By Victor Davis Hanson
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
The second-term curse goes like this: A president (e.g.,
Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, etc.) wins
re-election, but then his presidency implodes over the next four years -- mired
in scandals or disasters such as Watergate, Iran-Contra, Monica Lewinsky, the
Iraqi insurgency and Hurricane Katrina.
Apparently, like tragic Greek heroes, administrations
grow arrogant after their re-election wins. They believe that they are
invincible and that heir public approval is permanent rather than fickle.
The result is that Nemesis zeroes in on their fatal
conceit and with a boom corrects their hubris. Or is the problem in some
instances simply that embarrassments and scandals, hushed up in fear that they
might cost an administration an election, explode with a fury in the second
term?
Coincidentally, right after the election we heard that
Iran had attacked a U.S. drone in international waters.
Coincidentally, we just learned that new food stamp
numbers were "delayed" and that millions more became new recipients
in the months before the election.
Coincidentally, we now gather that the federal relief
effort following Hurricane Sandy was not so smooth, even as New Jersey Gov.
Chris Christie and Barack Obama high-fived it. Instead, in Katrina-like
fashion, tens of thousands are still without power or shelter two weeks after
the storm.
Coincidentally, we now learn that Obama's plan of letting
tax rates increase for the "fat cat" 2 percent who make over $250,000
a year would not even add enough new revenue to cover 10 percent of the annual
deficit. How he would get the other 90 percent in cuts, we are never told.
Coincidentally, we now learn that the vaunted Dream Act
would at most cover only about 10 percent to 20 percent of illegal immigrants.
As part of the bargain, does Obama have a post-election Un-Dream Act to deport
the other 80 percent who do not qualify since either they just recently arrived
in America, are not working, are not in school or the military, are on public
assistance, or have a criminal record?
Coincidentally, now that the election is over, the
scandal over the killings of Americans in Libya seems warranted due to the
abject failure to heed pleas for more security before the attack and assistance
during it. And the scandal is about more than just the cover-up of fabricating
an absurd myth of protestors mad over a 2-month-old video -- just happening to
show up on the anniversary of 9/11 with machine guns and rockets.
The real postelection mystery is why we ever had a
secondary consulate in Benghazi in the first place, when most nations had long
ago pulled their embassies out of war-torn Libya altogether.
Why, about a mile from the consulate, did we have a large
CIA-staffed "annex" that seems to have been busy with all sorts of
things other than providing adequate security for our nearby diplomats?
Before the election, the media was not interested in
figuring out what Ambassador Christopher Stevens actually was doing in
Benghazi, what so many CIA people and military contractors were up to, and what
was the relationship of our large presence in Libya to Turkey, insurgents in
Syria and the scattered Gadhafi arms depots.
But the strangest "coincidentally" of all is
the bizarre resignation of American hero Gen. David Petraeus from the CIA just
three days after the election -- apparently due to a long-investigated
extramarital affair with a sort of court biographer and her spat with a woman
she perceived as a romantic rival.
If the affair was haphazardly hushed up for about a year,
how exactly did Petraeus become confirmed as CIA director, a position that
allows no secrets, much less an entire secret life?
How and why did the FBI investigate the Petraeus matter?
To whom and when did it report its findings? And what was the administration
reaction?
Coincidentally, if it is true that Petraeus can no longer
testify as CIA director to the House and Senate intelligence committees about
the ignored requests of CIA personnel on the ground in Benghazi for more help,
can he as a private citizen testify more freely, without the burdens of CIA
directorship and pre-election politics?
It has been less than two weeks since the election, and
Obama seems no exception to the old rule that for administrations which manage
to survive their second terms, almost none seem to enjoy them.
The sudden release of all sorts of suppressed news and
"new" facts right after the election creates public cynicism.
The hushed-up, fragmentary account of the now-unfolding
facts of the Libyan disaster contributes to further disbelief.
The sudden implosion of Petraeus -- whose seemingly
unimpeachable character appears so at odds with reports of sexual indiscretion,
a lack of candor and White House backstage election intrigue -- adds genuine
public furor.
The resulting mix is toxic, and it may tax even the
formidable Chicago-style survival skills of Obama and the fealty of a so far
dutiful media.
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