Scandal in the Age f Obama (or, the Teflon President)

[DainBramaged]

Barack Obama was not in office for more than a couple of minutes, it seemed, before conservatives began trying to cover him in muck. Yet for almost three years, the administration has been scandal-less, not scandalous. In a capital culture that over generations has become practiced at the art of flinging mud pies, Republicans and a few reporters have been tossing charges against a Teflon wall.

First there was the pathetic charge that Obama was born in Kenya and therefore ineligible to be president. The story was heavily stoked by the conservative media, aided by the non-denial denials of GOP leaders, and gave Donald Trump his fifteen minutes of presidential contender fame. It was never taken seriously by the mainstream press, but the president ended the story in April of this year by taking the unprecedented step of releasing his birth certificate, a tacit acknowledgment that the desperate effort to smear him had become a political distraction.

This came after two years in which Fox News and congressional Republicans tried to make the case that Obama had abused his power by hiring unaccountable “policy czars.” Though the agitation lead to the ouster of a low-level White House policy aide, the broader charge never passed the Washington laugh test—policy czars have been fixtures in every administration since Richard Nixon’s.

During the 2010 campaign, Representative Darrell Issa, who would later become chairman of a key congressional investigative panel, called Obama “one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times.” He then walked the charge back for lack of evidence. Since taking over the committee, Issa has launched a series of investigations into alleged political malfeasance—including, for instance, that DNC fundraisers held in the White House violated the Hatch Act—that have so far yielded nothing.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/november_december_2011/features/scandal_in_the_age_of_obama032995.php#

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