The Wall Street Journal notes the disparity in the treatment afforded to former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn and that of former World Band head Paul Wolfowitz.
Whatever becomes of the sexual assault charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, DNA evidence and all, it is now clear that the former head of the International Monetary Fund treated the organization as his sexual fiefdom. "Despite my long professional life, I was unprepared for the advances of the managing director of the IMF," wrote Piroska Nagy, an IMF staff economist whom Mr. Strauss-Kahn pursued until she agreed to a brief affair in 2008. "I did not know how to handle this," she added in a letter to a law firm investigating the affair. "I felt, 'I was damned if I did and damned if I didn't.'"
Ms. Nagy's letter—which added that Mr. Strauss-Kahn was "a man with a problem that may make him ill-equipped to lead an institution where women work under his command"—has received considerable media attention in recent weeks, and rightly so. But perhaps its real interest lies in the way none of Ms. Nagy's points seem to have found their way into the firm's October 2008 report to the IMF Executive Board.
On the contrary, the report, conducted by three lawyers at the firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, concluded that "there is no evidence that the MD [managing director], either expressly or implicitly, threatened the female staff member in any way to induce her to engage in the affair or to keep it confidential." The IMF board gave Mr. Strauss-Kahn merely a wrist slap for a "serious error of judgment," along with board assurances that the episode would "in no way affect the effectiveness of the Managing Director in the very challenging and difficult period ahead."
Compare that whitewash job to the what happened to Mr. Wolfowitz.
Remember that Mr. Wolfowitz's alleged sin was that he had arranged a job transfer, along with a substantial raise, for his companion Shaha Riza, a bank employee at the time Mr. Wolfowitz took the helm in 2005.
But any suggestion that favoritism had been involved quickly fell apart when it came to light that Mr. Wolfowitz had disclosed the relationship with the bank's board before taking the job; that he had sought to recuse himself from the matter; that the bank's ethics committee had forbidden him from recusing himself; and that the committee had also directed him to arrange a promotion and pay raise for Ms. Riza "on the basis of her qualifying record" and out of concern for the "potential disruption" to her career for a conflict of interest that was not of her own making.
That was it. Yet outside of these columns, few other news outlets could be bothered to report the facts. Was it because Mr. Wolfowitz, as one of the most prominent advocates for deposing Saddam Hussein, was such a convenient media villain? Or because the board and management of the bank were so resistant to Mr. Wolfowitz's aggressive anti-corruption agenda, and all too happy to leak selective and bogus information to suggestible journalists?
I vote for the corruption angle. Sure, his advocacy for deposing Saddam Hussein may have made Paul Wolfowitz a more tempting target, but everything the left does is about getting the leverage to maintain power, and that leverage is found in the discretion to bestow favors. That's corruption.
Pick an issue. Voter identification requirements are opposed. Democrats want the voter fraud option. Illegal immigration is promoted. There's a constituency there and the left wants those new potential voters. Bailout money went to the politically connected with labor unions favored over bondholders.
The left depends upon the power to grant favors to their friends. With such an unappealing philosophy, how else do they hold on?
Update: Speaking of voter fraud, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, Mark Dayton, just vetoed a law requiring Minnesota voters to provide an ID in order to vote. Power Line's take:
The law provided for issuance of free voter IDs to any legitimate voters who, for whatever reason, have no driver's license or other form of identification. Minnesotans, aware that voter fraud has likely played a key role in recent elections, overwhelmingly support the law: the Star Tribune's Minnesota Poll, which routinely tilts left, found 80 percent support.
Nevertheless, Governor Mark Dayton vetoed the bill yesterday. That a Democratic governor is willing to fly in the face of overwhelming public opinion, even as he is fighting a budget battle with the legislature that likely will lead to a slowdown in state government, says volumes about where the Democratic Party stands on the issue of voter fraud.
Democrats stand strongly in favor of voter fraud. It's one of the imnportant ways they win elections.
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