By 1968, President Lyndon Baines Johnson was finally done in by his \u201ccredibility gap\u201d \u2014 the growing abyss between what he said about, and what was actually happening inside, Vietnam.<\/p>\n
![\"800px-Barack_Obama_in_the_Oval_Office,_April_2010\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/800px-Barack_Obama_in_the_Oval_Office_April_2010.jpg?resize=300%2C199&ssl=1\")
\u201cModified limited hangout\u201d and \u201cinoperative\u201d were infamous euphemisms that Nixon-administration officials used to mask lies about the Watergate scandal. After a while, few believed any of the initial Reagan-administration disavowals that it was not trading \u201carms for hostages\u201d in the Iran\u2013Contra scandal.<\/p>\n
George H. W. Bush thundered during his campaign that voters should \u201cread my lips: no new taxes,\u201d only to agree later to raise them. Bill Clinton\u2019s infamous assertion that he \u201cdid not have sexual relations with that woman\u201d was followed by proof that he did just that with Monica Lewinsky.<\/p>\n
The George W. Bush administration warned the nation about stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and never quite recovered its credibility after the WMD were not found. No one believed Bush when he told incompetent FEMA deputy director Michael Brown that in the midst of the Katrina mess he was doing a \u201check of a job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet the distortions and lack of credibility of the Obama administration have matched and now trumped those of its predecessors. The public may have long ago forgotten that Obama did not close down Guantanamo as promised, or cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term, or stop the revolving door of lobbyists coming in and out of the executive branch.<\/p>\n
The public may even have forgiven the president when the stimulus bill never lowered unemployment as promised, or when his misleading boasts about vast increases in oil and gas production came to fruition despite, not because, of his efforts.<\/p>\n
But the distortions and broken promises have now become so frequent that many at home and abroad are finally tuning out the president. Almost nothing promised about the Affordable Care Act is proving true. Contrary to presidential assurances, Obamacare has not lowered premiums or deductibles. It will not reduce the deficit or improve business competitiveness. It really will alter existing health plans and in some cases lead to their cancellation. Signing up is certainly not as easy as buying something online on Amazon.<\/p>\n
Two considerations often turn presidential ethical lapses into political disasters. Unfortunately, both apply to the present administration.<\/p>\n
First, the economy must be robust to offset the deception. Voters rejected the first George Bush for deceiving them, largely because the economy tanked in 1992. Yet the public did not turn on an impeached Bill Clinton, since\u00a0the economy was quite robust in 1998. Watergate\u2019s lies came at a time of oil embargos and stagnation. In contrast, Reagan survived Iran\u2013Contra because of the boom years.<\/p>\n
Second, we expect presidential mendacity to be sporadic rather than serial. By 1968, even when LBJ told the truth, no one listened. In 1973, no one believed anything that the Nixon administration asserted.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, Barack Obama has presided over five years of continued economic sluggishness that have not diverted attention from his administration\u2019s disingenuousness. If unemployment were down to 5 percent, the gross national product growing at 4 percent, and the budget nearly balanced, we might have forgotten about the Benghazi cover-up, the monitoring of AP reporters, the politicization of the IRS and its vast overpayment in income-tax credits, the NSA disclosures, and the Syrian mess. Or if Obama had spoken untruthfully only once, made false promises just twice, or offered empty boasts merely three times, he might have been forgiven.<\/p>\n
If Republicans agree to pass a comprehensive immigration-reform bill, can they be sure that Obama won\u2019t suspend \u201csettled law\u201d on border enforcement, as he did with the employer mandate? If Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius assures us yet again that Obamacare is suffering from a mere glitch, why should we believe her?<\/p>\n
For that matter, will a Saudi ambassador or an Israeli diplomat now trust Obama when he swears that Syria\u2019s next use of chemical weapons will cross a red line, or that another newly discovered secret Iranian nuclear facility is a game-changer?<\/p>\n
Will German chancellor Angela Merkel listen to Obama when he insists that the NSA did not monitor her phone? Would the American public trust administration officials if they stated on television that the next attack on a U.S. embassy was due to anger over a mere video, or that Guantanamo would be closed in 2014?<\/p>\n
Obama understandably came into office with a sense of immunity. His personal story and nontraditional background made him an emblematic figure. An enthralled media had unfortunately redefined its role as an appendage to, rather than an auditor of, the presidency. After the unpopular Bush administration, even Obama\u2019s empty \u201chope and change\u201d platitudes were considered deep.<\/p>\n
Yet after nearly five years of scandals, untruths, and hard economic times, a now-ignored Barack Obama has finally learned that even an iconic president can tell one too many untruths.<\/p>\n
