First, Eric Lipton and Matthew Wald at the New York Times write,
“I am increasingly worried that this visit could prove embarrassing to the administration in the not too distant future,” one official at the Office of Management and Budget wrote, according to a memo prepared Monday by House Democrats describing the e-mails provided by the White House and the Department of Energy.
A seven-page report based on the new documents reveals that top White House officials recognized early that the company faced potentially crippling business problems and that the government’s generous investment could backfire on the Obama administration. And they knew this before the president paid the company a visit in May of 2010.
The new documents show a private investor in Solyndra questioning why the federal government, back in September 2009, agreed to put up so much money — $535 million — to help the company expand given the questions about its financial future.
…
The dispute was summarized in a seven-page report by the Democratic minority staff of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, based on 685 pages of documents from the Office of Management and Budget and 27 pages from the White House. The Democrats said they were seeking to demonstrate that there was no evidence of political favoritism toward Solyndra, which counts a campaign fund-raiser for Mr. Obama among its investors. The Republican majority has been stressing that connection.The Democrats’ take on the documents, mostly e-mails, was that they showed a “vigorous internal debate,” that it involved senior members of the administration, and that the decisions were made “with no regard to the identity of the private investors.”
And now Deborah Solomon at the Wall Street Journal,
Two days before Mr. Obama’s tour of Solyndra, Steve Westly, a California venture capitalist, emailed Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, saying the company was risky for Mr. Obama and visiting it could “haunt him in the next 18 months if Solyndra hits the wall, files for bankruptcy, etc.”
Ms. Jarrett emailed Ron Klain, then chief of staff to Vice President Joseph Biden, who acknowledged “some risk factors here—but that’s true of any innovative company that POTUS [president of the United States] would visit. It looks like it is OK to me, but if you feel otherwise, let me know.” Mr. Klain then told Ms. Jarrett: “The reality is that if POTUS visited 10 such places over the next 10 months, probably a few will be belly-up by election day 2012—but that to me is the reality of saying that we want to help promote cutting edge, new economy industries.”
The memo was sent to Democratic members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on oversight and investigations and was written by that subcommittee’s Democratic staff.
It shouldn’t come as any surprise to anyone that the Times is going to bat for the president as the election draws near.
It also shouldn’t come as any surprise to anyone that Barack Obama doesn’t care about donors or good economic policy. He and his team care about one thing: the re-election of Barack Obama. In October 2011, nearly three years into his presidency, messaging is the only thing Team Obama does well. And they aren’t even doing that well.
