What would a president do if he were furious over criticism, or felt that his noble aims justified ![\"Nixon_while_in_US_Congress\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Nixon_while_in_US_Congress.jpg?resize=180%2C225&ssl=1\")
most means of attaining them?<\/p>\n
Answer that by comparing the behavior of Richard Nixon to that of an increasingly similar Barack Obama.<\/p>\n
Nixon tried to use the Internal Revenue Service to go after his political enemies \u2014 although his IRS chiefs at least refused his orders to focus on liberals.<\/p>\n
Nixon ignored settled law and picked and chose which statutes he would enforce \u2014 from denying funds for the Clean Water Act to ignoring congressional subpoenas.<\/p>\n
Nixon attacked TV networks and got into personal arguments with journalists such as CBS\u2019s Dan Rather.<\/p>\n
Nixon wanted the Federal Communications Commission to hold up the licensing of some television stations on the basis of their political views.<\/p>\n
Nixon went after \u201cenemies.\u201d He ordered surveillance to hound his suspected political opponents and was paranoid about leaks.<\/p>\n
Now, consider how President Obama has directed government, as opposed to the platitudes he has offered about how it should operate.<\/p>\n
The IRS? So far, the Obama-era IRS has succeeded in hounding nonprofit tea-party groups into political irrelevancy. By holding up rulings on nonprofit status, the IRS ensured that the Tea Party\u2019s big political wins of 2010 would not be a factor in the president\u2019s 2012 reelection bid. Disgraced former IRS official Lois Lerner headed the division that focused inordinately on conservative groups. But she has refused to answer questions to Congress \u2014 invoking the Fifth Amendment to protect herself from self-incrimination.<\/p>\n
The FCC? According to FCC commissioner Ajit Pai, Obama\u2019s agency, until outrage arose, had planned \u201cto ask station managers, news directors, journalists, television anchors and on-air reporters to tell the government about their \u2018news philosophy\u2019 and how the station ensures that the community gets critical information.\u201d In other words, Obama FCC appointees dreamed of predicating federal licensing on having politically correct views similar to their own.<\/p>\n
Enemies? Federal authorities jailed a video maker for a minor probation violation after the Obama administration falsely blamed him for causing a riot that led to the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi in September 2012. In truth, the attack was an organized terrorist hit facilitated by our own lax security.<\/p>\n
Dinesh D\u2019Souza has written and filmed some very unflattering things about Obama. He might be as openly critical of the president as Daniel Ellsberg once was of Nixon. In January, the office of Obama-appointed U.S. attorney Preet Bharara indicted D\u2019Souza on federal charges of violating campaign-finance laws. If convicted, D\u2019Souza could be imprisoned for up to seven years. Usually, those accused of such transgressions face far lesser charges involving fines.<\/p>\n
Speaking of the Obama Justice Department, its former Office of Public Affairs director, Tracy Schmaler, was reported to have worked closely with the George Soros\u2013funded Media Matters for America on stories slamming critics of the administration. When the story alleging this public-private political partnership came out, Schmaler resigned \u2014 and then went to work for former Obama political operative David Axelrod.<\/p>\n
Going after reporters? Obama regularly blames Fox News by name for its criticism. In 2008, he seemed to enter into a personal grudge match with Fox\u2019s Sean Hannity.<\/p>\n
Ignoring the law? The Affordable Care Act as currently administered bears little resemblance to the law that was passed by Congress and signed by the president. Federal immigration law is now a matter of enforcing what the president allows and ignoring the rest.<\/p>\n
Wiretaps? Well, aside from the electronic surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency, the Obama Justice Department secretly monitored Fox News reporter and sometime critic James Rosen. The Justice Department even seized his e-mails and phone records in fear that he might publish administration leaks. To hide these shenanigans, the Justice Department fraudulently dubbed Rosen a flight risk and a possible criminal co-conspirator.<\/p>\n
There are a few differences, however, between the transgressions of Nixon and Obama, and America\u2019s reaction to each.<\/p>\n
The old watchdogs of civil liberties that took on Nixon \u2014 the American media of the Watergate era \u2014 are now silent. Obama is not right-wing, easily caricatured, unappealing, or an old anti-Communist agitator\u00a0but an iconic liberal, charismatic, and, in the past, an experienced community organizer. A Democratic Senate majority now has little interest in auditing Obama, though it once zealously pounced on Nixon\u2019s misdeeds.<\/p>\n
If you once suggested that Nixon\u2019s team was violating constitutional principles, you were hailed as speaking truth to power. Try that with progressive Obama\u00a0and you are likely to be caricatured as some sort of embittered tea-party zealot at best, a retrograde racist at worst. Nixon ended impeached and disgraced; Obama may well enjoy a lucrative and in-demand post-presidency.<\/p>\n
Both presidents once had enormous potential and high poll ratings, but their treatment of the Constitution was as Orwellian as it was unnecessary. Before Nixon imploded, he was warned to stop it.<\/p>\n
Will Obama?<\/p>\n
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of\u00a0<\/em>The Savior Generals<\/a><\/span><\/em>.<\/em>\u00a0You can reach him by e-mailing\u00a0<\/em>author@victorhanson.com<\/a><\/em>. <\/em><\/p>\n \u00a9 2014 Tribune Media Services, Inc.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 of an increasingly similar Barack […]<\/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":[146,78,99],"tags":[12,1045,933,1044,40,901,660,447,284],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1QK","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5954,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/nixon-is-a-fair-comparison\/","url_meta":{"origin":7114,"position":0},"title":"Nixon Is a Fair Comparison","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 20, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"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. Nixon\u2019s sins were primarily domestic; no one died. Benghazi\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":6311,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-watergates\/","url_meta":{"origin":7114,"position":1},"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":11016,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/rethinking-watergate\/","url_meta":{"origin":7114,"position":2},"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":10128,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/will-2020-be-another-1972-for-democrats\/","url_meta":{"origin":7114,"position":3},"title":"Will 2020 Be Another 1972 for Democrats?","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 28, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/National Review Going hard to the left was the wrong lesson to learn from their narrow loss in 1968, and they could repeat the mistake. Forty-nine years ago, Vice President Hubert Humphrey was the Democratic candidate for president. The year 1968 was a tumultuous one that saw\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Democrats"","block_context":{"text":"Democrats","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/democrats\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":830,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/campaigning-on-grievances\/","url_meta":{"origin":7114,"position":4},"title":"Campaigning on Grievances","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 17, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services In 2008, a mostly unknown Barack Obama ran for president on an inclusive agenda of \u201chope and change.\u201d That upbeat message was supposed to translate into millions of green jobs, fiscal sobriety, universal healthcare, a resetting of Bush foreign policy, and racial unity.\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":1472,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/journalists-as-ring-wraiths\/","url_meta":{"origin":7114,"position":5},"title":"Journalists as Ring Wraiths","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 11, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Today\u2019s Washington journalists are like J. 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The Bob Woodward\/Ron Fournier\/Lanny Davis psychodrama is another small reminder that\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\/7114"}],"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=7114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7116,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7114\/revisions\/7116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}