rackets - are government services.  The government does provide - legitimately - effective protection in the form of armed forces.

But that's not a "protection racket" - it's just protection.  The difference between government services and a protection racket is easy to identify: the consent of the governed.  A protection racket is foisted, unwillingly, on local businessmen, complete with threats and follow-through in case of noncompliance.  Americans, in contrast, elect their representatives, who make the laws, and the executive charged with carrying them out.  If we don't like their performance, we can vote them out of office.  We've done a poor job of holding our elected officials accountable - but that's on us, too.  For democracy to work, the citizenry has to hold up its end of the bargain.

Which brings us to the money-for-access conundrum of the "business leaders" Pullman cites.  Yes, it's a problem, and a real one.  But no, it's not new, and it's not "mafia-like."  Corruption is an age old problem, and one that should be fought at every opportunity.  But it's not organized and centrally controlled in the way a criminal organization is, and that makes all the difference.

The Hobby Lobby case the Supreme Court is about to decide any day now is yet another example of the Obama administration’s demand that people follow its rules or pay crushing extortion fees (preferably both). Both the fines for not complying with Obamacare and the expense of doing so are simply protection money, paid to the administration directly with fines or indirectly through expensive healthcare purchased from Obama campaign donors. The administration doesn’t care about sick people or poor people, just like the mafia doesn’t care about actually protecting people. What both care most about is power.

And this is just full on ridiculous, and exemplifies the very worst of our politics.  Forget the lunacy of comparing the insurance mandate (which isn't even at the heart of the Hobby Lobby case, since all Hobby Lobby is objecting to - and not on grounds of expense - is the need to cover certain types of contraception) to "extortion fees."  In Pullman's world, the folks who disagree with her about Obamacare aren't simply having a policy argument based on a legitimate difference of opinion.  No, they are evil, heartless devils who "don't care about sick people or poor people" - they just want power.

I suppose it's her opinion, and she's entitled to express it.  But it's an entirely unsupported and pernicious opinion, one that drags America down by ensuring (if widely believed) that political compromise and cooperation are impossible.  After all, if the "other side" doesn't really care about America or its citizens, and their proposals are all about getting and maintaining power for their own sake, how can you compromise with that?  You can't.

But enough about that.  Let's move on to the truly ridiculous portion of her argument:

People Wind Up Mysteriously Dead

The ultimate way to earn power over other people is to threaten not just their livelihood, but also their lives, and the lives of those they love. On that note, perhaps it’s appropriate to mention that the Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Department of Education each have their own SWAT teams. Nary an innocent taxpayer sponsoring this arms race has any idea why their money is buying the nation’s school nanny a strike force, but apparently the Obama administration internally justifies such things. And let’s not forget Bambi Team Six, the crack shots within the Department of Natural Resources who sent a military-style team to execute a fawn some well-meaning American peasants had rescued from a more natural death. When black-helmeted men circle your home, break down your door, throw your children from their sleeping beds onto the dew-ridden lawn, and shoot you 22 times because some meathead mistook your house for a drug dealer’s, it’s clear government has gone from protecting you from threats to becoming a threat itself.

This paragraph reads like it was lifted from the worst conspiracy sites on the internet.  Yes, police have used excessive force on occasion.  (I live in New York, and some of the worst recent examples are from here).  But cherry-picking five or six incidents across a nation of 50 States and 313 million people does not an organized (mafia style) campaign of intimidation make.  I know next to nobody who lives in fear of government strike teams (and it's only "next to nobody" instead of "nobody" if you count a fellow Jets fan who posts on a message board I frequent).  So these incidents really are indicative of a campaign "to earn power over other people," it's a remarkably ineffective one.       

More directly, however, thanks to “The Godfather” and “The Sopranos,” everyone knows that the mafia’s presence means frequent, mysterious deaths. That’s also a hallmark of this administration. Fast and Furious and the Benghazi massacre are the two most obvious examples. It’s been years, in both cases, and it’s still an utter mystery as to why Americans died in foreign lands, where all those guns went, who used what money, where it all came from, and why. That may have something to do with the Justice Department’s utter lack of curiosity about massive crimes being committed on its watch, but remember: where there are mafia, there are corrupt police, district attorneys, and courts.

Again, what in God's name is Ms. Pullman talking about.  The deaths in Benghazi and Fast & Furious aren't "mysterious" at all.  They aren't attributable to a shadowy conspiracy or hit man.  The killers are known, and the scandals surrounding them relate to failures of administrative oversight (and subsequent attempts to avoid political responsibility for those failures, which may or may not have ripened into criminal cover ups), not to administration involvement in the deaths.  At least the Vince Foster conspiracy nuts have the decency to allege an actual murder, rather than stretching to make political scandals fit a poorly-thought-out article theme.

The mystery isn’t who did it, but proving it. Part of the reason it’s impossible to find evidence to prove what everyone knows is that no one will talk.  

