A Tale of Three Scandals

The Republican Party is a great example of America's diversity. Catholics, Protestants, Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Jews, Arab-Americans (Darrell Issa is Lebanese), North, South, South, East and West, all united in a common purpose - to stick it to the black man in the White House!

Now, I kid about the GOP's brand of "diversity," a sort of diversity that was last relevant in 1960, but there's no joke about the Republicans' efforts to make President Obama look like a more corrupt Chief Executive than Richard Nixon. Specifically, they're after the O-man on three scandals of varying importance, and they're attempting to pin on him things he has had nothing to do with. Particulars:

The Benghazi scandal shouldn't be called a scandal; it shouldn't even be called an affair. The White House released e-mails that passed between various government agencies in the aftermath of the Benghazi attack on the U.S. consulate there in September 2012 that showed the these agencies, with the CIA to the fore, were discussing how to explain this to the public. The objective was not not to cover up any knowledge of al-Qaeda ties but to figure out what exactly happened.

The Internal Revenue Service scandal was all about making it harder for conservative groups like the Tea Party organizations to get tax-exempt status while making it easier for liberal groups (note that I did not call the liberal groups "organizations"; American liberals can't organize a linen closet, never mind a political movement). Let me just say right now that targeting and harassing Tea Party groups over tax exemptions on the basis of their political beliefs is wrong. But guess what: Obama isn't to blame here. Steven Miller, the dismissed IRS acting commissioner, had complete responsibility over the agency. The IRS is independent from the executive branch; it doesn't take orders from the President any more than the post office does. (The only difference between the post office and the IRS is that the President still appoints the IRS commissioner, while the Postmaster General is appointed by a board of U.S. Postal Service governors.)  Much of the activity against the Tea Party didn't even take place under Miller, who took over as acting commissioner in November 2012; it took place under the last regularly appointed commissioner, Douglas Shulman, who was appointed in 2008 . . . by George Walker Bush. (Oh yeah, five of the last seven IRS commissioners have been "acting" commissioners because of the chronic inability of the executive branch to appoint a permanent commissioner for a highly polarizing agency that the Senate, which must approve the appointment, can stomach.)

The Associated Press scandal is the only one in which Obama may be culpable, but the government's investigation of AP phone records was in fact an effort to protect governmental secrets. The United States had foiled a terrorist plot in Yemen and was trying to find the source of an leak at AP that might have tipped off Yemeni terrorist cells that American national security officials knew about them. No one in the government ready to make the operation public because of the loose ends involved.  Ironically, the loose ends Obama has to deal with now is whether the government overreached in its efforts to find the source of the leak.

The Republicans, of course, already have the answer to that question - "YES!" They also blame a "culture of corruption" emanating from the White House that "inspired" the IRS to focus on Tea Party harassment, and they just won't give up on Benghazi, because their real target is Democratic 2016 presidential prospect Hillary Clinton. In the meantime, they're trying to divert attention from domestic spending cuts ordained by the sequester that hurt the poor and middle class by focusing on these affairs, and they're using all their power in Congress - their House majority, their filibuster-happy Senate minority - to obstruct Obama's agenda (whatever it is) and possibly impeach him for a non-misdemeanor so they can win complete control of Congress in 2014, win everything in 2016, and then use their unfettered power to deliver the coup de grâce to the middle class once and for all.  Yes, Obama can and probably will withstand all of these attacks and Republicans will be frustrated by their inability to bring him down.  But just because Obama will survive doesn't mean the Democratic Party (or the "Democrat party," as the GOP impudently calls it) will survive Obama's Presidency and still control the White House in January 2017.

If you disagree, I have a couple of tickets for the Albert Gore Presidential Library in Tennessee that I'd like to give you.  Because for all of Bill Clinton's political talents, the 42nd U.S. President couldn't secure his own legacy after his time in office ended.  Obama may not be able to do that either.