Nixoneque—II

Back in early July, I noted that the ever widening Benghazi and IRS scandals had a definite Nixonesque feel to them. Yesterday, Victor Davis Hanson, a noted conservative historian, commented on the many parallels between The Nixon Whitehouse and the Obama Whitehouse. He writes:

None of these scandals so far has been as ignored as the initial Watergate break-in and associated Nixon-administration misdeeds. If the doctrinaire press [the MSM] is now leading from behind, instead of launching a full-scale attack as it did in the Watergate years, the media as a whole are far more diverse than in 1973, with so many different venues and agendas that it’s difficult to suppress the truth for long.

Remember, between when the Nixon operatives drew up their initial plans to commit illegal acts in early 1972 and when the media furor over cover-ups and lying forced Nixon out of office in late summer 1974, the time elapsed was over 30 months — a period as long as or longer than the gestation of the present scandals. Recall also that no one died in Watergate; that the IRS resisted, not abetted, calls to go after critics of the president; and that Attorney General John Mitchell did not lie under oath to Congress. Scandals wax and wane, but until the truth is told, they never quite end.

I hope that Hanson is correct, and that the outright corruption of the IRS by operatives that were either loosely or directly connected to the Obama administration and the politically-driven decision making that influenced the Benghazi coverup come to light. But there is no doubt of the truth of Hanson's words when he discusses the stonewalling that has occurred from the Obama Whitehouse:

There is also nothing new in administration denials. Both President Obama and his press secretary, Jay Carney, characterized the Benghazi, IRS, AP, and NSA allegations as “phony.” So too Nixon’s press secretary, Ron Ziegler, characterized the Watergate break-in as “a third-rate burglary attempt” and insisted that “Certain elements may try to stretch the Watergate burglary beyond what it is.” In August 1972, when news of the break-in first got out, Nixon himself assured the nation, “I can say categorically that . . . no one in the White House staff, no one in this Administration, presently employed, was involved in this very bizarre incident.” The Obama administration’s variation on outright denial is “What difference, at this point, does it make?” And when Jay Carney declares, “I accept that ‘stylistic’ might not precisely describe a change of one word to another,” I am reminded of Ron Ziegler’s quip, “This is the operative statement. The others are inoperative.”

The difference, I think, is that today's MSM sits back and accepts the claims of Obama and Carney with very little, if any, push back (in fact, in many cases, they attempt to bolster the administration's misleading and ridiculous claims (think: Cincinnati). During an earlier era, the claims of Nixon and Zeigler were parsed word by word, every news organization trying to break a new and more damaging element of the story. In those days, the MSM did its job. Today—not so much.

As Hanson correctly points out, the "media" is far more diverse today, and alternative sources of news (blogs, forums, and independent political/news websites) continue to dig. Hopefully, the truth will come out.