We Deserve Truth on Presidential Scandals
"Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence." – variously attributed.
"We’re portrayed by Republicans as either being lying or idiots. It’s actually closer to us being idiots." – anonymous White House aide involved in creating the mendacious post-Benghazi talking points to Sharyl Attkisson, CBS News.
Those may ultimately be the administration’s best, most benign defenses of President Barack Obama’s multiple scandals. But, since his voters presumably didn’t think they were electing an incompetent idiot, it’s difficult for most Americans to take reassurance from either.
The White House/State Department’s Benghazi cover-up, IRS harassment of conservative groups and media intimidation and intrusions by the Justice Department are currently the most prominent, but don’t overlook other new or unresolved scandals.
Those include: "Fast and Furious" gunrunning into Mexico that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Mexicans and two American lawmen; Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is alleged to have raised money illegally from organizations her agency regulates; Obama’s EPA levied selective fines and used fake e-mail accounts to avoid detection of secret coordination between the agency head and radical environmentalists; drones targeted American citizens abroad without due process.
Although some of the known evidence points to incompetence, political abuse and/or embarrassed butt-covering, there is the appearance, at least, of governmental malfeasance or criminal wrongdoing in each of the president’s scandals.
The administration and, especially, its loyal followers who dogmatically adhere to the notion of Obama’s purity should be the people most eager to get to the bottom of all of these events, the former to clear themselves and the latter to prove their idol’s innocence.
Other than the details and the identities of the perpetrators, these are the central unanswered questions surrounding Obama’s scandals: Why hasn’t the administration come clean on any of them; why aren’t the administration and its enablers clamoring for proper investigations; and why are they demonizing those who wish to understand the facts? Innocent people waste no time sharing exculpatory evidence. It’s the guilty who stonewall and spin yarns.
As they say in Washington, the optics are bad. The delays and shifting administration narratives only reinforce the suspicion that the realities are worse than the known facts. If there are no new revelations to make things worse, why not admit what everyone already knows and move on?
The kindest explanation is that it’s simply not in Obama’s narcissistic makeup to admit anything, but one need not be terribly cynical to suspect serious wrongdoing.
Congress, where multiple inquiries involving members from both parties have been launched, is the appropriate place for the investigations. There have been calls for special prosecutors, but special prosecutors would only cause delays.
The Wall Street Journal noted: "With a special prosecutor, the probe would immediately move to the shadows, and the Administration…would use it as an excuse to limit its cooperation with Congress… [a] special prosecutor is a form of cheap political grace that gets a quick headline at the cost of less political accountability."
Our system cannot be improved without assigning proper blame. Glenn Reynolds observed: "Government officials are happy making and executing plans that affect the lives of millions, but when things go wrong … they’re willing to accept the responsibility, but they’re not willing to take the blame. What’s the difference? People who are to blame lose their jobs. People who are ‘responsible,’ do not. The blame, such as it is, winds up deflected on to The System, or something else suitably abstract."
Congressional Republicans must resist temptations to grandstand. The known facts in each scandal appear damning. One suspects there’s much more to learn. If they are truly scandals, more whistleblowers will come forward. Democrats worried about re-election will defect.
Conduct the investigations dispassionately, gather evidence from subpoenaed documents and sworn testimony and allow the facts to speak for themselves.
There may be more evidence of political abuse aimed at winning an election, some illegal — especially on the Benghazi cover-up and IRS actions.
Some Obama administration actions invite its description as a criminal enterprise. Allowing the administration to blow off real events with distractions and unsupported, superficial declarations of innocence is unacceptable. America deserves the truth.
Wouldn’t an innocent administration want us to have it?
Jerry Shenk is a PennLive/Patriot-News community columnist. Readers may email him at: [email protected]
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