peacefare.net

What me worry?

I have a skeptical reaction to the current Washington scandals.  The editing of the Benghazi talking points strikes me as unworthy of a news story on an inside page.  Why is the Internal Revenue Service’s close scrutiny of a flood of patriotic “tea party” registrations not viewed as a rigorous effort to carry out its mandate in the face of potentially fraudulent tax exemptions?  How come politicians who called for vigorous prosecution of the AP leak of information about a foiled terrorist plot are now upset that the Justice Department is pursuing the investigation with vigor?

These are not Watergate-league affairs, yet.  No one has connected the President to any of them.  He referred to the Benghazi incident as a terrorist attack the next day.  The inspector general at the IRS found no evidence of White House involvement, even if Washington-based political appointees did know about the matter.  The AP investigation is a Justice Department responsibility, from which the Attorney General recused himself because the FBI had at one point questioned him as a possible source of the leak.

The IRS affair is potentially the most serious of these scandals.  The inspector general’s report documents mismanagement in responding to a sharp increase in applications for tax exemptions from Tea Party and other right wing groups.  What it does not show is whether this response was out of the ordinary.  Would a sharp increase in environmental organization applications for tax exemption have triggered a similar response?  No one should be unhappy to see the IRS closely scrutinizing organizations that ask for tax exemptions.  I might even crack a smile to hear tea partiers suggesting that the IRS should have hired more employees if it had trouble reviewing all the applications for tax exemptions.  It is is the implied political bias, still unproven, that is most disturbing.

Massaging of talking points is a bureaucratic art unworthy of serious attention.  Susan Rice should have known better than to use them.

The AP leak is troubling mainly because a government investigation of this sort could have a chilling effect on confidential sources for journalists.  But I confess to surprise that confidential informants are still using telephones to spill the beans, or even to make appointments to spill the beans.  And it would be best if the culprit were found.

No one is (yet) blaming the Administration for the military’s various sexual abuse scandals, which seem somehow to involve disproportionately those responsible for preventing sexual abuse.  Fixing the culture from which these incidents grow will not be easy.

Yesterday’s international embarrassment came in Moscow.  The Russians appear to have caught a CIA agent red-handed in an attempt to recruit a Russian agent of their Federal Security Service.  Rarely does Moscow go so far as to release video of an agent with his bozotic tradecraft tools:  wigs, eyeglasses, a map of Moscow.  He lacked only false moustaches.  This does not bode well for budding cooperation with the Russians on Syria, though it likely won’t derail their help with the withdrawal from Afghanistan or their participation in the nuclear talks with Iran.

The news media are delighted that so much is happening to embarrass the Obama administration at a time when other news is lacking.  The president was already on the ropes.  Gun background checks have failed in Congress, immigration reform at best is moving slowly, and the budget won’t be ripe for serious negotiation until the Feds bump up against the budget ceiling again in the fall.  This is weeks later than anticipated, as revenues are running ahead of projections and the deficit falling more rapidly than anticipated.  I’ll let you know when someone decides to celebrate that.

The international significance of all this is that it puts the administration off balance in dealing with foreign policy issues.  A president who had convinced Congress to pass gun background checks, could be confident Congress would pass immigration reform and could hope for a budget deal would be in a stronger position internationally as well as domestically.  It would be even better if the president were not defending himself from charges of downplaying terrorism, using the IRS to discomfit his domestic opponents and infringing on freedom of the press.

There are serious international questions out there requiring American leadership.  Will it be possible to move ahead on a Middle East peace process that stalled in Obama’s first term?  Will Russia and the US find a way to manage a political process to end the Syrian civil war?  Can the administration bring to conclusion big Atlantic and Pacific trade agreements?  Will Afghanistan survive the withdrawal of the Americans and their international coalition partners from combat roles?  Can the administration somehow end nuclear weapons programs in North Korea and Iran without military action?

So yes, I do worry, even if Alfred E. Neuman would advise against it.