Is Barack Obama acting like Richard Nixon?
As someone who lived through the massive criminality and mendacity of Watergate, I take these comparisons seriously.
The shorthand “Watergate” stands for more than what the Nixon White House dismissed as a third-rate burglary at Democratic headquarters; it encompasses other break-ins, wiretaps, tax audits, hush money, cover-ups and perjury that sent many administration officials to jail and drove a president from office.
So for some on the right to accuse the current president of Nixonian behavior is a heavy charge indeed.
Here’s how Victor Davis Hanson frames it in National Review:
“Nixon tried to use the Internal Revenue Service to go after his political enemies — although his IRS chiefs at least refused his orders to focus on liberals…
“Nixon ignored settled law and picked and chose which statutes he would enforce — from denying funds for the Clean Water Act to ignoring congressional subpoenas.
“Nixon attacked TV networks and got into personal arguments with journalists such as CBS’s Dan Rather…
“Nixon wanted the Federal Communications Commission to hold up the licensing of some television stations on the basis of their political views…
“Nixon went after ‘enemies.’ He ordered surveillance to hound his suspected political opponents and was paranoid about leaks.”
Pretty bad stuff, right?
Now Davis lays out the particulars against this administration:
“The IRS? So far, the Obama-era IRS has succeeded in hounding nonprofit tea-party groups into political irrelevancy…
“The FCC? According to FCC commissioner Ajit Pai, Obama’s agency, until outrage arose, had planned ‘to ask station managers, news directors, journalists, television anchors and on-air reporters to tell the government about their “news philosophy” and how the station ensures that the community gets critical information.’…
“Enemies? Federal authorities jailed a video maker for a minor probation violation after the Obama administration falsely blamed him for causing a riot that led to the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi in September 2012…
“Going after reporters? Obama regularly blames Fox News by name for its criticism…
“Ignoring the law? The Affordable Care Act as currently administered bears little resemblance to the law that was passed by Congress and signed by the president. Federal immigration law is now a matter of enforcing what the president allows and ignoring the rest.
“Wiretaps? Well, aside from the electronic surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency, the Obama Justice Department secretly monitored Fox News reporter and sometime critic James Rosen.”
The problem with most of these examples is there’s no evidence that Obama ordered, or knew about, these efforts. And that’s very different from Nixon, who as we know from the secret tapes, would talk about breaking into the Brookings Institution.
One prominent exception would be the surveillance of journalists such as those at the Associated Press and Fox’s James Rosen. Obama may not have personally known in advance, but his attorney general, Eric Holder, did.
Perhaps one day evidence will emerge that the president or his top aides encouraged the IRS Cincinnati field office to crack down on conservative groups, but so far there’s no proof.
The FCC’s aborted effort to question TV newsrooms about bias and philosophy was incredibly boneheaded and disturbing, but there is no sign of White House involvement—as opposed to Nixon’s FCC challenging the licenses of two Washington Post stations.
Did Obama order the filmmaker jailed? He rips Fox all the time, but he has sat down with Bill O’Reilly twice.
It is troubling that the president keeps unilaterally changing the implementation of ObamaCare. But it was George W. Bush who ramped up the practice of “signing statements” that reserved his right to ignore parts of newly passed congressional laws. (The House on Wednesday passed an "enforce the law" act on a largely party-line vote, and the administration is threatening a veto.)
Criticize Obama all you want. Davis has a point that civil libertarians who railed against Republican presidents have given Obama a pass (on such issues as NSA surveillance, I would add). But Nixonian conduct is an awfully high bar to clear unless you can show that a president personally condoned lawbreaking.
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