Obama on the Ropes

By Rich Galen

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

All right. It's darn near June of the off year.

Over the past few weeks I've been writing like Grandma Moses painted: Sooooo very sweet.

Well, that's over. I don't have to write a sweet column again until Back to School on Labor day, so as Bette Davis (as Margo Channing) said in "All About Eve" in 1950:

"Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night"

The IRS is going to be the death of the Obama Administration.

NOBODY LIKES THE IRS

I'm not saying all IRS employees are bad people, but neither are all meter maids bad people - we just don't like to see them sniffing around our stuff.

Actually the IRS is not Obama's biggest strategic problem.

James Rosen is.

If you haven't been following the story, the Obama Administration has been trying to stop leaks from Executive Branch employees to the press corps.

James Rosen is one of the most senior - and most respected - reporters at Fox News. Unlike some of the night time hosts on Fox, Rosen is seen as a seasoned journalist who could be working at any major news outlet in Washington.

The Obama Administration decided that Rosen's reporting on North Korea was a national security issue and the Attorney General, Eric Holder, not only approved tapping into his email account(s), but also suggested that the investigation might have to go on for years.

The Department of Justice said that Rosen was "at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator" in the leaks about North Korea.

This is not new. Every administration - probably since Washington - has been trying to plug leaks to the press corps.

Henry Kissinger, in 1969 and 1970, allegedly authorized the FBI to employ wiretaps on 13 National Security Council Staff and at least four national reporters to find out who was leaking national security material to the press.

It is well documented that Richard Nixon didn't have the highest possible regard for the role and operating methods of the press corps.

That Barack Obama is being compared to Richard Nixon is ample evidence that his administration or, at a minimum, his legacy, is in big, big trouble.

So why is the Rosen case a bigger strategic problem than the IRS? Because if receiving information from an Executive Branch employee is a crime then, as one reporter said to me last week, "We are reduced to rewriting government press releases."

Because of the Rosen case, the Washington press corps - which contains some of Obama's most ardent defenders and supporters - is turning on him.

A week or so ago MSNBC's Chris Matthews said on the air that Obama,

"Obviously likes giving speeches more than he does running the executive branch."

Politico.com reported Matthews as saying:

"He doesn't like lobbying for the bills he cares about. He doesn't like selling to the press. He doesn't like giving orders or giving somebody the power to give orders. He doesn't seem to like being an executive."

As Lyndon Johnson is quoted as having said after a negative statement by Walter Cronkite about Viet Nam "If we've lost Cronkite, we've lost the war."

If Obama has lost Matthews, he's lost his Administration.

From this point onward there will be no such thing as a technical error in the Obama Administration. Like a lover scorned, Obama's former supporters in the press corps will see everything as a potential scandal unless proved otherwise.

He has no more Get Out Of Jail Free cards from national reporters.

The Internal Revenue Service is in business because Americans trust it to treat everyone equally without regard to politics or position.

The reports that the IRS was targeting that it believed were opposed to Obama's policies turned out to be true.

The woman who ran that shop refused to answer questions from a Committee of Congress, was asked to resign, refused, and was put on administrative leave meaning she is on a paid vacation.

If Obama's IRS was being used as a political tool, there is no one who will defend it, or him.

We are coming close to the beginning of the 2014 mid-term election cycle.

If House and Senate Democrats come to believe that Obama has become a negative in their districts, they will turn on him like, like Chris Matthews.

We have a lot going on: IRS, Rosen, Associated Press, Benghazi and who knows what else.

Barack Obama is losing his hold on the American people.

He has demonstrated zero skills that would lead us to believe he can get it back.