{"id":6311,"date":"2013-08-06T10:53:25","date_gmt":"2013-08-06T17:53:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=6311"},"modified":"2013-08-06T10:54:46","modified_gmt":"2013-08-06T17:54:46","slug":"obamas-watergates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-watergates\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama’s Watergates"},"content":{"rendered":"

Denial, evasion, “Let me be perfectly clear”–is this 2013 or 1973?<\/h1>\n

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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, we are only now learning details of\u00a0CIA\u00a0gun-running, military stand-down orders, aliases of those involved who are still hard to locate, massaged talking points, and the weird jailing of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula.<\/p>\n

We still do not quite know why Eric Holder\u2019s Justice Department went after the Associated Press or Fox News\u2019s James Rosen \u2014 given that members of the administration were themselves illegally leaking classified information about the Stuxnet virus, the Yemeni double agent, the drone program, and the bin Laden document trove, apparently to further the narrative of an underappreciated Pattonesque commander-in-chief up for reelection.<\/p>\n

Almost everything the administration has assured us about the\u00a0IRS\u00a0scandal has proven false: It was not confined to rogue Cincinnati agents; liberal and conservative groups were not equally targeted; and there were political appointees who were involved in or knew of the misdeeds.<\/p>\n

The NSA debacle can so far best be summed up by citing Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who has now confessed that he lied under oath (\u201cclearly erroneous\u201d) to the U.S. Congress. Even his earlier mea culpa of providing the \u201cleast untruthful\u201d statement was an untruth.<\/p>\n

TIMELINES<\/strong>
\nYet the truth does come out. None of these scandals so far has been as ignored as the initial Watergate break-in and associated Nixon-administration misdeeds. If the doctrinaire press is now leading from behind, instead of launching a full-scale attack as it did in the Watergate years, the media as a whole are far more diverse than in 1973, with so many different venues and agendas that it\u2019s difficult to suppress the truth for long.<\/p>\n

Remember, between when the Nixon operatives drew up their initial plans to commit illegal acts in early 1972 and when the media furor over cover-ups and lying forced Nixon out of office in late summer 1974,\u00a0the time elapsed\u00a0was over 30 months \u2014 a period as long as\u00a0or longer than the gestation of the present scandals. Recall also that no one died in Watergate; that the\u00a0IRS\u00a0resisted, not abetted, calls to go after critics of the president; and that Attorney General John Mitchell did not lie under oath to Congress. Scandals wax and wane, but until the truth is told, they never quite end.<\/p>\n

THE DENIALS<\/strong>
\nThere is also nothing new in administration denials. Both President Obama and his press secretary, Jay Carney, characterized the Benghazi,\u00a0IRS, AP, and NSA allegations as \u201cphony.\u201d So too Nixon\u2019s press secretary, Ron Ziegler, characterized the Watergate break-in as \u201ca third-rate burglary attempt\u201d and insisted that \u201cCertain elements may try to stretch the Watergate burglary beyond what it is.\u201d In August 1972, when news of the break-in first got out, Nixon himself assured the nation, \u201cI can say categorically that . . . no one in the White House staff, no one in this Administration, presently employed, was involved in this very bizarre incident.\u201d The Obama administration\u2019s variation on outright denial is \u201cWhat difference, at this point, does it make?\u201d And when Jay Carney declares, \u201cI accept that \u2018stylistic\u2019 might not precisely describe a change of one word to another,\u201d \u00a0I am reminded of Ron Ziegler\u2019s quip, \u201cThis is the operative statement. The others are inoperative.\u201d<\/p>\n

THE EXODUSES<\/strong>
\nBy the summer of 1974, Richard Nixon was almost alone. His attorney general, John Mitchell;\u00a0his closest two advisers, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman;\u00a0his White House counsel, John Dean;\u00a0and a score of others \u2014 some of them directly involved, others only tangentially mentioned \u2014 had resigned, had been fired, or had been indicted. Those not involved simply wanted out of the administration, lest they suffer from guilt by association.<\/p>\n

