Among respondents asked the following question -- "Of the current living former presidents, which do you think is best equipped to deal with the problems the country faces today?" -- 41 percent chose Bill Clinton, trailed by George W. Bush with 15 percent, George H.W. Bush with 7 percent, and Jimmy Carter with only 5 percent, while 26 percent chose "none," and 5 percent were "not sure." Those choices may be partly a function of the age of the former presidents, since the elder Bush and Carter are considerably older than the younger Bush and Clinton. But Clinton finished first among all age groups, all races, all religions, and both sexes, with a significantly better showing among women (46 percent) than men (36 percent). 

The most salient question -- given Barack Obama’s dipping numbers and the right-wing ripple of nostalgia for George Bush -- tested them against each other. By a margin of 48 to 38, respondents said they would elect Obama over Bush if they faced that choice. Twelve percent said "other" and 2 percent said "not sure." Newsmax didn’t publish the cross tabs but its story noted that, according to the poll, "Obama still nabs a large proportion of self-described independents, pulling 42 percent of these voters. Only 33 percent said they would opt for Bush."

While those aren't wonderful numbers for Obama, they aren't terrible either -- especially at a moment when the mainstream media depict him as weakened and imperiled.

When ranting on about Rangel, however, what the Republicans surely won't mention is that he's not alone in questionable fundraising for a vanity academic institution that bears his name. Leaders on both sides of Capitol Hill have done likewise for years -- notably including the  odious Trent Lott -- but the most troubling example is none other than Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who now holds Lott's former post. If the term "Senate Ethics Committee" weren't an oxymoron, he would be enduring an intense investigation, too.

McConnell is a graduate of the University of Louisville, a place of higher learning that he is seeking to transform into a display case for his limitless narcissism (as well as that of his wife, former Bush Labor Secretary Elaine Chao). Lots of nice things at the  university are named after him, but above all there is the McConnell Center for Political Leadership, a special program much like the Rangel Center at CCNY. In such places, young and idealistic scholars are introduced to the tradition of public service represented by these great men, etc.

According to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which has named both Rangel and McConnell to its annual lists of the "most corrupt" legislators, the list of donors to the McConnell Center was kept hidden by university administrators. When the Louisville Courier-Journal sued to obtain the names of those donors, the Kentucky Supreme Court handed down a curious decision. Future donors to the center would have to be revealed, the court ruled in August 2008, but 62 past donors could remain anonymous.

But thanks to the newspaper's diligent  reporting, names of several of the bigger donors have emerged over the past several years. They include Toyota, which gave $833,000 to the McConnell Center and  considers the Kentucky senator among its main Washington assets during its current crisis; RJ Reynolds and Phillip Morris, which gave $150,000 and $450,000, respectively, and which know they can count on him as a staunch backer of tobacco interests; and Yum Inc., the huge KFC/Pizza Hut/Taco Bell franchiser and a $250,000 donor, whose management was surely pleased when McConnell sponsored a special-interest bill protecting the fast-food industry against lawsuits alleging that their products cause obesity, heart disease and diabetes.

Yet  of all the dubious donors to the McConnell Center, the worst smell emanates from BAE Systems, the British-based defense firm that just settled a years-long, transatlantic bribery investigation last month by paying a record $450 million fine negotiated by prosecutors in London and Washington. BAE subsidiary United Defense Industries gave $500,000 to the McConnell Center because, as a spokesman proudly  explained to the Courier-Journal, "We have a very good relationship with Senator McConnell. We appreciate all he's done for our company and our employees in Louisville."

What has he done for BAE? In the fall of 2007, to cite just one notorious instance, he secured three earmarks worth $25 million for the firm in the defense appropriations bill for programs that the Pentagon had not requested. By then, everyone knew that BAE was crooked and under investigation by the Justice Department, but McConnell continued to perform favors for the company and accept donations from its political action committee.

"Most politicians decide that a scandal is a good time to stop doing business with a company, at least until the scandal is over," remarked CREW executive director Melanie Sloan at the time. "Particularly when we're talking about a criminal investigation over bribery. You would think that a member of Congress would want to steer clear of anyone accused of bribery."

