The White House: Scandalous again!

Ever since Bill Clinton left office – and left the stained blue dress behind – I began reading celebrity gossip magazines for entertainment. I love the tawdry talk, which has been in low supply with the Bush administration.

Let’s face it: The Bushes are downright boring. No interns. No former girlfriends accusing President Bush of rape and assault. Mrs. Bush didn’t try to socialize medicine. The left-wing nutjobs had to dream up lies about the Bushes that the Enquirer wouldn’t even print. So, even though the Bush administration has kept us safe from terrorist attacks since 9/11, I have to admit I love the excitement of the Chicago mob’s takeover of the White House. President-elect Barack Obama is rebuilding the Arkansas mafia before our eyes and, just to up the ante, he’s giving the keys to the White House to the Chicago Political Machine.

Even before Mrs. Obama decorates the living quarters, scandal is following Obama like stink on a dead skunk. Just this week, the white man’s club in the Senate locked out Sen.-Elect Roland Burris, who was duly appointed by Illinois Gov. Rod “Blago” Blagojevich. Blago is in trouble for allegedly trying to sell the Senate seat left vacant by Obama. Still, Blago has the constitutional authority to appoint whomever he pleases.

But Harry Reid, the whiny Democrat from Nevada, locked Burris out of the Senate. The image of Mr. Burris, a black man, being turned away from the halls of the Senate in the driving rain was something to behold.

Mr. Obama is trying to stay above the fray. He has said he never spoke with Blago about filling his vacant Senate seat. Call me cynical, but I’m not buying that any more than I believed Clinton when he wagged his finger at America and said he did not have sex with Monica. Obama has brushed off reporters in a Nixonian move when they asked his opinion on the appointment of Burris, who would be the only black senator if Reid would stop blocking the Senate doorway.

Let me back up. Initially, Obama said this: “Roland Burris is a good man and a fine public servant, but the Senate Democrats made it clear weeks ago that they cannot accept an appointment made by a governor who is accused of selling this very Senate seat,” he said in a written statement. “I agree with their decision, and it is extremely disappointing that Governor Blagojevich has chosen to ignore it.”

But now Obama has backed up, simply saying, “It’s a Senate matter.”

Really? Is that how they do it in Chicago? Swear to uphold the Constitution, then turn around and use it as fish wrap? The Senate doesn’t get to choose the next senator of Illinois; the governor does. Obama knows it. He and his network of Chicago politico hitmen have outdone the Arkansas mafia when it comes to pre-inaugural scandal – and I’m not even counting his friendship with an admitted terrorist and Obama’s American-loathing former pastor.

Obama has ensured that his administration’s entertainment value will reach far beyond the Blago blunders and the associated stonewalling of a black senator in waiting. He brought Sen. Hillary Clinton in as secretary of state, an appointment that could cause some friction between the Arkansas gang and the Chicago thugs. I can imagine a death-match between Rahm Emanuel and James Carville.

Emanuel worked in the Clinton White House, but he’s a Chicago boy through and through. The Richard Daly political machine nursed Emanuel until he was a big, bad boorish boy. He is vicious, relentless and ruthless. He once sent a dead fish to a pollster he didn’t like. I guess a horse’s head was too big to mail. Jose Cerda, a former Clinton staffer, once said about Emanuel’s demands on employees: “We joke that someone should open a special trauma ward in Washington for people who’ve worked for Rahm.”

Carville is a tough talker, but I think the boy from the hood, “Rahmbo,” could take him.

A fiction writer couldn’t write the scandals for Obama’s upcoming feature: “The Chicago Machine Goes to Washington.”

But thanks to Obama voters, it looks like the next four years will be more entertaining than a beltway full of Clintonistas.

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