Less than a year after Benghazi, all the chief participants in reacting to the attack are gone from their positions: Susan Rice left the U.N. ambassadorship and is now a very quiet national-security adviser; Hillary Clinton is no longer secretary of state; we have both a new defense secretary and a new\u00a0CIA\u00a0director; the ranking military officer responsible for the area around Benghazi, General Carter Ham, commander of U.S. Africa Command, has retired.<\/p>\n

Likewise there have been several resignations and suspensions from the\u00a0IRS. I don\u2019t think James Clapper will last long as director of national intelligence \u2014 such a high-ranking official simply cannot confess to lying under oath to a congressional committee and expect ever again to be taken seriously. Eric Holder may prove to be Obama\u2019s version of a steadfast-to-the-very-last General Haig; yet, like the mostly silent Susan Rice, he has been so tainted with scandal as to have little reputation left other than for being loyal to the president, and is thus irrelevant.<\/p>\n

THE ELECTION<\/strong>
\nI think it is a fair guess that had the public learned the truth about the Benghazi deaths \u2014 that a videomaker had no role in the violence and that the administration was paranoid about drawing attention to an ascendant al-Qaeda, U.S. missile-running, and lax diplomatic security \u2014 or about the\u00a0IRS\u00a0targeting or the NSA surveillance or the AP\/Rosen monitoring, Barack Obama would have lost a close election. All these scandals had their geneses before the 2012 election, and all were adroitly hushed up until after Obama\u2019s second inauguration.<\/p>\n

That too is in accord with the Watergate pattern. The Nixon administration covered up in Machiavellian fashion the June 1972 Watergate break-in, almost five months before the president\u2019s landslide win. At least six weeks before the election, the nation knew that there were members of the Nixon administration or the Nixon reelection committee involved in Watergate-related misdeeds \u2014 but they found that in comparison to Vietnam, the Chinese initiatives, or the economy, the Watergate news was boring. Again, that the Obama scandals were successfully kept hushed up before the 2012 election is not unusual.<\/p>\n

Whereas Nixon suppressed the truth and won big in 1972, by the 1974 midterm elections there had been enough blowback from the Watergate scandals that the Democrats picked up four Senate seats and 49 House seats. In other words, 2014 is still a long time away.<\/p>\n

THE TARGETS<\/strong>
\nThe Obama administration\u2019s methods and aims \u2014 going after political opponents, monitoring a supposedly leaking press, fingering fall guys, soiling the\u00a0IRS\u00a0\u2014 are likewise Nixonian to the core.<\/p>\n

Nixon tried to use the\u00a0IRS\u00a0to punish his enemies, although Lois Lerner and William Wilkins appear to have had far less integrity than did Nixon\u2019s\u00a0IRS\u00a0chief, Johnnie Walters, who resisted rather than abetted Nixon\u2019s illegal efforts. As in the case of doctoring\u00a0CIA\u00a0talking points and pressuring\u00a0CIA\u00a0operatives, so too Nixon tried to cloak misdeeds as \u201cnational security\u201d operations. Nixon went after members of the press; Obama had the communications of James Rosen of Fox News \u2014 and even those of Rosen\u2019s parents \u2014 monitored. Mr. Nakoula was the poor soul the authorities almost immediately jailed for his supposedly right-wing, Islamophobic film. He proved a sort of updated version of the caricatured crazy Cuban burglars and the unhinged Gordon Liddy, whose freelancing zeal allegedly caused the Watergate problem in the first place. The only difference is that the latter really did commit relevant illegal acts, while Nakoula\u2019s videomaking was uncouth, not criminal \u2014 and irrelevant to the Benghazi deaths.<\/p>\n

