by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
NRO’s\u00a0The Corner<\/em><\/p>\n In the next few weeks, we will probably hear more stories about journalists whose correspondence was monitored, and more creepy details about the corruption of the IRS. The fault, however, is not Obama\u2019s alone; he is what he is \u2014 a take-no-prisoners tough Chicago politician who came to power in Illinois by suing to remove opponents from the ballot and leaking the sealed divorce records of his primary and general-election senatorial opponents. Such things worked there, and they work on the national level as well.<\/p>\n Instead, the problem has been the press, which for a variety of reasons invested in Obama to the point that it gave up its integrity and for the last five years essentially surrendered its vital watchdog role in a free society. The road to where we are now was not just marked by the embarrassing exclamations from journalists about tingling legs, perfectly creased pants, the smartest president we have ever seen, and Obama as a \u201cgod,\u201d or by Candy Crawley ruining her reputation by becoming a partisan instead of a moderator in a presidential debate.<\/p>\n In addition, the purpose of Obama-campaign websites such as AttackWatch and Truth Team was to go after anyone thought to be antithetical to the president\u2019s agenda, in ad hominem fashion, thereby creating a sort of deterrence \u2014 donors would not wish to have their taxes audited or their personal lives scrutinized, and opinion journalists would not wish to be on lists and defamed, and thereby would pull their punches.<\/p>\n It worked well enough; Obama was elected President twice, and now for some reason we are shocked that, without another election to worry about, and the collective madness of 2008 wearing off a bit, we suddenly learn that all along the agencies of government \u2014 especially the powers of Justice and Treasury \u2014 have been used in unconstitutional fashion to go after individual Americans for the crime of exercising their First Amendment rights.<\/p>\n Obama, in that regard, is a symptom of a far deeper ends-justifying-the-means pathology among far too many journalists who gave up their independence in exchange for a shared egalitarian vision. In the last few years, I think most columnists who wrote things critical of the administration or its\u00a0congressional\u00a0or state allies expected either\u00a0to get a letter of inquiry from the IRS, or an angry call or public putdown from a liberal public official, or back-channel advice about the selection of topics for columns, or weird storms of hostile e-mails and postings that were almost identical in their pro forma boilerplate talking points, or all that and more. I know I did\u2014and was not disappointed.<\/p>\n As an endnote, I wrote this about Obama\u2019s strange creation, AttackWatch, back in September 2011:<\/p>\n Yet go onto the new (\u201cPaid for by Obama for America\u201d) AttackWatch.com website. It reads and looks like some sort of Stasi file (\u201cfile\u201d is their vocabulary, not mine). It asks readers to inform them of criticism of Obama. The format is, I guess by intent, supposed to resemble a government intelligence dossier (\u201cAttack files\u201d), with its blaring black and red headers: \u201cAttack\u201d \/\u201dAttackers\u201d (followed by names and pictures of the supposed bad guys)\/\u201dAttack Type\u201d \/(\u201cpublic statements\u201d) followed by check off boxes like \u201cHave you seen or heard this attack?\u201d \u201cYes\/No\u201d. It reminds me of living in 1973 dictatorial Greece, when we all kept silent about the Colonels upon entering the apartment building, lest the government-paid concierge write down something not nice in her black book.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner In the next few weeks, we will probably hear more stories about journalists whose correspondence was monitored, and more creepy details about the corruption of the IRS.<\/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":[145],"tags":[641,12,639,308,1026,357],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1yl","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5944,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-tainted-campaign\/","url_meta":{"origin":5973,"position":0},"title":"A Tainted Campaign?","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 14, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner If it is proven that the IRS\u00a0thwarted some groups from obtaining tax-exempt status in fear that their traditional or\u00a0conservative messages might hurt the 2012 Obama campaign (especially if it did so under pressure from White House-affiliated operatives),\u00a0and if it is\u00a0proven that the Obama administration\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":[]},{"id":8571,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-obama-administrations-chicago-politics\/","url_meta":{"origin":5973,"position":1},"title":"The Obama Administration\u2019s Chicago Politics","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 28, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"\u201cIf they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.\u201d by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online Barack Obama is the first American president from Chicago. That fact will be the trailblazing Obama\u2019s most lasting legacy. Chicago has long been stereotyped as a city where any-means-necessary politics have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Obama Administration"","block_context":{"text":"Obama Administration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"President Obama delivers a statement on immigration reform, June 30, 2014 Photo by Mark Wilson via Getty Images","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/pic_giant_071514_A-500x291.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6311,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-watergates\/","url_meta":{"origin":5973,"position":2},"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. 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He was scheduled to meet Romney in three weeks for the first\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campaign 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Campaign 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/campaign-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7556,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/was-benghazi-a-scandal\/","url_meta":{"origin":5973,"position":4},"title":"Was Benghazi a Scandal?","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 10, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Scandals \u2014 or fundamental transformations? by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review\u00a0Online If the CIA wanted to smuggle guns to Syria or interrogate al-Qaeda suspects in Benghazi, that was its business, not necessarily the administration\u2019s. To the degree Obama was involved in overseeing events in Libya, his involvement was most\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The World"","block_context":{"text":"The World","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"photo by Getty images via NRO","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/pic_giant_061014_A_0-500x291.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6042,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/pick-you-scandal\/","url_meta":{"origin":5973,"position":5},"title":"Pick Your Scandal","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 11, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Violating Americans' privacy while failing to identify the terrorists among us. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online All can agree that the Obama administration is mired in myriads of scandals, but as yet no one can quite figure out what they all mean and where they will lead. 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