Once Is Happenstance, Twice Coincidence...

Joe Conason writing in Salon: What's Obama hiding about Blagojevich? (D) The subtitle answers the question: "Probably nothing. But by mishandling the scandal, his team has allowed questions to be raised where there were none."
You'd have to read the whole thing to see if you really agree "there were none" in terms of questions about talking with Blagojevich. (He must really have political cooties if Obama--who famously stated he'd talk to a whole Rogue's Gallery of international scumbags without precondition--won't talk to the Illinois Democrat.)
Where have we seen this pattern before? Do a search on Obama and "birth certificate" and you'll find a whole roiling controversy on the right, where there didn't need to be one.
So why would they repeat the mistake of letting something fester endlessly?
Outside of Free Republic, the birth certificate controversy didn't get much of a look from the nation at large. As such, it may not have registered as a lesson that Team O! should take anything from. Perhaps the Obama campaign liked it--after all it kept the dextrosphere wrapped up about one particular thing on message boards and not out in the streets getting out the vote. And if it didn't really make a true penetration into the Big News cycles, what was the real harm to him? A bunch of people who wouldn't vote for the man anyway were now really sure they wouldn't vote for the man. A simple enough calculation for a campaign run by the numbers.
So now? The tapes that have been released give the impression that Obama's camp wasn't about to give Blagojevich a thin dime in return for appointing Valerie Jarrett to Obama's Senate seat. So what was the big deal?
We'll almost certainly never find out since the prosecutor pulled the plug right around the time Ms. Jarrett withdrew herself from consideration and was subsequently handed a job in the White House. If there's a third instance along these lines, we'll see if there's a trend.
Tag: Blagojevich