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.<\/em>\u00a0His latest book is<\/em>\u00a0The Savior Generals<\/a><\/span>,\u00a0published this spring by<\/em>\u00a0Bloomsbury Books.<\/em>\u00a0You can reach him by e-mailing\u00a0<\/em>author@victorhanson.com<\/a><\/em>. <\/em><\/p>\n \u00a9 2013 Tribune Media Services, Inc.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The former hope-and-change president no longer gets a pass. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 By 1968, President Lyndon Baines Johnson was finally done in by his \u201ccredibility gap\u201d \u2014 the growing abyss between what he said about, and what was actually happening inside, Vietnam. \u201cModified limited hangout\u201d and \u201cinoperative\u201d were infamous euphemisms that […]<\/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":[146,78],"tags":[12,74,286,901,67,284,76],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1K1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10948,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/fisa-gate-is-scarier-than-watergate\/","url_meta":{"origin":6697,"position":0},"title":"FISA-Gate is Scarier than Watergate","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 8, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review The Watergate scandal of 1972\u201374 was uncovered largely because of outraged Democratic politicians and a bulldog media. They both claimed that they had saved American democracy from the Nixon administration\u2019s attempt to warp the CIA and FBI to cover up an otherwise minor, though\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "FISA"","block_context":{"text":"FISA","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/fisa\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5926,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/is-benghazi-becoming-a-watergate-or-iran-contra-or-both\/","url_meta":{"origin":6697,"position":1},"title":"Is Benghazi Becoming a Watergate, or Iran-Contra, or Both?","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 6, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Benghazi cannot be dismissed with \u201clong ago\u201d or \u201cwhat difference does it make\u201d exasperation, given it may have the cover-up and civil-liberties aspects of Watergate and the weapon-transfers and foreign-policy implications of Iran-Contra. 1. Can a State Department be credible that on its own\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":818,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/when-administrations-implode\/","url_meta":{"origin":6697,"position":2},"title":"When Administrations Implode","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 23, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Administration meltdowns are hardly novel. In almost every presidency there comes a moment when sheer chaos, whether self-induced or the result of an outside crisis, takes hold. Vietnam had effectively destroyed Lyndon Johnson by 1967. Watergate unraveled the Richard Nixon administration, as the\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":7521,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-future-is-1979\/","url_meta":{"origin":6697,"position":3},"title":"Our Future Is 1979","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 4, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Obama\u2019s foreign-policy weakness encourages our enemies and disheartens our allies.\u00a0 by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online The final acts of the Obama foreign policy will play out in the next two years. Unfortunately, bad things happen when the world concludes that the American president has become weakened, distracted,\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 of Jimmy Carter holding cabinet meeting 1977 photo by US National Archives","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/375px-Jimmy_Carter_convenes_a_cabinet_meeting_-_NARA_-_175123.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11016,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/rethinking-watergate\/","url_meta":{"origin":6697,"position":4},"title":"Rethinking Watergate","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 22, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Hoover Institution The Watergate break-in is now 45 years old. The scandal is as distant from our own time as it was once from 1928. The median age of Americans is about 38 years old. Half of all Americans were likely born after the break-in. But\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Donald Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6176,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-press-and-dr-faustus\/","url_meta":{"origin":6697,"position":5},"title":"The Press and Dr. Faustus","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 5, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Too late, American journalists realize their mistake. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online In the old Dr. Faustus story, a young scholar bargains away his soul to the devil for promises of obtaining almost anything he wants. The American media has done much the same thing with the Obama\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":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6697"}],"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=6697"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6699,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6697\/revisions\/6699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}