Posted on 09/07/2009 4:52:59 PM PDT by Senator Goldwater
See article below.
The departure nominally the choice of a still-defiant Jones, who said he feared distracting from important business confirmed Obamas choice of pragmatism over confrontation and a belief that controversies sometimes are better solved by capitulation, a view that infuriates Obamas allies on the left.
It confirmed that the real opposition party to Obama right now is the conservative grassroots that draws its energy from Fox News, talk radio and the Drudge Report, and often leaves Republican elected officials scrambling to catch up.
And it was a fresh reminder that the White Houses vetting process didnt fall down only on high-profile nominees like Tom Daschle. It barely touched the lower reaches of the administration a White House official conceded Sunday that Jones past statements werent as thoroughly scrubbed due to his relatively low rank. Jones selection also was propelled by powerful patrons, who included the first lady and the vice president.
In his statement, Jones was defiant. "On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me, he said. They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs cast the move the same way.
What Van Jones decided was that the agenda of this president was bigger than any one individual, Gibbs said, agreeing with the shows host, George Stephanopoulos that Obama doesnt endorse Joness remarks on race and politics, his apparent flirtation with the 9/11 Truth movement, and his advocacy for the convicted murderer Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The logic of the departure was clear: A hope of keeping the national conversation where Obama wanted it this week ahead of his health reform speech to a joint session of Congress Wednesday.
Between Cambridge cops; whether administration officials are or are not for the public option; right wing mobbing at town halls; and the back to school welcome contretemps, the White House has been forced to play defense and loose-ball control over [the summer], said the former Clinton White House aide Chris Lehane, who noted that a very important week could have been consumed by a discussion related to an obscure staffer who no one has ever really heard of.
Joness departure resonated sharply, however, with the other topic on Sundays television rotation: The public insurance option in the health care debate. There, too, the White House has responded to conservative opposition by pointing first to the outright distortions and then running the other way.
To the outrage of the House Progressive Caucus, MoveOn, and other liberal voices, Gibbs and senior advisor David Axelrod said Obama this week will continue to advocate for a government-run plan to compete with private plans, but wont insist on it, as some foes have cast the option, inaccurately, as equivalent to a government takeover of all health care delivery.
The Jones departure recalls another Democratic surrender: The indicated willingness to abandon a plan to fund voluntary end-of-life consultations after they were miscast by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as death panels.
"As we've seen before, succumbing to these types of propaganda attacks from the right wing only emboldens the aggressors. This controversy will go away and they will trump up another one tomorrow, said David Brock, founder and chairman of Media Matters for America, a group that has taken on conservative commentators. No good comes from appeasing a lunatic bully like Glenn Beck."
"If Jones left under pressure from the Obama administration then we are in for a very long and painful four years, said Melissa Harris Lacewell, a political science professor at Princeton University. I would hate to think that Glenn Beck can simply shout down any member of the administration he chooses to target.
They were referring to the Fox News host who has rocketed to a status as de facto leader of the opposition since joining the network from the relative obscurity of talk radio and CNN Headline News. Beck's attacks on Jones intensified after an advocacy group Jones helped found, Color of Change, lead a campaign to drive advertisers away from Becks show.
But as soon as the ensuing controversy began to bleed over onto the websites of ABC News, POLITICO, and other quarters of the mainstream media, the administration appeared to stop defending Jones. After passing on a statement Thursday from Jones indicating that he would hold fast, Gibbs declined to indicate Friday that he had Obamas confidence, and the resignation apparently timed for maximum obscurity in the early hours of a holiday weekend Sunday began to seem preordained.
The resignation, in turn, confirmed Becks stature as the administrations most potent foe. Along with the talk radio host Rush Limbaugh and the Drudge Reports Matt Drudge, Beck helped drive a summer of protest against health care reform that turned the legislation into a referendum on change and government.
They turned an anodyne presidential pep talk to students Tuesday into an illustration of the wide discomfort in parts of the country with Obamas presidency. And they beat those drums for days before elected officials in Washington jumped on the bandwagon.
Beck, for one, seems unlikely to be satisfied by Jones resignation.
Van Jones is the tip of the iceberg, Beck said earlier this month. If we understand [Obama] by who he surrounds himself with as HE told us, what does [Van Joness] 9/11 truther stuff tell us about [Obamas] Middle East policy? Beck wrote on Twitter just before Joness resignation.
Some progressives said they saw racial overtones in Jones departure which came as critics began to step up their scrutiny of Jones past words of support for Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther on death row whose murder conviction in the death of a police officer is a cause célèbre for some on the left.
