Van Jones was no mistake...

I Could No More Disown Van Jones Than . . .
[Victor Davis Hanson]

When Van Jones talks of the aims of the civil rights movement and its initial minimalist agenda, he references the ultimate desire of 'redistributing all wealth.' When one collates that revelation with Obama's own off-handed "spread the wealth" comment, his 'fair share' sermons, and his 2001 public radio interview thoughts on “the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society,” we begin to see a pattern in which one’s income and wealth do not properly belong to the earner, but are seen as illegitimate and thus legitimately can be redistributed to others.

What is interesting about Van Jones’ supposedly divisive comments are that many in fact dovetail with Obama’s past revelations in more indiscreet moments. Aside from a shared rhetoric of spreading and redistributing wealth, I don’t see how white polluters of the ghetto is that much different from anything Rev. Wright said, Obama’s own ‘typical white person’, or his stereotyping of the Pennsylvania clingers or the Cambridge police.

Jones’ own deprecations of the U.S. are no more extreme than Michelle Obama’s ‘downright mean country’ and for the first time she has become proud of America. When Van Jones talks about coal, he is simply amplifying Obama’s own suggestion that he would “bankrupt” those who wished to build new plants.

So I do believe Valerie Jarrett that the administration had been looking at Van Jones for a long time, and liked what they saw.