Unless you're Mitch McConnell, that is, who can rely on his fellow senators to do nothing about his corrupt earmarking -- and on the mainstream media, whose deep thinkers will swoon over Rangel's wrongdoing while McConnell's trespasses are simply never mentioned. 

The Times originally investigated Rangel’s finances and fundraising and then published the stories that triggered the official ethics probe. The ethics committee, reorganized by Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2007, ultimately did not shrink from admonishing one of the most powerful and senior Democrats in the House, and continues to examine other allegations against him. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington -- a watchdog group funded by Democratic donors -- twice named Rangel to its annual list of “most corrupt” members of Congress (which is always admirably bipartisan, unlike such lists maintained by CREW's conservative counterparts).

Yet as the Republicans and their media epigones celebrate Rangel’s downfall, the contrast with their own typical tolerance of corruption in their own ranks is instructive. To draw political comparisons between the cases of Rangel and Tom DeLay, as some mainstream pundits and conservative commentators do, is glib and fatuous if not simply dishonest. 

Keep in mind that none of the GOP pet media outlets, such as the Washington Times, the Weekly Standard or Fox News Channel, has ever initiated an ethics investigation of a Republican in the House leadership. Instead, these outfits habitually devote their efforts to protecting Republicans, no matter how crooked. Indeed, they tend to accuse the Times of “liberal bias” whenever the paper criticizes or investigates a Republican.

Five years ago, when DeLay came under intense pressure from prosecutors, the press and watchdog groups, the National Review urged conservatives to rally around him in an editorial, noting dismissively that “many of the offenses DeLay is being accused of—taking foreign trips funded by outside groups, attending events with lobbyists—are committed by every congressman on Capitol Hill.” Of course taking a foreign trip funded by an outside group (with corporate support) is precisely the transgression for which the ethics committee admonished Rangel.

But the same National Review editorial suggested that official rebukes by the ethics committee are unimportant anyway, at least when directed at a Republican leader: “The [ethics] committee did warn DeLay to be more careful, the ‘admonishment’ that has played in the media as an official sanction, which it wasn't.” In short, they didn’t believe an admonishment by the ethics committee was enough to get rid of DeLay, but it is reason enough to throw out Rangel -- and vote against the Democrats who pushed him out, just because they’re members of the same party.

During the decade or so when the Republicans controlled the House, their stewardship of the ethics committee – and their handling of ethical issues – was deplorably weak. In those days, they didn’t believe DeLay should be removed from leadership because of those wimpy admonishments. Indeed, they didn’t believe that he should have to step down  even if indicted for a felony! That was the permissive viewpoint of the great majority of the House Republican caucus in November 2004, when they voted (just after the presidential election) to change the rules so that DeLay’s expected indictment would not automatically oust him. They held that vote in strict caucus secrecy – and a few months later restored the old rule when public outrage became overwhelming.

Reluctant to punish DeLay for his multiple transgressions and abuses, the House Republican leadership instead eagerly rapped the handful of Republicans on the ethics committee who had admonished him. Here the contrast between the Democrats and the Republicans is striking. Speaker Pelosi may have wished her friend Rangel could somehow escape the consequences of his actions, but she did nothing to hinder or intimidate the ethics committee. 

The Republicans  purged their own members from the ethics committee -- and its chairman, Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colo. -- for the sin of joining committee Democrats in unanimously admonishing DeLay. Replacing them were three more pliable members, who had publicly admitted voting to change the indictment rule. One of those three DeLay stooges was none other than Rep. Tom Cole, who now serves as deputy whip under Minority Leader John Boehner .

When did the Republicans start to worry so much about ethical purity? Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., who replaced Hefley as ethics chairman, was notable only for stalling probes into the truly repugnant misconduct of Mark Foley, R-Fla., Randy Duke Cunningham, R-Calif., and Bob Ney, R-Ohio, as well as his sponsor DeLay. Foley narrowly escaped criminal indictment, while the other two went to prison (where Cunningham will remain for the rest of his life).

