One of the ginned-up scandals of the Obama administration's first two years that you might have forgotten by now is the Joe Sestak non-scandal involving the White House offering a job to Sestak to prevent him from defeating Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter in the Democratic primary. At the time, Republican Darrell Issa, now poised to be the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, compared it to Watergate.
Now, however, Issa is saying he won't investigate something he compared to one of the most infamous abuses of power in American history:
Issa was among the chief critics of the incident, which involved the White House tapping President Bill Clinton to offer the Pennsylvania Democrat an administration job if he would drop his Senate primary bid against Sen. Arlen Specter. Sestak dismissed Clinton’s overtures and ultimately went on to defeat Specter in the campaign. Sestak fell to former Rep. Pat Toomey (R) in the general election.
But Issa spokesman Kurt Bardella said Friday that the committee has “no intention” of issuing subpoenas for Clinton, Sestak or anyone else involved; he said similar job offers happen all the time.
“This isn't isolated to the Obama administration. This goes back to everyone since Andrew Jackson. If you’re going to go down that road, you have to go back to every administration,” he said.
The latter point by Bardella is one the administration's defenders made around the time Issa was claiming that what had occurred could lead to felony charges. So what happened between now and then? Very simple: Sestak lost. Had he prevailed against Toomey, Issa would probably still be calling this the worst scandal since Watergate. It has simply lost its use as a political talking point. An abuse of power is only an abuse of power if there's a political incentive for calling it that.
