Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Playbooks, Espionage and Collusion

Yesterday, Glenn Reynolds linked to a James Pethokoukis post at The American titled 11 stunning revelations from Larry Summers’s secret economics memo to Barack Obama, which Pethokoukis was compelled to write after reading a piece written by Ryan Lizza for The New Yorker titled The Obama Memos, and the actual Larry Summers penned 57-page, “Sensitive & Confidential” memo (pdf of 57 pgs.) meant for Obama’s use, but in all likelihood not meant to be seen by the American public.

Glenn stated the following in regards to Pethokoukis’ post.

A stunning portrait of duplicity and irresponsibility, even for those who have been paying attention.

And indeed, Summers’ memo is a “stunning portrait of duplicity and irresponsibility,” but evidently the portrait is not so stunning as to warrant much interest by the mainstream media, or the general voting American public.

As I considered why this may be, I thought of a loose analogy.

In the National Football League, playbooks are all important.  Every NFL team develops their own playbook for each game, and every opposing NFL team desires to get some type of intelligence on just what plays are in their opponent’s playbook.  Espionage is not unheard of.  But even if NFL espionage is succesful, when it comes right down to it, every NFL team is running the same type of plays; pass, run, screen, quarterback sneak, etc.; though the formations may be different for each individual team as they prepare to run the called play.  The plays and players in government are really no different.

Does anyone really believe that if John McCain would have been elected POTUS he and Congress would have taken actions much different than Obama’s?  Certainly, the form of the “stimulus” may have been different, but the play(s) would have been taken from the same playbook, whether it was put together by Larry Summers, or some other economic wank unable to keep their playbook under wraps.  Only the formation of the congressional and senate colluders would have been different.

Posted by John Venlet on 01/24 at 01:52 PM
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