The rule that Rangel violated when he took those now-infamous Caribbean trips was instituted by the Democratic majority as part of its ethics reorganization. This was a rules change that Boehner vocally opposed -- and it is a rule that Boehner would have violated more than once had it been in effect a year or two earlier. Back in July 2006, the New York Times reported on one of Boehner’s many subsidized vacations:

"Mr. Boehner flew to a golf resort in Boca Raton, Fla., in March for a convention of commodities traders, who have contributed more than $100,000 to his campaigns and are lobbying against a proposed federal tax on futures transactions. During the trip, Mr. Boehner assured his hosts that Congress would most likely not approve a tax they opposed. His leadership committee, the Freedom Project, which in recent months has enlisted the use of corporate planes from Federal Express, Aflac and the Florida Power and Light Company, later reimbursed the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for the cost of the Boca Raton trip."

Naturally Boehner’s leadership PAC is funded heavily by corporate interests – so he was “reimbursing” one corporation with money donated to him by others. Boehner has always been known as an obsequious servant of business lobbyists, dating back to the moment in 1995 when he was observed handing out checks from the Brown & Williamson tobacco company political action committee on the House floor. (Confronted by a few naive GOP freshmen, he conceded that such brazen grifting “didn’t look good” and was sorry that he had been caught.)

At this point it is clear that Rangel is guilty of hubris and sloppiness, and perhaps worse. It isn’t easy to understand why he should be branded irredeemably “corrupt,” however, while someone like Boehner is considered an honorable public servant. The notion that he and his cronies would restore ethical standards if they regain the majority must be a joke.

Nowhere did he or anyone around him complain back then that Emanuel could not make his will done in the White House, or worry that the president was not listening to him. That particular profile included a coy paragraph, which offered a tantalizing clue about things to come. Explaining that a Times magazine story about Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett had annoyed the president by exploring her difficult relationship with Emanuel, Baker and Zeleny suggested that Obama himself had informally forbidden everyone from "cooperating with staff profiles," which was why "Mr. Emanuel declined a formal interview for this article." 

To describe someone as declining a "formal interview" sounds like another way of saying that he spilled everything off the record or on background, of course. Which seems to be what Rahm is doing these days, either himself or through cutouts.  

First Dana Milbank and then Jason Horowitz set forth the argument for Emanuel's blamelessness in the Washington Post, somehow shifting responsibility from the chief of staff to other aides and even the president -- and portraying him as the sole strategic thinker in an administration bent on liberal self-immolation.

As Noam Scheiber argues in this subtler New Republic assessment, Emanuel may not be directly participating in these Washington Post pieces, which defend him while diminishing the president and other senior staff. But Scheiber offers a telltale clue. "True to form," he writes, "Emanuel refused to speak to me on the record." The key phrase is "on the record." Presumably the inside information in all of these Rahm-reinforcing articles comes from the chief of staff’s loyal surrogates, who wouldn’t feel free to talk unless he wanted them to do so. 

Now that political pressures are mounting and the president’s popularity is slipping, Emanuel is no longer advertising himself as the testosterone-fueled alpha dog in charge of everything. Now he is a lonely voice of reason, whose wise counsel is ignored, imperiling all the hopes that we all held dear, etc., etc. 

Both versions cannot be accurate. What is probably the dismal truth about his stewardship of the Obama vessel can be found toward the end of last August’s Times story, which showed the chief of staff steering without any rudder of principle, and playing captain in policy and political waters too deep for him. He is largely responsible for the fiasco of financial reform, the soured deal with the pharmaceutical and insurance interests on health reform, and the botched retreat from the president’s promise to close Gitmo. 

Whether and how to change the White House staff is a problem that Obama will have to face eventually. Even sooner, however, the president must decide whether to accept Emanuel’s insistence that he had nothing to do with the Post articles, which have inflicted real damage by depicting Obama as a weak and hapless foil to his brilliant deputy. If he cannot disprove that portrait, his presidency will continue to drift. 

