by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
NRO’s\u00a0The Corner<\/em><\/p>\n There have been lots of comparisons, most hotly dismissed by the president\u2019s defenders, between Nixon and Obama, but in some ways the latest scandals have the potential to match or even trump those of 1973\u20134.<\/p>\n Nixon\u2019s sins were primarily domestic; no one died. Benghazi goes to the heart of U.S. foreign policy, when an administration knowingly misled the United States, and stuck to a preelection campaign narrative that ensured a facility was endangered, help was not sent, Americans died, and a petty crook would be jailed to take the rap \u2014 while officials for weeks peddled an untruth. Unlike \u201cBush lied, thousands died,\u201d the CIA did not give the president \u201cslam dunk\u201d information, supported by most agencies abroad and both Houses of Congress, but rather had its initial analyses massaged by the White House for overtly campaign purposes.<\/p>\n Much of the hatred toward Nixon emanates from the tapes that reveal the private man to be a paranoid and often deceitful character. But while Nixon stormed on about the IRS, and dispatched the odious John Dean to find a way to use tax returns against his enemies, at least after Donald Alexander took over, the agency pushed back, and often in heroic fashion thwarted the destruction of the once independent bureau.<\/p>\n So far, in 2013, the IRS seems to have been compliant, almost an extension of Obama-Biden 2012. Will a memo surface of just a single Alexander-like hero who said, \u201cNo, the IRS does not determine its tax policies on the basis of politics\u201d? I hope so, but think not.<\/p>\n And while Nixon certainly went after the press and ordered phone monitoring of supposed leakers, Obama more often\u00a0selectively<\/em>\u00a0has gone after the press, in a fashion in some sense even more chilling, using the mainstream media to peddle administration tropes, while demonizing dissenters like Fox News (and monitoring a Fox reporter) and talk radio.<\/p>\n The Justice Department\u2019s beef with the AP was not just leaks \u2014 after all, the Obama administration itself leaked all sorts of classified information that it felt was useful to the reelection effort, from the details of the Stuxnet virus to the drone targeting details, to channeling information to favorite\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0reporters, who were even given exclusive access to troves of the bin Laden documents. The AP\u2019s problem was that it thought it had been given the unofficial green light to release information that the Obama administration on second thought wanted to release first, and so was considered a sort of \u201chow dare you\u201d double-crosser by the administration.<\/p>\n On this incestuous relationship with the media and the corruption in selectively releasing classified information for particular political purposes, I wrote back in May 2012, in the Corner the following about the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u2019s analyses (branded with \u201cEXCLUSIVE\u201d) of the recovered bin Laden documents:<\/p>\n While the analyses may well be insightful and balanced, no one can know that, given that Ignatius is apparently working alone (\u201cexclusively\u201d) with formerly classified documents under conditions that are not transparent and without a published narrative of how he obtained them and\/or any detailed information about the nature of the raw data he has acquired. . . . The trove found in bin Laden\u2019s compound either belongs to the security agency or Defense Department bureau that classified it, or the documents that were given to Ignatius belong in the public domain \u2014 otherwise, fairly or not, the impression given is that we are a sort of garrison state that choses authorized state megaphones to analyze what have become court documents. And when administration officials praise Ignatius\u2019s sobriety and that sanction is echoed by peers in New York and Washington, then one only gets the impression that something is terribly wrong in this insular DC-NY corridor, where no one any longer seems aware of simple ethics and propriety.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I think when one adds up Benghazi, the AP mess, the IRS scandal, the politically correct laxity about domestic terrorism and radical Islam, the deliberate leaking of classified documents to preapproved in-house reporters, and what Kathleen Sebelius is trying to do, the impression given is Nixonian to the core: scores of \u201cblindly\u201d ambitious underlings, competing with each other to outdo the next, in order to gain attention or brownie points from the man at the top, who lets it trickle back down that he is in a virtual push-back war with certain Americans (e.g., the Tea Party, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the NRA, the post-2010 Republican House, and assorted conservative groups).<\/p>\n In 1973, the press was almost uniformly adversarial; today it has shamefully functioned from 2009 onwards as a Ministry of Truth, a sort of force multiplier of the West Wing. Everything Nixon did was suspect, often with good cause, and seen through the prism of his excesses; in the case of Obama, from Fast and Furious to Solyndra to the EPA and NLRB freelancing to the selective enforcement of the law, the press has more often been an enabler, working to explain why a scandal or an excess is really some sort of right-wing obsession, emanating from suspect or even racist motives. Something very scary started in 2009\u201310 \u2014 and that this new way of doing business was supposedly done for the proverbial \u201cpeople\u201d to ensure \u201cfairness\u201d has made it even more insidious and far more difficult to come to terms with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner There have been lots of comparisons, most hotly dismissed by the president\u2019s defenders, between Nixon and Obama, but in some ways the latest scandals have the potential to match or even trump those of 1973\u20134.