Presidential foibles and déjà vu all over again
Published in the Boulder Daily Camera, 5/19/13
I know I’ve seen this act before. The President of the United States is anxiously seeking a second term and people under his command resort to some rather unseemly methods to further his reelection. These include intentionally misleading Americans, sending the IRS to harass their enemies, and sticking a fork in the First Amendment with clandestine snooping on the American press. Boy, that sounds so familiar…
Wait, I remember. President Nixon, Watergate, the Enemies List, and The Plumbers. That’s it.
It was early 1973. President Nixon had just been reelected by an electoral landslide winning every state but Massachusetts. I was 19 years old and had just voted in my first election for Senator McGovern. I really didn’t like President Nixon and wanted to live in Massachusetts so I could get one of those bumper stickers that said, “Don’t blame me, I’m from Massachusetts.”
Not long after the election, the news started buzzing about a bungled burglary a few months earlier at The Watergate into the office of a Pentagon employee who had leaked secret materials from Lyndon Johnson’s administration to the New York Times. President Nixon had nothing to do with the leaked materials nor authorizing the burglary, but he was concerned that the bad news might compromise his chances of reelection and hurt some close friends. So, rather than just standing up and saying, “Somebody really screwed up and they will be punished,” he used the power of his office to squelch scrutiny, blame the press’s continued interest on partisan politics, and create a fictional narrative that never quite stuck.
Hmmm… I can’t seem to get past the similarities between this and the Obama administration’s actions over Benghazi. Individuals in his administration made bad calls and, even with ample warnings of specific dangers, our ambassador and others were killed. Okay, people make mistakes, but what happened next was no mistake – misleading Americans about the cause of the attack to protect the President. It’s now clear that everyone knew that this was probably a terrorist attack and there were things that might have been done. But, instead of leveling with us, the President’s team chose to spin a yarn about “You Tube” and squelched serious scrutiny until after the election.
Then there was President Nixon’s “Enemies List.” As described in an internal White House memo, the Enemies List was created to “use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.” The primary screwing apparatus was a list of 576 supporters of Senator McGovern given to the Internal Revenue Service. President Nixon played no direct part in compiling and using the list, but he was held responsible for creating an atmosphere that encouraged such behavior by his administration.
Geez, not much of a reach to see how President Obama has one foot in the quicksand on this one, is it? People in his Administration, we are now told, have known about IRS targeting of President Obama’s enemies for two years and not done much about it. I guess the biggest difference is that there was little evidence that those on President Nixon’s Enemies List were ever harassed by the IRS, whereas the IRS under President Obama has already told us that they were pretty darned good at screwtinizing whoever they wanted to.
President Nixon’s “Plumbers” were a covert White House unit whose job was to stop leaks of classified information to the news media. Amongst other jewels, these were the geniuses who cooked up the Watergate burglary, all in the name of national security, First Amendment be damned.
This week, we learned that someone inside the Obama administration decided it was in the interest of national security to step around the First Amendment and tap the phones of the Associated Press to find the source of national security leaks.
At the moment, the big difference between these two Presidents with respect to these scandals is that we now know that President Nixon knew about these illegal activities, either directly or indirectly. President Obama, on the other hand, seems to be comfortable in his cluelessness and shock over the shenanigans that have gone on under his leadership. Personally, I don’t find cluelessness a good excuse since, if true, his Alfred E. Neumann “What? Me Worry?” style of management seems pretty risky given the ship of state he is steering. It's also getting harder and harder to believe.
I have seen this act before. It didn’t end well the last time and, in the interest of our nation’s well being, I hope it works out better this time.
I know I’ve seen this act before. The President of the United States is anxiously seeking a second term and people under his command resort to some rather unseemly methods to further his reelection. These include intentionally misleading Americans, sending the IRS to harass their enemies, and sticking a fork in the First Amendment with clandestine snooping on the American press. Boy, that sounds so familiar…
Wait, I remember. President Nixon, Watergate, the Enemies List, and The Plumbers. That’s it.
It was early 1973. President Nixon had just been reelected by an electoral landslide winning every state but Massachusetts. I was 19 years old and had just voted in my first election for Senator McGovern. I really didn’t like President Nixon and wanted to live in Massachusetts so I could get one of those bumper stickers that said, “Don’t blame me, I’m from Massachusetts.”
Not long after the election, the news started buzzing about a bungled burglary a few months earlier at The Watergate into the office of a Pentagon employee who had leaked secret materials from Lyndon Johnson’s administration to the New York Times. President Nixon had nothing to do with the leaked materials nor authorizing the burglary, but he was concerned that the bad news might compromise his chances of reelection and hurt some close friends. So, rather than just standing up and saying, “Somebody really screwed up and they will be punished,” he used the power of his office to squelch scrutiny, blame the press’s continued interest on partisan politics, and create a fictional narrative that never quite stuck.
Hmmm… I can’t seem to get past the similarities between this and the Obama administration’s actions over Benghazi. Individuals in his administration made bad calls and, even with ample warnings of specific dangers, our ambassador and others were killed. Okay, people make mistakes, but what happened next was no mistake – misleading Americans about the cause of the attack to protect the President. It’s now clear that everyone knew that this was probably a terrorist attack and there were things that might have been done. But, instead of leveling with us, the President’s team chose to spin a yarn about “You Tube” and squelched serious scrutiny until after the election.
Then there was President Nixon’s “Enemies List.” As described in an internal White House memo, the Enemies List was created to “use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.” The primary screwing apparatus was a list of 576 supporters of Senator McGovern given to the Internal Revenue Service. President Nixon played no direct part in compiling and using the list, but he was held responsible for creating an atmosphere that encouraged such behavior by his administration.
Geez, not much of a reach to see how President Obama has one foot in the quicksand on this one, is it? People in his Administration, we are now told, have known about IRS targeting of President Obama’s enemies for two years and not done much about it. I guess the biggest difference is that there was little evidence that those on President Nixon’s Enemies List were ever harassed by the IRS, whereas the IRS under President Obama has already told us that they were pretty darned good at screwtinizing whoever they wanted to.
President Nixon’s “Plumbers” were a covert White House unit whose job was to stop leaks of classified information to the news media. Amongst other jewels, these were the geniuses who cooked up the Watergate burglary, all in the name of national security, First Amendment be damned.
This week, we learned that someone inside the Obama administration decided it was in the interest of national security to step around the First Amendment and tap the phones of the Associated Press to find the source of national security leaks.
At the moment, the big difference between these two Presidents with respect to these scandals is that we now know that President Nixon knew about these illegal activities, either directly or indirectly. President Obama, on the other hand, seems to be comfortable in his cluelessness and shock over the shenanigans that have gone on under his leadership. Personally, I don’t find cluelessness a good excuse since, if true, his Alfred E. Neumann “What? Me Worry?” style of management seems pretty risky given the ship of state he is steering. It's also getting harder and harder to believe.
I have seen this act before. It didn’t end well the last time and, in the interest of our nation’s well being, I hope it works out better this time.
