Memory can be semi-reliable faculty at best. For days now I have been looking for a half-remembered Omarosa Manigault-Trenton NJ connection. I could swear there was one but alas, neither I or anyone I know could find it.

That led me to other questions. Omarosa's bathetic career of invitations to high level employment, bad behavior and ejections is now before the public in high detail. [Omarosa worked in the Clinton White House long before she worked for Trump. Here's everything you need to know about her career, by David Choi, Business Insider, August 15, 2018]First, she was a Vice Presidential staffer with Gore, then a White House aide and finally a Commerce Department employee. Her falling in with President Trump's lowlife reality TV ensemble cast is too well known to include here.

Googling Omarosa brings up numerous treatments sounding like they all came from the same source. Gore's former staff are not shy about her intractable, disruptive behavior. She comes across as the dysfunctional schemer she so transparently is on first sight. Like much in the public eye, this is reported as the obvious masquerading as deep insight.

So far as I can discover, no one asked or answered the following question, how the hell did she get a job on Al Gore's staff? How did this neurotic virago advance to the Vice Presidents Office? In New York Police parlance, "Who was her Rabbi?" Who did the Clinton Campaign feel obligated to. Or, was there some personal trait or service she rendered? 

We'll never know unless a news source with sources of its own drills down a bit. Omarosa doesn't appear to have been able to deliver the two indispensable political necessities, money or votes. She was from Ohio and perhaps she had a connection able to deliver black votes in this swing state. It would be nice to know just what that connection was.

My own theory is this. Both parties expect little in the way of either competence or team play from blacks. As an old elected boss of mine confided "They (Black Republicans) always have their hand out (for money) every time I meet them." In my experience, the level of mutual cynicism between blacks and politicians is so steep that looking for honest players among either would be like looking for albinos at the beach. That said, our current reality demands black faces in every group picture. With the worst of Blacks to choose from, Omarosas are to be found everywhere. I've had to work with them in state government. A Division Director who fell asleep at his own staff meetings, A Deputy Director caught driving voters to the polls in his state car, (complete with state markings), budget staff who could not comprehend their mission, etc. 

Of course no one can or will admit this.