The FIFA-Clinton Method -Nothing Embarrasses Them, so Nobody Stops Them. Bret Stephens
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fifa-clinton-method-1433200034
Ubiquitous but opaque. Powerful but unaccountable. Ostensibly public spirited but relentlessly mercenary. Often shamed but unshakably shameless. Let us count the ways in which the Clinton Foundation resembles the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, better known as FIFA.
Last week we learned that FIFA had made a donation to the Foundation in the range of $50,000 to $100,000. But for the Clintons that kind of money is hardly worth mentioning, so the suggestion of some sort of unseemly financial linkage between the two organizations is doubtful. You don’t get to roll with Bill, Hill or Chelsea for less than seven figures.
We also learned that the “Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee,” tasked with organizing the forthcoming World Cup in the Arab kingdom, gave the foundation as much as $500,000, while the Qatari state itself gave up to $5 million.
This is more interesting. Qatar’s successful bid for the Cup is one of the scandals of the age, tarred by serious allegations of bribery as well as the country’s dismal record of abusing foreign workers. The Clinton Foundation’s website says it will use the Qatari money to develop “sustainable infrastructure at the 2022 FIFA World Cup to improve food security in Qatar.” Sure. Think of the Qatari money as a way of trying to scrub itself clean with that special Clinton shampoo.
The Qatar story is suggestive of the way in which both FIFA and the Clinton Foundation work. Both organizations serve as portals through which shadowy people find their way, for a given price, into the light: the light of social respectability, the best parties, the right connections. It works in the other direction, too. How better to get lucrative uranium mining concessions in Kazakhstan or roadwork contracts in Haiti than by going through the Clinton Foundation? How better to make a tidy fortune in media and marketing rights than by greasing the right palms at FIFA—assuming, that is, that the Justice Department’s indictment is to be believed?
Also, how better to avoid close scrutiny than by doing—or purporting to do—good works in scrubby jurisdictions where laws can be usefully vague and officials are frequently pliable?
Consider the career of Jeffrey Webb, a Cayman Islander who, until recently, ran FIFA’s North American and Caribbean division and was once seen as a potential successor to FIFA President Sepp Blatter. “It’s about giving back; it’s about serving the game,” Mr. Webb said when he was elected to his position in 2013. Mr. Webb, who had cultivated a reputation for probity at FIFA, was arrested in Zurich last month on charges of soliciting millions in bribes for the broadcast rights to future World Cup games.
“Giving back” and “service” are also the guiding pieties of the Clinton Foundation. When Chelsea Clinton rakes in $75,000 a speech to dispense wisdom on her favorite subject—diarrhea, as it happens—is she giving back?
But nowhere are the similarities between FIFA and the Clintons more obvious than in their response to scandal. In the case of Mr. Blatter, he first responded to the arrest of his executives by disavowing all responsibility: “I cannot monitor everyone all the time.” Then he played the victim: “We cannot allow the reputation of football and FIFA to be dragged through the mud.” Then he offered himself as the savior: “It must fall to me to bear the responsibility for the reputation and well-being of our organization and to find a way forward to fix things.” Then he described the stakes: Not just for soccer, but “for the world, for peace.”
And then he resorted to anti-American conspiracy theorizing: “No one is going to tell me that it was a simple coincidence, this American attack two days before the elections to FIFA,” he said of the Justice Department’s charges.
Mrs. Clinton could not have done it better. All that’s missing is a 332-page memo from Mark Fabiani on the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, complete with the usual incantations of “no smoking gun” and “tired old stories.”
***
Naturally Mr. Blatter shrugged off the scandal to win his fifth term as FIFA’s president. Naturally, too, Mrs. Clinton will shrug off her scandals to win the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. Like FIFA, the modern Democratic Party is a purely transactional institution consisting of easily bought off voting blocs with minimal concern for corruption, or the appearance thereof, so long as they get what they want. When the media describe the Clintons as resilient or unsinkable or bulletproof—the ultimate “Comeback Kids”—what they really mean is that they are shameless. Nothing embarrasses them, so nobody stops them.
A friend of mine once observed that democratic politics is supposed to be played like a grown-up game of cops-and-robbers, observing the rule that bang-bang-you’re-dead puts you out of the game, at least for a while. But the Clintons figured out long ago that they’ll pay no price for not playing dead. So they don’t.
It has served them well. As for the rest of us, watch out: The further the Clintons go, the closer we get to being FIFAized.
Comments are closed.
