I thought you might be amused by this Chicago Tribune editorial drawing an analogy between President Joe Biden and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. On Biden’s part there’s this:
On Tuesday, Biden said that the discovery of the stash was a surprise to him but he remained woefully mum about a second trove of classified documents that already had been found in his Wilmington, Delaware, garage, apparently next to his gas-guzzling Corvette.
But by Thursday, as the White House should have predicted, that news (along with that of another document found in a storage room) was out, too, and Attorney General Merrick Garland was holding a hastily arranged news conference and announcing a special counsel and an investigation.
The issue was toxic for Biden, of course, because Democrats had been lambasting former President Donald Trump for absconding with classified documents, implying they would never do such a thing.
while on Lightfoot’s part there’s this:
Meanwhile, in Chicago, WTTW reported on Wednesday that an unspecified number of Chicago Public Schools teachers had received an email from Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s reelection campaign to their work addresses, asking them to recruit CPS students to help with the mayor’s effort to stay mayor.
The email, signed by a campaign staffer named Megan Crane, said participants in the “externship program†would be expected to volunteer 12 hours per week to the Lightfoot campaign and that students could expect to earn “class credit.â€
This gaffe boggles the mind. Apparently, the campaign convinced itself that since no one was being coerced, and that the email addresses were generally accessible, this was a legitimate ask. It must further have convinced itself (how, bamboozles us) that the mayor’s rivals would not eventually find out about and pounce upon this issue.
And it must have made peace with the clear conflict of interest and ethical violation in “asking†either public school teachers or their students to “volunteer†to help their big boss retain her power.
Just like the White House, the Lightfoot campaign hemmed and hawed when asked for comment, only eventually coming to terms with the need for a full-throated mayoral apology and an assertion that this will not happen again. By Thursday, Lightfoot had a monster distraction on her hands, an escalation involving similar campaign emails also sent to City Colleges of Chicago, and two likely watchdog investigations to anticipate, potentially keeping the damaging story alive.
What’s the connection? As a piece at Reason.com put it, “shoddiness, carelessness, and hypocrisy”. They conclude:
Like Biden, Lightfoot was attacking much worse behavior than her own. But also like Biden, the mayor was caught on her own petard.
All either of them can do is apologize, vow to do better, and move on.
Frankly, I doubt that an apology will be forthcoming from either. Once you rise to a certain level of elective office apologies come hard. Mayor Lightfoot has already blamed an aide; I expect President Biden to do the same.
