It was choose-your-metaphor week here to define the scandals encircling the Obama administration. Atlanta Democratic Rep. David Scott selected Jaws.
“His opponents see blood in the water, man,” Scott said. “And if you got blood, they coming. We’ve got to get that blood out of the water.”
Republicans responded aggressively to the mix of new testimony about last year’s killings in Benghazi, the Internal Revenue Service over-scrutinizing tea party groups and the Department of Justice pulling Associated Press reporters’ phone records in a leak investigation.
Democrats’ responses were in many ways more interesting. They were frustrated, and not as quick as usual to get the commander-in-chief’s back.
“We’re not talking about the substantive things that affect the day to day life of the American people,” Scott said. “Here we are talking about these scandals. … The president cannot allow these scandals to get out in front of him.”
The necessary work of Congress goes on. Scott was in a hearing room Wednesday night until around midnight working on the Farm Bill. The Senate passed a major water bill.
But the high-profile hearings and investigations will continue in both chambers, sucking up media attention and inflaming partisanship.
President Barack Obama tried a triple punch-back Wednesday, releasing a trove of emails on Benghazi, firing the head of the IRS and flip-flopping to endorse a media shield law.
But the Washington scandal volcano is not appeased so easily. More sacrifices must be offered up.
“I want anyone who’s acted inappropriately (at the IRS) to be punished,” said Rep. Hank Johnson, a DeKalb County Democrat. It was a milder version of House Speaker John Boehner’s, “Who’s going to jail?”
Johnson had Attorney General Eric Holder’s back to an extent during a testy Judiciary Committee hearing. Johnson said seizing the AP’s phone records “could cast a cool breeze over First Amendment rights.” But he said to solve it Congress must pass a new law to require a judge to approve any such record-gathering from media organizations.
Johnson, though, said the White House has handled the situation “straight-up and businesslike.”
Rep. John Lewis, an Atlanta Democrat, would speak of the scandals only in carefully worded statements. In both the IRS and AP cases he was “deeply disturbed.” Albany Democratic Rep. Sanford Bishop declined to comment at all.
Rep. John Barrow, of Augusta, is typically more willing to criticize his own Democratic Party, as he represents a Republican-leaning district. Said district is disturbed, Barrow reports. When he returned to town on Tuesday, Barrow wrote Obama a letter — one no doubt devoured line by line by the president.
“These situations are eroding what little confidence many of the people I represent have in their government,” Barrow wrote.
Obama visits Atlanta Sunday to give a commencement speech at Morehouse and raise money for Democrats at Arthur Blank’s house. He no doubt will make a sly reference or two to his rough week in front of friendly crowds.
If the proper heads roll and no serious malpractice can be definitively tied to the White House, Washington eventually will move on, perhaps even to items such as immigration reform that are vital to Obama’s legacy.
“Sometimes,” Johnson mused, “I think you just get caught up in a cloud, and that cloud passes over you and then you keep on going.”
This reporter much prefers the shark metaphor.
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