"President Passerby"

Dana Milbank, opining in today’s WaPo on the IRS’s Targetgate:

The president “found out about the news reports yesterday on the road,” he added.

And now that Obama has learned about this extraordinary abuse of power, he’s not doing a thing about it. “We are not involved at the White House in any decisions made in connection with ongoing criminal investigations,” Carney argued.

Reuters correspondent Jeff Mason asked how Obama felt about “being compared to President Nixon on this.”

The press secretary laughed. “People who make those kinds of comparisons need to check their history,” he said.

Carney had a point there. Nixon was a control freak. Obama seems to be the opposite: He wants no control over the actions of his administration.

First, I’d like to apologize for having even thought of, much less typed out “Targetgate.” And secondly I’d like to say that when a Vile Prog has lost Dana Milbank, then you can safely bet this is the scandal that will cleave the MSM from being permanently on its knees for Obama.

But now let’s get to the meat.

Milbank is having a little fun here at the President’s expense, and he certainly sounds like he’s upset over the whole thing — but he hasn’t really thought this one through.

“Plausible deniability” is called that because the deniability is plausible, not because it’s true. The President doth protest too much, don’t you think? But even if Obama really is so far out of the loop on this one (and all the other ones), this Administration certainly enjoys a Nixonian tone. And where that tone comes from is the question Milbank hasn’t asked. But anyone who has ever worked for a large organization (a major newsdaily, just as an example) knows that underlings take their cues from the top. The Boss doesn’t have to say, “Bug these particular reporters at this particular news organization.” But he shouldn’t have to, either. People know what the Big Boss likes — particularly when it comes to the nasty bits.

So when Milbank writes that Obama “wants no control over the actions of his administration,” he’s really taking on Jay Carney’s job of providing public cover for Obama, even if this once it’s minus the lip service. Carney needs to paint a picture of a clueless President, just for appearances sake, because that’s his job. He’s Obama’s press flack, and a particularly offensive one at that. Milbank is a political reporter and columnist at the newspaper that brought down Nixon. There’s a difference between the two, or at least there’s supposed to be.

Instead, Milbank seems to have bought fully into Carney’s excuses that everyone in the Executive Branch is lawless — except for the President himself.

Really? That’s an awful lot of deniability you have to find plausible, month after month, in a series of crises spiraling up in number and in seriousness.

Repeating Carney’s talking points is still repeating Carney’s talking points, even if it’s done with Milbank’s knowing sneer. He should instead be asking the tough questions about why Obama seems content to be a passerby in his own Administration. Because either we have another President who is every bit much as power-hungry and vindictive as Nixon, or we have a thuggish community organizer who has been way out of his depth since Day One.

Which is it, Dana?