"It struck me, why go after this guy? He is a minor player, he has no power, no budget, why take him? It's because he looks like Obama and he has all those same attributes of being well-educated and hes an electrifying speaker with an elite education," said John Anner, a good friend of Jones and former chair of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, an organization Jones founded in Oakland. "It seems to me that he is symbolic of what the Obama administration is and could be and that's inspiring for me, but for some people on the right, it's terrifying and threatening.
The third lesson of the Jones flap is less unique to Obamas White House, and to the moment. Jones was just an adviser to the Council on Environmental Quality he was never officially referred to as a green jobs czar, as hes sometimes been called but he was also a celebrity of sorts. His work in California fusing civil rights, economics, and environmentalism put him at the head of powerful streams in the Democratic Party. Hed been the subject of a full-length profile in the New Yorker, and top officials sometimes touted him as a kind of trophy hire.
At a commencement address in the spring, first lady Michelle Obama held Jones up as an example to students of people who are doing interesting and innovative work.
"And then there's Van Jones, who recently joined the Obama administration, a special adviser to the president on green jobs. Van started out as a grassroots organizer and became an advocate and a creator of green collar jobs - jobs that are not only good for the environment, but also provide good wages and career advancement for both skilled and unskilled workers, she said.
Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett echoed that praise to a cheering crowd at the Netroots Nation convention this summer. Van Jones, we were so delighted to be able to recruit him into the White House, we have been watching him really...for as long as he's been active out in Oakland... and all of the creative ideas that he has... and now we have all of that energy and enthusiasm in the White House," Jarrett said.
And Vice President Joe Biden also had spotted Jones, whom he met at an administration-sponsored roundtable in February, Jones told POLITICO in an interview earlier this year.
"I just spoke from my heart and [Biden] looked me right in the eye...It wasnt like he was taking notes or distracted...And hes taken those ideas on board and thats the kind of person he is, he is very down to earth..,,and Ive since worked very closely with him and his staff to get a lot of those ideas implemented, Jones said.
A White House official conceded that Jones was not as thoroughly vetted as other administration officials, though the official suggested it had more to do with the relatively low level of Joness job than with the power of his patrons.
There was little immediate talk of possible successors to Jones, largely due to the sense he would be difficult to replace in an advisory post designed specifically for him, due to his past work in promoting "green jobs." His departure will likely leave the sorest feelings among Obamas supporters on the left. Jones has deep ties to the current liberal elite: He was a top aide to Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffingtons 2003 campaign for governor of California, and Sunday won praise from, among others, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean.
I think its a loss for the country, Dean said.
Nice to see such balance and neutrality coming from academia.
Vetted schmetted. Obama himself wasn't even vetted. ...and his résumé is even worse than VJ's.
That’s a lie that Van Jones wasn’t vetted. Obama knew exactly what he was getting. That’s why he hired him.
vicious smear campaign = shining a light on the truth.
So much for the excuse that he was "not thoroughly vetted." I wonder what lie the liberals will come up with next.
But they got this much right.
“I just spoke from my heart and [Biden] looked me right in the eye...It wasnt like he was taking notes or distracted...And hes taken those ideas on board and thats the kind of person he is, he is very down to earth..,,and Ive since worked very closely with him and his staff to get a lot of those ideas implemented, Jones said.
Yes he's very down to earth, actually below the earth where its’ hot as hell. He just wants to destroy the US like all us liberals do. You know the white are all racist (not liberals, only republican whites) They want to steal money from the poor and kill them like in Katrina. They think people should “work” for a living. Black have suffered (there ancestors) and these whites should pay for that suffering even if they did not cause the suffering directly. They probably KNEW someone who caused the suffering......bah bah bah...hate hate hate..
I love how they’ve touted Van Jones as the big creator of green jobs. Seems like nobody can seem to name ALL the green jobs he’s created...
Can anybody enlighten me on the wonderful skill he is supposed to have?
We can alinksy as well as they can..
What still gets me during the campaign the left screams that Sarah Palin is inexperienced. Small business owner, Mayor, Governor -vs- community organizer. The left is suffering from post LSD revisists.
He was smeared alright . . . with his own vile and deficated arrogance displayed in his own spoken words and writings.
What lies?
What distortions?
Was he the person on video uttering the words or not?
Not exactly a MENSA-level question.
Did he have any facts or other evidence to support his hateful utterances?
Shutting down the American economy generates carbon credits to offset all the jobs we’re going to create in Brazil and China.
Losing Van Jones is a tragic, tragic thing.
Its not right that someone with so much promise should be destroyed by unfairly targeting him and playing his video and audio recordings publicly.
Con-artistry is a skill... They even made a movie about it: Elmer Gantry.
What I took from the article is that the reporters were trying to figure out how to beech slap the people in the adminstration while at the same time asking their forgiveness for writing it.
It is wonderful seeing the socialists playing defense. They are scared of the grassroots movement outing them and costing them mainstream support. This is good.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.