Pat Dollard | Young Americans

The Swamp:

My first thought on hearing that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson had asked President-elect Obama to drop his nomination as Commerce Secretary because of a federal probe into possible pay to play activity in Richardson’s office was “Uh-oh, don’t tell me Obama has some pay-to-play curse that will be following his presidency like a hungry stray dog.”

The scandal involving Gov. Rod Blagojevich in Illinois is, of course, about the governor’s alleged pay-to-play activities including the charge in a federal criminal complaint that he sought to auction off Obama’s vacant Senate seat. First Illinois, now New Mexico. You’re almost afraid to ask what state comes next?

My follow-up thought was that Richardson’s move obviously calls into question the quality of the, ahem, “vetting process” that the Obama team conducted. How did Richardson, an old baseball player, ever to first base with a huge problem like this hanging out there?

As it turns out, the Obama people are reportedly saying they asked Richardson’s people about the probe but were evidently stone-walled.

That seems like reason enough for Obama to have told Richardson “don’t call us, we’ll call you.” Who would have blamed the president-elect? Even Latino groups would have been hard pressed to defend Richardson, one of their own, under such circumstances.

But something obviously went very wrong because, even with Richardson’s people purportedly stiff-arming Obama’s vetters, Richardson still was announced as the Commerce nominees.

Politico.com reports that the situation has some Democrats wondering just what went wrong inside the vaunted Obama vetting operation.

Barack Obama’s transition team pressed Bill Richardson about a federal probe into “pay to play” allegations against his office - the same investigation Richardson cited Sunday in withdrawing his name as commerce secretary.

But a Democratic source said Obama’s questioners came away empty-handed. “Those guys were pressed for information and they gave nothing,” the source said.

Now some Democrats are questioning Obama’s vetting process — and asking whether Obama’s team went far enough in pushing the New Mexico governor for information in face of the federal grand jury probe that has been public since August.

It’s the first high-profile stumble for an Obama transition that generally has run smoothly so far–and it deprives Obama of the highest-ranking Hispanic member of his Cabinet, already prompting cries from Latino groups for a prominent replacement.

Maybe Obama so badly wanted the team-of-rivals script to work that he was willing to overlook the New Mexico play-to-pay investigation. Or maybe Richardson made the probe sound so benign, Obama was willing to try and look past it. Whatever the case, it’s clear now that there was a major miscalculation.

So Richardson is gone now. If there’s any good news for Obama is that it happened now before the confirmation process started, even before Obama’s inauguration, so it will likely quickly become old news with the rush of events.

But that still doesn’t solve the issue of the pay-to-play curse that seems to be haunting Obama’s pre-presidency. He may need to appoint a White House shaman to get rid of that problem.