A Letter To The Editor

A Letter To The Editor that I submitted to the Richmond Times-Dispatch was published today! Frequent readers of this blog will likely not be surprised by the content:


Washington is caught up in Scandalmania 2013, and so, it seems, is the letters section of this newspaper. Since news of the IRS scrutinizing conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status and the Benghazi attacks, there has been a flurry of letters from conservative correspondents breathlessly accusing President Obama of corruption and claiming that he is the second coming of Richard Nixon

As more facts have been released to the general public, however, Benghazi and the IRS controversy have begun to look less like scandals and more like molehills.

Take Benghazi. Emails released from the White House reveal that it was the intelligence community – not the White House – that was responsible for the infamous talking points from which Susan Rice read on Meet the Press. Besides Rice, Obama is also absolved from guilt, as military analysts have gone on record to say that even if military planes had been sent to Benghazi during the attacks, they would not have arrived in time to render aid. So much for Benghazi being used to derail Obama’s presidency.

Attempts to turn the IRS controversy have met with similar difficulties. Despite claims to the contrary, liberal groups received the same scrutiny as conservative groups, suggesting that the IRS was not targeting political opponents to the president but simply doing what it thought was its job. A conservative-leaning manager of the IRS recently told The Washington Post that he was responsible for the scrutiny of political groups and not the White House.

There are certainly valid reasons to be upset with Obama. Recent leaks revealing that the government has been spying on citizens’ phone records is appalling. If the president is to be criticized, however, he should be criticized for what he has done, and not imaginary scandals milked by the opposing party. What happened to Republicans vowing to focus on jobs, jobs, jobs?