Consigliere

Don Obama needs Tom Hagen.

You remember Tom – the German-Irish street kid Vito Corleone took in out of the kindness of his heart and turned into the family lawyer, not to mention the best intelligence man in the history of Hollywood GoonWorld.

It’s Tom who digs up the goods on movie mogul Jack Woltz, it’s Tom who finds out Sollozzo is dealing dope for the Tattaglias and has Captain McCluskey on the take, and it’s Tom who tracks down Frank Pentangeli’s scary brother in Sicily just when Frankie is about to sing for the Senate.

Tessio and Clemenza had the muscle, but Tom could vet.

I bring this up because whoever is doing the vetting for the Obama gang flat-out sucks at it.

You didn’t need to wait for this embarrassing procession of tax cheats to sense that. You saw it way back when Obama’s association with Jeremiah Wright seemed to catch his campaign totally off guard.

Tom Hagen would have had a ranting nimrod like Wright on his radar long before he became an issue. The good reverend would have been quietly bundled off to a nice out-of-the-way pastorate in Nevada, with a salary more than high enough to convey the appropriate message, and Rocco Lampone dropping in now and then to make sure he was behaving himself.

Now come Geithner and Daschle and Killefer, and it’s like nobody has even bothered to ask the most obvious questions.

Who’s running this administration’s domestic intelligence team -- Fredo?

Mr. President, get yourself a good consigliere. And tell the next person you consider for anything, from the Supreme Court to White House basement toilet attendant, that he or she had better be as clean as an unwrapped bar of Ivory. Or else.

Even the rich and powerful can be brought to heel. Just ask Woltz.

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