THE FIFTH<\/strong>
\nLois Lerner\u2019s resort to the Fifth Amendment is not new and will not be successful in covering up her record at the\u00a0IRS. During the Watergate scandals, almost everyone from Charles Colson to John Dean took the Fifth at one point or another while under oath in front of various committees and grand juries. Such stonewalling delayed but did not stop the investigations. I expect more participants in the Obama-administration misdeeds will invoke the Fifth, and the dodges will ultimately have little effect, other than to remind us that many in the administration have lots to hide.<\/p>\n

THE FALLOUT<\/strong>
\nNixon left office with historic low poll numbers and the economy a wreck. His successful feat of Vietnamization was undone by Congress\u2019s refusal to make good on American promises of aid. His foreign trips were seen as failed efforts to regain political stature back home.<\/p>\n

So too already with the unraveling of Obama. Cap-and-trade, green energy, and the idea of global warming are politically dead. So is a new gun-control initiative. The president, not his critics, is dismantling key elements of Obamacare, his signature achievement. Cabinet posts resemble musical chairs. About all we can expect is a new Nixonesque war on someone \u2014 post\u2013Trayvon Martin \u201cbigots,\u201d conservatives supposedly waging a \u201cwar on women,\u201d \u201cnativists\u201d who sabotaged \u201ccomprehensive immigration reform.\u201d In other words, there will be no positive initiatives, just attacks on Them.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s poll numbers are tanking, and even some of the liberal press feels increasingly betrayed. The Middle East is a mess: Syria a charnel house,\u00a0Egypt pure chaos,\u00a0Libya the new Somalia,\u00a0Iraq abandoned, Afghanistan ignored. Al-Qaeda is on the run \u2014 toward Westerners everywhere.<\/p>\n

The common denominators are perceived presidential weakness, and inattention. But whereas Richard Nixon was seen as a brilliant foreign-policy realist, Obama prior to his scandals was already struggling to overcome the reputation of being a na\u00eff about foreig and cool, distant, and inept at home.<\/p>\n

Because something terribly wrong occurred in Benghazi, with the\u00a0IRS, with the treatment of the Associated Press and James Rosen, and perhaps with Edward Snowden and the NSA, and those involved are seeking to mask their culpability, the scandals grind on. They will not end until the truth sets us all free. So expect a long-drawn-out and sordid saga.<\/p>\n

If the administration continues to stonewall and taunt its critics, there will soon appear updated Obama versions of diehard Nixon defenders like Rabbi Korff and Representative Sandman \u2014 with plenty of the same old \u201cLet me be perfectly clear\u201d and \u201cMake no mistake about it\u201d presidential denials.<\/p>\n

NRO\u00a0contributor<\/em>\u00a0Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the\u00a0Hoover Institution<\/a>. His latest book is\u00a0<\/em>The Savior Generals<\/a>,<\/em><\/span>\u00a0published this spring by<\/em>Bloomsbury<\/em>\u00a0Books.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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, we are only now learning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6312,"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":[11,187,536],"tags":[1045,357,186,1044,447,284],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/79713948_47244e8c2a.jpg?fit=400%2C273&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1DN","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6331,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-mother-of-all-scandals\/","url_meta":{"origin":6311,"position":0},"title":"The Mother of All Scandals","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 13, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media IRS? 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For the foreseeable future, each time an American receives a tax query, he will wonder to what degree his politics ensures enhanced or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Benghazi"","block_context":{"text":"Benghazi","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/benghazi\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5944,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-tainted-campaign\/","url_meta":{"origin":6311,"position":1},"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":5942,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/there-is-no-there-there\/","url_meta":{"origin":6311,"position":2},"title":"There Is No There There?","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 14, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Senator Harry Reid may be right that we should wait for the full sordid details before demanding resignations from an increasingly politicized and now apparently confessional IRS (yet the proof of the pudding is that groups such as\u00a0Media Matters, Think Progress,\u00a0Moveon.org, and Organizing for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Benghazi"","block_context":{"text":"Benghazi","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/benghazi\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7556,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/was-benghazi-a-scandal\/","url_meta":{"origin":6311,"position":3},"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. 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