the spectre of bribery: Sestak, Obama, and their odd ideas of "transparency"

Obama's transparency continues to be an opaque thing...

From Dick Morris and Eileen McGann at TownHall.com...

Rep. Joe Sestak, the winner of the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary, says quite openly and repeatedly that he was offered a job by the White House if he would drop out of the race against Sen. Arlen Specter. Having secured Specter's conversion to the Democratic Party, thus giving the party a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, the Obama administration obviously sought to keep its word to Specter that it would do its utmost to deliver the Democratic nomination to him. According to Sestak, that included a job offer.

Who made the offer? What position was offered? And when did it happen? Sestak, who was nominated on a platform of "transparency" refuses to answer any of these questions. The White House admits that a conversation took place but won't provide any details and insists that an "internal investigation" revealed that "nothing inappropriate" took place.

Or did it?

It is unlikely that Sestak was offered a job interviewing people for the census. Only a high-level job offer -- a Cabinet post or an ambassadorship to a key country -- would have sufficient gravitas to conceivably induce him to drop his primary challenge. Some have speculated that Sestak, a retired admiral, might have been offered the post of secretary of the navy. Others wonder that, since he is fluent in Russian, he was to be tapped for ambassador to Moscow.

And, before an offer of that magnitude were tendered, it would have had to have been cleared with the higher levels of the White House. How could an offer of a Cabinet post have been made without consultation with the chief of staff?

And how was the offer made? It would have to have been proffered by somebody who Sestak could reasonably assume was speaking for the president and could deliver on his end of the deal. A lower-level official wouldn't have that kind of clout. Could the offer have been tendered by Rahm Emanuel himself? It's clearly his style.

But, could Rahm or anyone else have made such an offer without consulting the president himself? You can't go around passing out Cabinet posts or ambassadorships without consulting the boss....