There’s a problem for President Obama in dealing with the cascading public-relations crises involving the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Justice — a problem that can’t be repaired by “fixing the problem,” as he promised to do yesterday with the IRS in a rainy press conference at the White House.
The problem is that these are agencies the Obama presidency has empowered and is in the process of empowering still further. They are arms of the federal government whose authority and reach he wishes to increase — at a time when the American people might be coming to think that, especially now, these agencies need to be reined in.
Indeed, in the case of the FBI wiretapping 20 Associated Press phone lines in secret as it searched for a leaker, the president yesterday essentially defended it and stood foursquare behind his attorney general Eric Holder. Leaks should certainly be investigated, and aggressively, but this was an investigation of unprecedented scope, and it was carried on as though The Associated Press was a hostile actor.
Now, some of the Right would wish that were true of the AP, but like most mainstream organizations it has done what it could to carry water for an administration that turned on it so easily. And the available evidence thus far suggests the AP was very accommodating to the administration.
It just might not have been accommodating enough for someone’s taste.
Indeed, the more one finds out about the AP matter, the more reason there is to worry that something untoward might have happened.
The leak investigation was triggered by AP releasing a sensitive national-security story in May 2012. But it did so only at a point when it had been told by the CIA that the security danger had passed.
The CIA had asked AP to hold the story, and AP did — until it heard the White House was going to go public with it at a news event the next day. At which point the AP published its scoop.
Here’s the problem with this. If the leak was so destructive, why didn’t the investigation of the leak begin the second the administration found out AP had the story? And why would it have failed to inform the AP that it was initiating the leak search, which is evidently settled practice in these matters?
The possibility arises that the investigation might have been triggered because of anger within the administration that the White House’s news event — announcing the foiling of a terrorist plot in the midst of the president’s re-election effort — was ruined. And that anger may not only have been directed at the leaker, but at the AP.
That would be a self-evident misuse of the Justice Department’s subpoena power.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Eric Holder is behaving very oddly here. He announced that he had formally recused himself on the AP matter, though the reason he gave — that he had to speak to the press too often — was nonsensical.
Then, on Wednesday, Holder testified before a House panel under oath. When pressed, he said that he did not remember when he had recused himself, and that he had not done so on paper and he had not informed the White House.
The problem here is that if Holder didn’t recuse himself on paper, then he didn’t recuse himself at all legally.
Why would he say he did this when he didn’t? And why would he open himself up to a possible perjury charge for claiming he’d done something he didn’t do? This is all very peculiar and discomfiting — and should discomfit the president as well.
As for the IRS, which subjected groups ideologically hostile to the Obama administration to illicit scrutiny, it is being given broad enforcement powers over 47 aspects of the Affordable Care Act — a k a ObamaCare.
The president is a believer in government, and he is far more worried about Republican efforts to restrict government’s reach than he is about excessive government power. That is why these problems may endure, and not only for him, but for his party as well.
Twitter: @jpodhoretz