The Sound and the Fury

I'd like to be able to comment on the specifics of Operation Fast and Furious, a sting operation involving gun running into Mexico, and the investigation into it that Darrell Issa, the Grand Inquisitor of the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee has been conducting into it.  If I tried to comprehend the details, though, my head would hurt too much.  I hear too much screaming and yelling from both sides over the role of Attorney General Eric Holder in this case, and the TV commentators aren't casting much light on the subject either.  But here's the story in as small a nutshell as I can find: Operation Fast and Furious was started by Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Holder's Bush-administration predecessor, to track guns bought in the United States and exported over the Mexican border for drug dealers, but no gun runners were apprehended, and a border patrol agent was killed.  Holder stopped the operation once it became clear it was a failure, but Issa has demanded select documents over the issue in an apparent attempt to embarrass our black President by embarrassing his black Attorney General.  The documents aren't necessarily germane to the investigation, and President Obama has invoked executive privilege over them.

This is a fight the White House thinks it can win with an unpopular Republican House, given that it's distracting the Republicans from talking about jobs.  But Obama's order gives the appearance of something to hide involving the operation, even if there isn't anything to hide (and there likely isn't).  I say, play ball with Issa - because even the appearance of a scandal is enough to hurt the President in November and hurt Holder now. When accusations of scandal plagued the Harding administration, Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover advised President Harding to "blow it all out at once."  And, as it turned out, there was a scandal (bootlegging and illegal oil reserve deals) in Harding's White House.  Since it appears that there's no scandal here - it has the greater appearance of a witch hunt - what harm would it do for Obama to let those documents out? I say, do it. There are other battles Obama has to fight.       

And the sooner Obama and Holder comply, the sooner Republicans can go back to pretending to care about jobs.