May 222013
 

(You know, you always feel the door before you open it.  I think the political fire isn’t very far away, Mr. President.)

OK, ready?  Here goes:

  • The President’s lawyer learned of the IRS targeting of conservative groups in April.
  • The President’s chief of staff learned of the IRS targeting of conservative groups in April.
  • The President himself learned of the IRS targeting of conservative groups in the news on May 10.

That’s the story right now from the White House.  Really.

I think right now it is still marginally possible for Barack Obama’s defenders to go with the hey-what’s-the-big-deal approach.  Manufactured scandal, Republicans on a witch hunt, blah blah blah.  Outliers are hurling charges of racism here and there.  There’s no reason to think the sociopolitical environment has suddenly become hostile to that particular brand of nonsense, so those accusations may increase a bit too.

Anything but, you know, the obvious.

I suspect we are not far from something that incontrovertibly implicates President Obama.  The truly mindless sycophants—and they are numerically significant—will continue their standard, hand-waving dismissals as if nothing has happened.  For everyone else, the time-honored tu quoque will become the primary defensive response.

One thing of which I am absolutely convinced:  no matter what emerges—no matter what—Barack Obama will never be anything but defiant and dismissive.  There is no genuine grace or decorum in him.  There is only Chicago thug.  There is only “what are you gonna do about it?  Huh?”

I think that even if it gets genuinely bad, politically speaking, for him, he can’t even fake remorse.  It’s not there to summon.

It will surprise few to read that I am not an especially big fan of our esteemed president.  He is politically bleeding right now, which is really a first in his entire time in office.  I hope it gets much worse, and I think it at least as likely that it will as it won’t.  Whatever happens, I’m thankful that his ability to do any more damage is diminished, and as a student of political communication, I’m looking forward to watching him.

 Posted by at 8:00 pm
May 142013
 

It’s amazing how much more I’m enjoying following the news now that the Obama administration is under sustained political attack.

(Poor Barry, though. He must feel so betrayed. Et tu, CNN?)

As quickly as I’d start thinking about a post today, more major developments would come.  Benghazi is only getting worse, but the IRS scandal is beginning to yawn like a chasm.  There’s no telling where the bottom of this thing is.

Guess what?  The IRS released confidential application data of tea party and patriot groups to ProPublica, an “independent” (yeah, right) corporation concerning itself with investigative journalism.

Guess what else?  Senate Democrats actively and extensively called for exactly what the IRS has admitted doing.

The inspector general’s report hasn’t even been released yet.  All of this is swirling ahead of it.

With all that has already emerged against the backdrop of Jay Carney’s unintentionally hilarious press briefing today—catch how he kept saying things like “if proven true” when the IRS has already admitted it?—it’s seeming not so ridiculous to me to wonder whether this path does eventually lead directly to the Oval Office.

 Posted by at 5:09 pm

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