Sometimes your read stuff and do a double take because you just can’t believe it. For instance:
Obama’s Gift to Hillary Clinton
No modern-day president has left his potential successor a less scandal-plagued legacy than Barack Obama.
We are due for a major presidential scandal. At least, that’s been the pattern for three of the last four administrations. By this point in 1987, President Reagan had fought through the Iran–Contra affair. By this point in 1999, President Clinton was coping with fallout from his impeachment. And by this point in 2007, President Bush was dealing with continued revelations into the torture at Abu Ghraib and the criminal investigation of a former aide, Scooter Libby (to say nothing of a failing economy and an unpopular war launched with bad intelligence in Iraq).
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Conservatives will huff and harrumph to the contrary, but relative to his peers, Obama has had a remarkably clean, scandal-free presidency. Unlike Reagan, he hasn’t had to offer a national apology. Unlike Clinton, he hasn’t had to face a special prosecutor. And unlike George W. Bush, he hasn’t had to answer to something like the 9/11 Commission. He’s had scandals, but not the kind that bring intra-party criticism—a sure sign that the offense is serious—or force a massive public reckoning. This isn’t a matter of polarization either. When the IRS scandal broke, Democrats as well as Republicans called for investigations. As it withered, however, it became a more partisan affair.
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Far from being a burden on Clinton’s bid, Obama is an asset. Which is why the campaign will embrace him. Not just as a conduit to black American voters, but as a good president whose policies should be continued and extended. No, this doesn’t equate to an inevitable Clinton victory, and the public may still want a change of pace after eight years of Democrats. But for Democratic partisans, it’s far preferable to the alternative world where Clinton is desperately running away from the president and his administration.Indeed, for as much as liberals have complained about Obama’s stoicism in the face of almost everything, that same quality is poised to give Democrats a key bonus in the game: Stability. And when Republicans warn of a “third Obama term,” Clinton can flip that as a good thing.
This is the Slate equivalent of “drunk blogging.” What this twit writing this does is use a malleable definition of scandal so that Scooter Libby being convicted on trumped up allegations by a malicious prosecution and the actions of some Army Reserve soldiers at Abu Ghraib are Bush scandals but since Obama didn’t order Lois Lerner to unleash the IRS on conservative groups, no harm-no foul.
The Obama presidency has been beset with scandal in a way that perhaps no other administration has, other than arguably Nixon’s.
Obama’s has been a pay to play administration where high rollers and major donors were able to use the federal government as their personal piggy bank. Solyndra and climate change whacko Tom Steyer. Obama claimed to have personal authority to determine when Congress was in session and was repudiated by the Supreme Court. But the list is long.
IRS scandal
Solyndra and all manner of ‘green energy’ boondoggles
Punishing politically incorrect auto dealers during the restructuring of Chrysler and GM
Requiring nuns and priests to have medical coverage for contraceptives
Attacking religious freedom at home and abroad… except as it applies to Muslims
Remember the low-level fly-by of Air Force One over Manhattan that caused panic?
Two words: Bowe Bergdahl.
Eavesdropping on the phones of allied leaders
Still more illegal surveillance
Letting the New Black Panther Party evade prosecution
This is just a sampling of the more minor scandals. What has distinguished this administration’s scandals from other is the willingness to kill other people, American and foreign, in order to further policy goals.
Operation Fast and Furious racked up a body count in the low hundreds and effectively destabilized large areas of the Mexican border in order to create a fact narrative to support more gun control laws.
The VA scandal killed veterans or deprived them of needed medical care for the sake of improving reporting numbers.
Letting a man with known sympathies for Islamic extremism to stay in the Army until he shot up Fort Hood… then classifying it as ‘workplace violence’ rather than a terror attack
Race baiting in an already tense Ferguson, MO, definitely increased property loss if not actual loss of life.
Of course, the perfect storm of Obama/Clinton arrogance, incompetence and duplicity was the sacking of the US consulate in Benghazi and then blaming it on some “filmmaker.”
I won’t even get into the crappy policy decisions that have turned Libya and large areas of Iraq and Syria into terrorist states; to pissed away a war won in Iraq and a winnable war in Afghanistan; or handed Egypt over to Muslim extremists; or destroyed six decades of American diplomacy in six short years.
Obama’s ability to skate above a seething cauldron of incompetence and maliciousness that would have destroyed a lesser man it a direct result of a lapdog media unwilling to do even the basics of reporting and a Congress composed of [mc_name name=’Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’R000146′ ]’s Senate, which was intent on protecting Obama at all cost, and a stump-trained House under [mc_name name=’Rep. John Boehner (R-OH)’ chamber=’house’ mcid=’B000589′ ] that was afraid to do anything lest they be called racist.
If Clinton wants to run on hers being a third Obama term it is hard to see how that results in anything but a GOP landslide.
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