Less Than Meets The Eye

++I hope President Obama's demeanor will serve him well during the overheated rhetoric about "his" scandals. Will the Benghazi, IRS and AP scandals morph into something real? Let's look at the tape.

++ Benghazi is a nothing burger left over from the Romney campaign and John Boehner is obsessed by it. He wants to have one large committee hold endless hearings on it. The "it" has been less than clear from the beginning. During the George W Bush years there were 64 attacks on American diplomatic missions with ten deaths. There were only three hearings. The point Republicans wanted to make during the campaign was that Obama was weak on terrorism and although he got bin Laden, when W failed to do so,Al Qaeda still posed a threat which he was ignoring. Like the rest of us, President Obama wants to hightail it out of dodge and make the Pacific Pivot before it is too late. Republicans are fixated on the war on terror and chronic intervention into the Middle East. Will the public actually buy into their story? Whenever they figured one out. 39% of Republicans believe this is the biggest scandal of American history. 31% can not identify where Benghazi is.

++The AP story. Appalling to me but perfectly legal. The laws implemented under the George W. Bush administration allow Justice to investigate reporters,news services, etc. without a subpoena. This administration has used this to quell whistleblowers. Ironically this particular investigation was requested in a letter by 25 Republican Senators who thought the administration was leaking materials to the press deliberately. Today, it seems the Republican Senators didn't seem so concerned with this "scandal".

++The IRS scandal is the most interesting because it is the opposite of what was originally reported. The IRS own investigation reports a bureaucratic mess trying to process the flood of non-profit requests after the Citizens United case. IRS letters for additional information were sent to Tea Party groups and Progressive groups alike. I even received a questionnaire on a 501-C-4 I applied for. The internal IRS investigation showed a delay in granting this status but none that were turned down. We have yet to receive any information about whether anyone had been audited. The question here is really that close to a $1 billion was spent on political campaigns when these non-profits were not to engage in political activity on behalf of any candidates. 

So far Crossroads America,Karl Rove's group, has not received its non-profit status. Rove himself admitted millions were funneled into the Romney campaign. That's a real scandal. Because Democrats are wary about engaging the real problems posed by these groups they are letting Republicans determine the debate. Scandal--there does not seem to be any direct Obama administration officials involved. 

The Republicans are trying to rev up the 1990s Clinton-era scandal machine. Right now I find it hard to believe they can get traction. Remember White Water, Hillary Clinton's commodities deal, the suicide of Vin Foster and the Clinton love affairs. In all of these a Clinton was involved in one form or another. So far Obama is missing from the equation even in an indirect way. But this hasn't stopped the GOP from ring after Obama on anything. 

My old executive assistant Jon Karl of ABC News thought he had a great scoop about the e-mails on Benghazi but today it turns out he hadn't read them--they were read to him and that they were not in fact what he reported. There are suspicions that Karl got them from a Republican source. My bet is a staffer from the ISSA hearings in order to gin up interest in them.

Some on the Left have argued that President Obama should act in a resolute manner by firing Eric Holder. The argument against Holder is that he led the charge to monitor Occupy Wall Street and environmentalists. Holder took the national security laws created by Bush and implemented them on steroids. There is more of a story on Holder than has appeared. But Holder has also been the target of House investigations about the death of a AFT agents in the Fast and Furious controversy. But again this program had begun under George W. Bush.


Politico tonight cheered the fact that official Washington is done with President Obama. Nate the Great Silver opines that these incidents erode trust in government and that this is problematic for President Obama because he depends on the public understanding the crucial role government plays in our lives. However, one liberal actually thinks this will turn out OK because Obama will need to rally his base and therefore can not alienate his base by reducing social security or Medicare. The AFL-CIO proclaimed all talk of a grand bargain is dead because of the fixation of the Republicans on scandal.

I would like to see Obama overcome the CIA's objection to the release of the 600 Senate report on the practice of torture under George W. Bush. McCain and Biden at a forum in Arizona agreed that should be done. There are Senators opposed to releasing it.

Meanwhile the CBO projects a deficit $200 billion then the one they had forecast. Also, President Obama program that took away student loans from the banks has netted the government more profits than Exxon Mobil. He is also the only President I remember who made any money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.Also for all the "Drill, Baby, Drill" crowd, oil production in the United States is on track to rival OPEC. One problem will be that the oil companies now want licenses to start exporting natural gas so prices might not decline as much as anticipated.

So far we have no Watergate, no Iran-Contra, no Beirut Marine barracks, even though the US finally killed the Iranian responsible. Whether the GOP can gin up hysteria and fear over these scandals remains to be scene. The public response from the Boston bombing suggests we aren't as afraid as we were and that the constant griping about Obama has taken its toll. 

But in this case, No Drama Obama may not be the best approach for the President to take. He must try and shut down these scandals before they actually erode his time in office endlessly answering questions about them. It was clear from his press conference with Prime Minister Cameron of the U.K. that he acts annoyed and somewhat removed from the various charges thrown at him. I think he should get more engaged and encourage supporters to fight back.