A Quick Early-on Handicapping of Obama Administration Scandals: Watch, but Don’t Bet

Red Maryland

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

--Richard E. Vatz

The two most interesting questions regarding presidential
administration scandals are: 1. What each says about the political integrity of
the president and his administration, and 2. What the likely political costs
and historical costs are.

Herein is a quick analysis of the current presidential scandales
du jours in descending order of mortality of threat to the Obama
Administration:

A. The Benghazi Scandal: I think this is the worst of the controversies and will
forever hurt President Obama’s presidential reputation. It does not mean that
most historians will concur: as Richard Nixon memorably and with rhetorical
astuteness said, “It depends on who writes the history.” There is no evidence
counteracting the inference that the Administration wanted to eliminate any
public discussion that al-Qaeda terrorism was at the root of the killing of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three
other Americans in Libya. Not only is there no explanation of why President
Obama attributed the killings to an anti-Muslim tape, but there is not even an
attempt to explain why he and his administration did so for weeks following the
murders. The Administration’s irresponsible rhetoric reached its apogee when
Secretary Hillary Clinton bizarrely and angrily and rhetorically said, “We
have 4 dead Americans…what difference does it make? Was it because of a protest or because 4 people were out for a walk?”

This is a false dilemma, of course, as the issue is not whether the Americans were
killed by people out for a walk or by protesters, but whether they were killed
by terrorists, associated with al Qaeda, who are still at-large.

President Obama’s dismissing criticism as a “sideshow” and averring that there is no “there there” is a classic non-substantive response to substantive questions regarding the United States’ irresponsible actions before, during and after the attacks,and his misrepresentation of his rhetorical responses immediately following the attacks will exist forever and not reflect well on him and his presidency,regardless of who writes the history.

B. The I.R.S. Scandal: all of rhetoric (persuasive discourse) begins with selection
and ends with spin. Analogously, the I.R.S. was involved in what appears to be
criminal anti-democratic selection in scrutinizing conservative groups
profoundly disproportionately. This includes, as summarized by USA Today, “put[ting] a hold on all Tea Party applications for non-profit status [and] approving applications from similar liberal groups.” The issue of whether any such groups should get non-profit status is a canard or “sideshow.”

The initial reaction by Democrats has been all over the place, but some particularly responsible – and politically astute – responses have come from the president who showed with some, but perhaps not completely sufficient, anger his contempt for the use of federal agencies for political purposes, calling it “intolerable and inexcusable.”

The potential for political consequences will lie in a variation of Howard Baker’s tried-and-true Watergate line, “What did who know; when did they know it; and what did they do about it.”

The estimate here is thatthis will not much hurt the president, but will not go away. The Attorney General will – and I am not sure here – have to resign but claim it is due to his “pursuing other interests.”

The Associated Press Scandal: the Administration has proudly owned up to secretly examining the A.P.’s records for months. The A.P. has condemned the actions, calling them a "massive and unprecedented
intrusion." Attorney General Eric Holder says that the Justice Department
was protecting the American people against a security threat: as CBS News puts
it, revealing information concerning“a Saudi double agent who had infiltrated
al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.”

     The excellent CBS correspondent John Miller, with an extensive background in intelligence work, says that the British, obviously America’s preeminent ally, complained bitterly about the breach of national and international security.

The A.P. has complained that the actions by the Justice Department violated their (A.P.’s) rights, and that it constituted the “plunder[ing] of two months of news-gathering materials to seek information that might interest them.”

          The estimate here is that this “scandal”will, unlike the first two, peter out, and Americans will, correctly or incorrectly, see this as almost an inside fight between the government and an unsympathetic press, with far fewer consequences to our Constitutional rights. The concern
for security will trump concern for the Associated Press.

Professor Vatz teaches political rhetoric at Towson University
and is author of the book, The Only
Authentic Book of Persuasion (Second Edition), Kendall Hunt, 2012, 2013