Concerned about spinning scandals, grabbing perks and racial issues

The title of this post is from an article in the Detroit News today about former Mayor of Detroit, Democrat Kwame Kilpatrick. Here is some more from that article:

According to text messages released Monday... sent on city-owned pagers, provide a window into how Kilpatrick ran his administration, revealing that he and his appointees and relatives were concerned about spinning scandals, grabbing perks and racial issues.

"There was a culture of corruption that started at the top and permeated down throughout the administration, through every department," Brown said. "There was a sense of entitlement like nothing I've ever seen."

The article goes on to talk about Kwame's perks of the jobs, including new cars, and about how Kwame viewed government, strong executive-weak legislative, about how he used race often, and how he tried to spin every bad event to gain more power for himself. There is another good article in the Detroit News today commenting about these events by Laura Berman:

But these newly released text messages also are a course in American civics, a study of a political leader captured in all his human complexity and moral vapidity. In 682 pages, SkyTel's court-released window into the promise, and failure, of Kwame Kilpatrick's administration is a primer on the normally hidden workings of power. It might as well be titled, "By Any Means Necessary."

Take a jaunt through the detritus of a disgraced mayoral administration, and you see a charismatic, intelligent, passionate, funny, life-embracing leader who swallowed his mother's Kool-Aid by the gallon.

"Leadership is a B," Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick texts, in May 2003. "But the rewards make the challenge worth our commitment to our God and our people. YOU ARE CHOSEN."

Process isn't on the table: The question, sometimes spoken, is how can Kilpatrick and his top aide, Christine Beatty, fire the cop, transfer the aide, kill the newspaper story -- do what they want to do.

That sense of calling isn't weighted, in any visible way, by any real values. He's a pleaser -- a man who gives people what they want, gives them the Kilpatrick they want. If he soul-searches, questions his own morality, wonders about right and wrong, none of it shows up.

If he ever entertains moral doubts, or feels shame, or questions any of the political decisions he and his staff makes, there is little evidence of it on the SkyTel pager record. Is he all energy, charisma, and drive, an attention-deficit-disordered mayor on a mission from God?

These articles are about the liberal African-American Democrat Kwame Kilpatrick, but I have a feeling they could describe another politician we have out there, one who also is "concerned about spinning scandals, grabbing perks, and racial issues.' This is about how the person goes about their business, how they operate- and it is not just Kwame who 'gives people what they want' and operates using the motto 'By Any Means Necessary.' There is another major politician in our country who feels that he is on a mission from God, that he is the chosen one, that he is the change and hope that we need.

These articles about liberal Democrat Kwame Kilpatrick remind me of liberal Democrat Barack Obama. I wonder what sort of 'a study of a political leader' we would get if we took a look at Obama's Blackberry- would it be of a leader of deep moral convictions, concern that his own actions might be causing harm, discussing history, civics, and economics, or would it too capture a politician 'in all his human complexity and moral vapidity' operating under the motto “Never let a serious crisis go to waste …"