The president was accused of overseeing a sinister 'culture of intimidation' against his opponents on the one hand and then on the other, not having control over investigations or knowledge of events conducted by independent agencies, unaware of what going on around him in his administration. The only reason that we're revisiting these criticisms of the Bush Administration is due to former Secretary Rumsfeld's appearance today. Ok, sure we're guilty of the old bait-and-switch tactic, but that's just so we all keep things in perspective.
In doing so, you realize that the great disappoint in the Obama Presidency isn't these immediate controversies but that he's conducted his White House pretty much the same as those men prior. It shouldn't come as any surprise that this is the case as it is the nature of being President because people are coming at you at all angles (see the above example). What you always hope is that the incoming administration can do it a little bit better than the last, and frankly, that's where Mr. Obama has the advantage. On today's Meet The Press, that perspective was lost.
Case in point, Peggy Noonan said that this I.R.S. misconduct was the worse political scandal since Watergate, and she adamantly defended that opinion. Never mind that David Gregory challenged her directly on that overreach with Iran-Contra, which she was in fact a part of where the Reagan Administration knowingly lied to Congress, something that President Reagan himself knew. But how about the Bush Administration and WMDs in Iraq? They lied to Congress, the American people, and the UN Assembly (where Colin Powell's reputation was forever tarnished) about their existence... Did we forget anyone? Ms. Noonan, Ma'am, you're disqualified from mention for the rest of today's column. This brings us to another example, the most comical statement of the day, courtesy of Mr. Rumsfeld who said that is was worrisome that the Administration supported 'a narrative that didn't exist'... That's all Mr. Rumsfeld did in his time as Secretary of Defense during the Bush years - lie about what was really going on in Iraq. He couldn't characterize it as such, but when Mr. Gregory suggested to Mr. Rumsfeld have sympathy for what's happening with the current administration, he really couldn't give too much for political appearances, but he should have. Mr. Rumsfeld also said that the 'truth leaves on horseback and returns on foot.' We have absolutely no idea what he was talking about there, but it's so meaninglessly funny we just had to mention it.
That implicit understanding, sympathy for the administration, also came from Senator Mitch McConnell with regard to the AP story where the Justice Department accessed reporters' phone records, believe it or not. It's this story that has received the least amount of criticism from conservatives because of the entire national security issue - potentially endangering our agents overseas. The criticism that does exist, and Mr. McConnell channeled it a bit today, is that Republicans as a whole simply loathe the President and Mr. Holder's general modus operandi so they use this for the pile-on effect.
However, for more serious commentary on this issue, we would first ask why the Justice Department didn't come at this from a completely different direction. Instead of gathering AP Reporters' phone numbers without their knowledge, the Justice Department should have turned their focus internally first investigating the outgoing calls from departments involved. This way, if the press then finds out that Justice is doing an internal investigation about leaks - key word internal - and reports on it then the heat gets turned up for Justice's benefit.
Senator McConnell is the Republican Leader in the Senate but when he starts talking of this particular administration's 'culture of intimidation' he begins to exhibit qualities that run completely counter to that moniker of 'leader.' His commentary about the 25 year-old clip of himself saying that 501(c)(4) 'social welfar' tax exempt groups were a problem was very telling. He said that 25 years ago he was wrong and for the past 20 he has been right, and now the twenty-year evolution of a leader into political operative is complete. He was correct 25 years ago, as Congressman Xavier Becerra (D-CA) noted during the panel discussion, that we were asking the I.R.S. to make political calls - on both sides of the aisle and that's problematic, obviously. Mr. McConnell mentioned the danger of disclosing contributors' lists for these 'social welfare' organizations for fear of political retribution, but not seeing the larger picture, he's advocating for big amounts of secretive money to remain in politics, which is the main cause of legislative dysfunction.
Adding to that, when asked by Mr. Gregory about his Republican colleagues calling Benghazi a massive cover-up, Senator McConnell said that he never said those things. Citing Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel's column that the President implicitly encouraged these practices and creating this climate due to his repeated public statements critical of such tax exempt groups - dog whistling to call up action against his enemies. The same can be said for Senator McConnell on Benghazi, a master dog whistler who can conduct an entire interview without really putting anything on record. With regard to Benghazi, all he would commit to was that the security was inadequate. We have to not pay attention to the reasons according to Mr. McConnell, in which it could be argued that Congressional budget cutting played a a part.
The entire 'dog-whistling' argument by Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel and others is really the product of the other end of the dog.
As we're going through the writing of this column thinking about these controversies and the 'righteous' indignation displayed by conservatives on today's program, we can't help but think of their collective complacency during a particular incident - the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. (Mr. Gregory cited Abu Ghraib, which was good too.) The Bush Administration's disclosure of her identity was all three of those 'Obama' controversies rolled into one. It was a 'cult of intimidation' against politic opponents, sinister manipulation of the press, and it endangered the lives of Americans overseas... to say the least.
In saying all this, these are serious issues that need serious solutions and we've had some critical questions of the President and his cabinet, especially Mrs. Clinton, but this barking at the rain is the exact thing that will turn the public sour on the Republicans' cause for accountability.
President Obama’s senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer appeared on the program today (and all the others) to mitigate damage of course with reporters' hope that he'd slip and make news, but he didn't. As a foil,
Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) answered questions just before the panel discussion. His introductory clip contained a soundbite from the Congressional hearing about the I.R.S. in which he talks about a culture of cover-up. As we said last week, the I.R.S. specifically targeting anyway is unacceptable so we're on the same page as Mr. Camp as far as that is concerned, but not the 'culture of cover-up' hyperbole. He reasonably talked about the tax code and how the reformation of it would help this country's economy, which is true and we appreciated that fact that he recognizing the burden that the tax code presents for average Americans - 13 hours for one family to do its taxes is ridiculous (6 billion hours in total). But let's extrapolate that a bit and realize that the Supreme Court's Citizens' United decision opened the floodgates for so many of these organizations, probably conservative leaning organization outnumbered progressive ones (nothing wrong there) so the I.R.S. is inundated with the tax exempt status requests. Wrongly, they group them together and then someone becomes skeptical of them all and starts targeting. Dog whistling? We don't hear it.
Round Table: Rep. Camp joins the discussion along with the chairman of the Democratic
Caucus, Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA); Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy
Noonan; and the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward.
[An interesting dynamic is that Mr. Camp answered Mr. Gregory's questions
while the panel participants were present, which tempered his comments
quite considerably. Meet The Press seems like it has taken a page out of the Bill Maher format where the second featured guest becomes part of the panel. It makes for a smoother transition in the show, but what it also does is force that guest to answer questions more sensibly, truthfully, and realistically.]
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