SLATE COLUMN: … President Obama isn’t a stranger to mishaps, mistakes, and improprieties. His attorney general, Eric Holder, faced contempt of Congress over a failed “gunwalking” operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; his State Department was raked over coals for the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya; his Internal Revenue Service was criticized for rejecting nonprofit applications from conservative groups; he was savaged for the initial failure of healthcare.gov, and his Secret Service has had to deal with questions of basic competence and accountability.
But unlike Iran–Contra or Clinton’s impeachment, none of these were consequential for Obama’s presidency. “Fast and Furious” ended with a whimper. An outside investigation from Fortune magazine—as well as investigations from House Republicans and the inspector general of the Justice Department—found no evidence that Holder (or the White House) was involved with the operation. Likewise, in the 2½ years since the tragedy in Benghazi, five congressional committees and the State Department’s Accountability Review Board have released reports on the attacks. The latest one, from the House Select Intelligence Committee, is an almost full exoneration of White House officials that debunks the conspiracies around the event. According to the GOP–penned report, there was no stand down of military support, no intelligence failure prior to the attacks, no false White House talking points, and no cover-up of evidence.
No one blames Obama for the Secret Service fiascos, and while the IRS business looked like a serious scandal, subsequent scrutiny turned up practically nothing. A Senate report found “no evidence of IRS political bias” in the agency’s actions, while a report from the House Oversight Committee failed to find coordination between IRS officials and political operatives in the White House. Even the most critical reports—which condemned the IRS for an alleged “inability to keep politics out of objective decisions about interpretation of the tax code”—didn’t connect agency behavior to the president. The general conclusion—condemnation aside—was that the IRS had gone too far in trying to keep political advocacy groups from claiming tax-exempt status… (more)
