It was bound to happen, Obama throws Ex Detroit-Mayor under the bus…

Yesterday we mentioned how Obama is fond of surrounding himself with people of dubious mein, in reference to Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s resignation. This story comes from the current edition of Newsweek.

I have excerpted some of the more interesting parts. If you don’t want to read the whole thing, that’s fine, the video below provides a very succinct summary:

Friends Like These- How the Detroit mayor’s fall hurts Obama.

“Long before sex, lies and texting caused Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to plead guilty to two felonies and resign on Thursday, he and Barack Obama shared a warm man-hug before a huge Motown crowd. It came 16 months ago, as Obama was launching his campaign for president with a scalding speech to the Detroit Economic Club upbraiding Detroit’s automakers for not building more fuel-efficient cars. But while that speech gave Obama green street-cred, his praise of Kilpatrick as a “great mayor” who will do “astounding things for many years to come” backfired. …Kilpatrick now heads to jail for four months…”

and

“This Kwame Kilpatrick mess has splattered over onto the Obama campaign at the worst possible time,” says veteran Detroit political consultant Sam Riddle. “Kilpatrick’s brand of leadership has fed into the worst stereotypes that white voters have about black leaders.”

That could explain why Obama has worked so hard lately to stiff-arm the mayor he once embraced. First, he asked him to stay away from the Democratic National Convention—which was no problem, since the mayor was wearing an electronic tether at the time and had been ordered by a judge not to travel beyond metropolitan Detroit. Then on Wednesday evening, a few hours after the prosecutor announced Kilpatrick was copping a plea, Obama issued a statement saying, “It is time for the mayor to step aside so that the city can move forward.”

The next morning, Kilpatrick, 38, stepped before a judge and admitted: “I lied under oath” in a whistleblower trial last summer, where he hotly denied he had an affair with his then chief of staff, Christine Beatty.

To end his eight-month sex saga, the mayor agreed to cop to two counts of obstruction of justice in a deal that cost him his job, his law license, $1 million in restitution, his pension, his liberty for 120 days and the ability to run for office for the next five years while he is on probation. Kilpatrick also pleaded no contest to charges that he assaulted a police officer, who was trying to serve a subpoena on a friend of the mayor. The Obama camp followed up with another statement that echoed what they’d said the night before: “The serious charges against the mayor were a distraction the city could not afford and his immediate resignation is the only way for the city to move forward.”

Obama: Judgment to Lead! Yeah Right

Posted by AD76