At least her segue is good.

No One Talks

The mafia protects itself with codes of silence, both as an expression of machismo-style loyalty and because people who talk end up under a bus. The Obama administration—or its enablers—has apparently gone high-tech with this idea: Who scrubbed Lois Lerner’s email server? It’s utterly ridiculous that in an era where everyone’s naked pictures and address can be found online, two years of what surely are thousands of government employee emails can “go missing.” Let’s not forget, either, Lerner’s fifth-pleading stonewall of Congress, or that every congressional hearing or investigation into any unseemly events is met at every turn with refusals to provide documents, witnesses, or answers.

And where are the classic second-term interviews with “a former high-ranking official within the Obama administration” breaking silence to air dirty laundry, make a few revelations, and settle a few scores? Is everyone afraid of what will happen if he or she exhibits an independent mind (albeit after the fact)?

This one is actually a fair point - the level of stonewalling has reached absurd proportions with the latest "the dog ate my e-mail" revelation - but the mafia connection and reasoning?  Not so much.  Lois Lerner didn't take the Fifth because she was afraid of repercussions from the Obama administration if she talked - she did it because she was afraid of repercussions from prosecutors and Republicans.

As for critical statements from former high ranking officials, Ms. Pullman seems to have missed a lot of that news.  Like this criticism of the Afghan withdrawal plan.  And former Defense Secretary Gates' memoir.  Or Robert Ford explaining his resignation as ambassador to Syria.  Google can help her find more, if she wants.  None of these people seem to feel a need for witness protection programs.

So, apparently, people aren't afraid to speak their minds.  What that does to Ms. Pullman's analogy is obvious.

The Boss ‘Has No Idea’ What’s Going On

Mafia leadership never directly calls the hits. They imply to underlings what they want done, so if the underlings are caught they can’t incriminate the bosses in court. This leadership style is not just the mafia’s. “A Few Good Men” dramatized how it might play out within a Marine unit. The direct analogy, of course, is that President Obama never seems to know what’s happening within his own organization. He had no idea the IRS was targeting conservative groups. He heard on the news about the Veterans Affairs debacle, where vets literally died because the agency managing their healthcare was so corrupt and incompetent, even though in the Senate he had served on the Veterans Affairs Committee and had heard of the problems in 2007. Rush Limbaugh has played a montage of all Obama’s “I’m just hearing about this and I’m so furious” moments: About the Secret Service scandal, the Gulf Oil spill, when people found out Van Jones was a Communist sympathizer…the list never ends.

And this, of course, is outright insane.  Mafia dons (at least as portrayed in pop culture) aren't worried about "plausible deniability."  They're counting on the whole "nobody talks" thing Pullman referenced above (plus hitmen for anyone who breaks the code) to protect them from "underlings incriminating the bosses in court").  And if that doesn't work, they're well aware that "implying" to underlings isn't going to keep them out of jail.  When "Mafia Underling One" gets on the stand and testifies that "Mafia Boss" said "wouldn't it be a shame if something happened to Louie" and that was mafia code for "kill Louie" . . .  well, Mafia Boss is well aware that he isn't getting acquitted based on the "but I only implied it" defense.  Oh, and "yeah, he's in my criminal syndicate but I didn't order that particular crime" doesn't fare very well, either, thanks to conspiracy laws.

More, it isn't "common practice" for a criminal overlord not to know what his underlings were doing.  To the contrary, a truly oblivious crime boss is soon to be either arrested or dead.  Which isn't good for business.

So no, there's not really any decent comparison to be made, here.

Either Obama is the world’s best delegator-in-chief, or he knows a lot more than he’s telling us. Nobody will ever be able to prove that, of course.

Here's the thing, Joy.  When the government is big, it's impossible for anyone - even (in fact especially) the President - to know all its workings.  That's an argument against big government (one that I'd expect the Federalist to be making) and President Obama has certainly taken it to a new level of administrative incompetence.  But the concept that things like the IRS targeting went all the way up to Obama's level is conservative wish-fulfillment at its best.

Time for the big finish.

The mafia answers a need for societal order by imposing criminal order upon the citizenry. In the Obama administration’s case, it first created a need for it to impose order by destroying the rule of law. Sometimes The Mob does that, too. It fails when a few good men resist. The problem with being run by a criminal enterprise, of course, is that it inverts justice and destroys freedom. A murderer is not called to account for his acts unless it displeases the mob boss, regardless of how the family of the murdered feels. Everyone, from business owners to mob associates to children, lives in fear. And, as with every manifestation of injustice, mafia government means that the little people—like you, me, and our neighbors and kids—get hurt the most.

Again, in case you missed it at the beginning, here's Pullman's point: this is all new, and deliberate.  In fact, it's a criminal conspiracy.

Of course, it's none of those things.  But a more sober dissection of the problems of the Obama Administration wouldn't be as much fun, I guess.