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[78,145,99],"tags":[12,1045,1055,357,1044,447],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1y2","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6311,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-watergates\/","url_meta":{"origin":5954,"position":0},"title":"Obama’s Watergates","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 6, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Denial, evasion, \"Let me be perfectly clear\"--is this 2013 or 1973? by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online The truth about Benghazi, the Associated Press\/James Rosen monitoring, the\u00a0IRS\u00a0corruption, the NSA octopus, and Fast and Furious is still not exactly known. Almost a year after the attacks on our Benghazi facilities,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/79713948_47244e8c2a.jpg?fit=400%2C273&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7114,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/following-the-trail-nixon-blazed\/","url_meta":{"origin":5954,"position":1},"title":"Following the Trail Nixon Blazed","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 18, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Obama shows the same Orwellian disregard for the Constitution. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 What would a president do if he were furious over criticism, or felt that his noble aims justified most means of attaining them? Answer that by comparing the behavior of Richard Nixon to that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5950,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-second-term-embarrassments-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":5954,"position":2},"title":"Obama’s Second-Term Embarrassments","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 16, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Hope and change\" is looking like the 1973 Nixon White House. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online In Barack Obama\u2019s 2008 presidential campaign, he ran to the left of Hillary Clinton as a moral reformer. Obama promised to transcend the old politics and bring a new era of hope-and-change\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mainstream Media"","block_context":{"text":"Mainstream Media","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/mainstream-media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5964,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-second-time-as-farce\/","url_meta":{"origin":5954,"position":3},"title":"The Second Time As Farce","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 20, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner The lengths to which some are going to excuse the IRS corruption (\u201cthe tea-party groups deserved\u00a0extra\u00a0scrutiny\u201d), the AP monitoring (\u201cnational security\u201d), Benghazi (\u201cconfusion\u201d \u2014 or the Republicans did it by cutting back on funding for embassy security), the Sebelius shakedowns (no choice when the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mainstream Media"","block_context":{"text":"Mainstream Media","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/mainstream-media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6735,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/americas-wilderness-years\/","url_meta":{"origin":5954,"position":4},"title":"America’s Wilderness Years","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 12, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media\u00a0 Most two-term presidents leave some sort of legacy. Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. George W. Bush prevented another 9\/11, and constructed an anti-terrorism protocol that even his critical successor embraced and often expanded. Even our one-term presidents have achieved something. JFK got Soviet\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":139,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/2012-when-dreams-died\/","url_meta":{"origin":5954,"position":5},"title":"2012: When Dreams Died","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 2, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The year 2012 saw the triumph of cold reality over pie-in-the-sky dreams. Barack Obama in 2008 won an election on an upbeat message of change in the hope that the first black president would mark a redemptive moment in American history. Four years\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Retrospective"","block_context":{"text":"Retrospective","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/retrospective\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5954"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5954"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5956,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5954\/revisions\/5956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}