From Glenn Beck and his followers to John McCain, Walker is the favorite expert of the harshest critics of the Obama administration’s stimulus spending (and any other federal effort to increase employment). During his presidential campaign, McCain promised that if elected, he would hire Walker to help balance the federal budget.

As for Beck, he has conducted more than one fawning interview with Walker; in fact, the excitable Fox News personality hosted him two weeks ago to discuss his latest book, titled "Comeback America." Beck clearly feels that Walker’s worries about fiscal balance somehow support his own demagogic predictions.

But Walker’s fans on the right may not be so quick to mention his latest insight, for as he reveals in an important essay he co-authored with Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute, he now believes that employment is the overriding issue that must be addressed before any attempt to reduce deficits.

Mishel and Walker explain that the only way to bring spending back in line with revenues is to stimulate growth and employment. The entire piece is well worth reading, especially because the authors come from different sides of the political divide, but these paragraphs summarize their argument well:

Though a concern, most of the recent short-term rise in the deficit is understandable. Furthermore, public spending can help compensate for the fall in private spending, and help stem the pain of substantial job losses.

With more than a fifth of the work force expected to be unemployed or underemployed in 2010, there is an economic and a moral imperative to take action. Persistently high unemployment drives poverty up, makes it harder for families to find decent housing, increases family stress and, ultimately, harms children’s educational achievement. For young workers entering the workforce, the current jobs crisis reduces the amount they will earn over their lifetime.

In deep recessions, businesses tend to make fewer critical investments in research and development that can improve our economy’s productive capacity over the long term. Entrepreneurs usually find credit hard to obtain if they want to start a new business. These factors hurt U.S. global competitiveness and growth potential.

That’s why we agree that job creation must be a short-term priority. Job creation plans must be targeted so we can get the greatest return on investment. They must be timely, creating jobs this year and next. And they must be big enough to substantially fill the enormous jobs hole we’re in. They must also be temporary — affecting the deficit only in the next couple of years, without exacerbating our large and growing structural deficits in later years. 

So government must create more jobs now, for economic as well as moral reasons. The current deficit matters much less than growing the economy out of recession. And the nation's future depends on spending more, not less.

All this is precisely the opposite of current Republican policy and conservative ideology, including the imbecile slogans of Beck and his tea-party drones. If the Democrats were any smarter, they would bring Walker up to Capitol Hill to tell them why federal jobs spending is imperative -- and then we would see what Beck, McCain and the rest of the wingers would say about the wisdom of their erstwhile idol. 

While even Bunning’s fellow Republicans dislike him intensely, none of them cares enough about the unemployed to tell him to sit down and shut up. That has been left to the Democrats, who should make Bunning the poster boy of the right-wing filibuster — a symbol of obstructed democracy and discarded humanity.

Here’s a suggestion for anyone who runs into the former baseball pitcher on the Senate floor. Tell him that if he is truly worried about the deficit, he should stop using the Jim Bunning Foundation to shelter the money he makes from baseball memorabilia.

Ever since he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Bunning has operated this phony “charitable” operation as a front for his business selling autographed balls. As this outfit’s sole employee, working one hour a week, he has paid himself hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past 10 years — considerably more than the amount donated to any actual charity.

Indeed, the only charities to which the foundation gives any significant sums are Catholic churches attended by Bunning and his family (so he gets other people to make his religious donations as well). Perhaps those churches ought to reconsider accepting his generosity in light of his nasty conduct toward the unemployed, whose plight is a matter of grave concern to the Catholic hierarchy.

Clearly Bunning is a man of low character, even for someone who belongs to what Twain described as “our only distinctly native American criminal class.” Not only does he exploit a charitable foundation to avoid taxes and ethics rules while greasing his own palm; he actually put a Washington lobbyist on the foundation board — and then arranged budget earmarks for clients of that same lobbyist, who oversees his self-dealing scam. Someone ought to file an ethics complaint against this dreadful, dishonest man.