An American Lion

Watching what people do is sort of a requirement to be in the government. You have to be nitpicky and fussy and you have to be a busybody. You have to want to sit at a gunmetal gray desk for weeks on end with nothing to do except pore over things called spreadsheets and balance statements, looking for evidence that someone, somewhere is having a good time. This is why I rail tirelessly against "Poindexter," which is my catchall term for any nerd who reads a lot of books and ruins everyone's fun.

An Inspector General is a Poindexter emeritus, a finicky person who looks at everything that's being done and manufactures issues to examine up close.Think of a bureaucrat with an accounting degree from an average school but no soul, handed enormous powers, and allowed to look at anything and everything.Now turn several hundred of these loose and you have the United States Government.

The only way to check or stop such power is to engage in the politics of personal destruction. If you cannot attack the actions, the statements, or the ideas of a person, simply paint them as a mentally ill sex addict with bedroom problems and an incontinence issue. Mock, humiliate and denigrate them by getting a few Washington D.C. insiders to come along for the ride so that they feel important.

When you go after a friend of President Obama, you should prepare to see yourself destroyed in the press now:

President Barack Obama removed a government agency’s internal watchdog last week and plans to fire him in part because he was “confused” and “disoriented” at a meeting last month, the White House said in a letter to Congress Tuesday night.

The letter came after several senators, including key Obama supporter Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), expressed concern that Obama skirted the requirements of federal law in the terse explanation he gave Congress about his reasons for removing the inspector general of the Corporation for National and Community Service, Gerald Walpin.

“Mr. Walpin was removed after a review was unanimously requested by the bi-partisan Board of the Corporation," Obama ethics counsel Norm Eisen wrote in a letter to senators Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Me.), with a copy directed to McCaskill. “The Board’s action was precipitated by a May 20, 2009 Board meeting at which Mr. Walpin was confused, disoriented, unable to answer questions and exhibited other behavior that led the Board to question his capacity to serve.”

“We further learned that Mr. Walpin had been absent from the Corporation’s headquarters, insisting upon working from his home in New York over the objections of the Corporation’s Board; that he had exhibited a lack of candor in providing material information to decision makers; and that he had engaged in other troubling and inappropriate conduct,” Eisen wrote.

Eisen’s letter also noted that a complaint was pending against Walpin, brought by the acting U.S. Attorney in Sacramento, who accused Walpin of failing to disclose evidence in an investigation.

“Mr. Walpin had become unduly disruptive to agency operations, impairing his effectiveness and, for the reasons stated above, losing the confidence of the Board and the agency. It was for these reasons that Mr. Walpin was removed,” Eisen wrote.

That sounds pretty cut and dried, doesn't it? Confused, disoriented, absent, disruptive. Exactly what you'd expect to hear about a career bureaucrat who was elevated to a watchdog position chiefly because of his past performance, his reliability, and his professionalism.

When you hear Mr. Walpin's side, you come away with a different view:

“Anybody who’s heard me speaking more than I’m used to speaking on radio and TV in recent days, obviously under great pressure from what happened would clearly know that I know what I’m saying and what I’m doing and I’m not incoherent,” Walpin told POLITICO. “There’s nothing confusing about malfeasance and there’s nothing confusing about what appears to be the fact that they terminated me because I was doing my job because the White House wanted to protect people who proclaim they are friends of the White House.”

Walpin said he did recall a board meeting where he became frustrated over “constant interruption…consistently breaking up my organization.”

Asked about the May 20 session, Walpin said, “It’s certainly possible at that meeting I had a bug and was tired. I can’t remember right now…All I can say is this is a weak reed to now be relying on.”

Walpin said he worked full-time in the Washington office for his first two years as inspector general and only began “teleworking” from New York after members of his staff convinced him to withdraw a resignation he tendered in January. He said he ran his plan to telecommute by the corporation’s acting CEO and general counsel, who had no objections.

“This is an afterthought,” Walpin said. “The problem isn’t that I’m not there. The problem is that I’m too much there.”

Walpin has alleged in recent interviews that his removal appeared to be in retaliation two reports he recently produced. One faulted a political supporter of Obama who is now mayor of Sacramento, Kevin Johnson, for misuse of federal Americorps personnel. Another criticized Americorps grants for participants in a City College of New York teacher training program.

Another man destroyed to protect a friend of the President. I wish it were not so, but this is commonplace in American politics. It is not new.

What is new is that many people seem to think President Obama is an annointed saint, sent to save us all. No, he's just a President. They do things like this. They send their minions out to destroy lowly Poindexters and bureaucrats because of political expediency.

When Republicans do it, it is wrong. When Democrats do it, it is wrong. The only thing that changes is which side of the aisle that the mindless defenders will come from. We are inherently polarized, and reality and facts don't seem to count for anything anymore. Change the "D" to an "R" and you see all kinds of righteous indignation replacing carefully parsed justifications. It's merely intellectual dishonesty at work, all of it driven by a bloodlust for holding onto power.

Let's stop pretending there's any reason to hope things will change. Things will gradually get better or worse, and it's nothing to do with hoping.