Will 2014 Turn Out to be 2006, Or 1998?

GREG SARGENT WASHINGTON POST

Last night’s release of the Benghazi emails has pretty much doused whatever smoldering embers remained from the Benghazi ”scandal,” but the scandal “narrative” will live on, fed by serious lingering questions about IRS and Justice Department conduct. So naturally the talk has turned to how scandal-mania will impact the midterm elections.
Will they resemble 2006, when mounting Iraq casualties and Katrina eroded confidence in George W. Bush’s leadership, leading to major Dem gains? Or will they turn out more like 1998, when GOP confidence amid the Monica Lewinsky revelations led to overreach and backlash? This morning, National Journal’s Reid Wilson makes the case that 2014 will look more like 2006:

The beginning of Bush’s second term bears the most resemblance to the current predicament in which Obama finds himself. The war in Iraq had grown unpopular during 2005, and the government’s bungling of the recovery from Hurricane Katrina gave voters the sense that Washington was inept. [...]
The mishandling of Hurricane Katrina and the various troubles Obama is answering for now are completely different types of scandals. But the message they send to voters about the aptitude of governing is remarkably similar. Once voters lost confidence in Bush’s ability to manage government, the Republican brand began to suffer…If voters begin to believe that Obama is similarly ill-equipped to govern, it will be the Democrats in Congress who bear the brunt of the political punishment.

But Chris Cillizza makes the case that Republicans risk a rerun of 1998. Note in the admission from former GOP Rep. Tom Davis, a respected party strategist:

[T]here are real concerns within the Republican establishment that their party won’t look before they leap when it comes to the right strategic path forward, taking a major political opportunity and blowing it ala the impeachment of President Clinton in the late 1990s.
“Republicans need only remember 1998 when they overplayed Monica Lewinsky and turned a promising midterm into almost losing the House,” said former Virginia congressman Tom Davis. “The Republicans have a political buffet in front of them. No need to gorge themselves….[they] need to pace themselves.”

 

 The key thing to keep in mind is it’s an open question whether the GOP base will let Republicans “pace themselves.” As the Fix guys note, some outside Republican strategists are urging less of a focus on Benghazi and more of one on the IRS, and the collapse of the Benghazi scandal should, in theory, give weight to that case. But untold numbers of GOP base voters have now apparently been persuaded that Benghazi has ensured that the total collapse of the Obama presidency is right around the corner.
A recent survey from the automated Public Policy Polling found that 41 percent of Republicans believe Benghazi is the worst scandal in American history. So it’s unclear whether Republican officials can put the Benghazi genie back in the bottle — or whether they even want to, given the utility of using it to rev up the base for 2014. Indeed, despite the release of the emails, which clearly back up the administration’s case, Republican officials continue to call for more investigations.

It’s always possible that the scandal pile-up will undermine confidence in Obama’s leadership or feed a negative storyline about Obama and bigger, intrusive government, a point made by Karen Tumulty today. But it’s also possible that the scandals will be perceived as inside-the-Beltway noise and that voters won’t blame them on Obama or see in them any larger storylines about his leadership or vision. Indeed, a glance at Mike Allen’s Playbook suggests the narrative is already shifting: “OBAMA ACTS ON THREE FRONTS to calm storm.” And predictions that suddenly the voters will come to see Obama’s vision of government as dangerous, out of control, and radical have been made for literally years.
What’s more, for all the understandable focus on Obama’s difficulties, Republicans also face a series of difficult political dilemmas. They confront the challenge of getting immigration reform past riled up House conservatives or taking the blame for killing it. They will soon be mired in discord over whether to stage another debt limit hostage crisis, which could further underscore the sense of a party in chaos that has lost the ability to engage in basic governing. So later this summer the current scandal mania may have dissipated even as public confidence in the GOP could continue to plummet.


 RELEASED BENGHAZI EMAILS SUPPORT ADMINISTRATION CLAIMS: The Post’s overview of the email release last night gets right to the point, deflating the GOP charge of political intentions in the editing of the talking points:

The internal debate did not include political interference from the White House, according to the e-mails, which were provided to congressional intelligence committees several months ago.

That’s pretty clear. Remember, Republicans claimed the administration would not release these emails because it may have been trying to hide a cover up.

OBAMA ATTEMPTING TO BE THE NEW NIXON?

Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Obama commented on Benghazi and the I.R.S. at a news conference with Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain

Excuse us, we have to go check our phone records right now. The Associated Press on Monday slammed the government for the “massive and unprecedented intrusion” of seizing the news agency’s phone records, while the White House insisted it had “no knowledge” of the Justice Department’s operation. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington confirmed Monday that it had issued subpoenas of the AP’s phone records in an effort to track down a source who had disclosed an alleged Yemeni terrorist plot. The White House tried to distance itself from the latest public-relations disaster, with Press Secretary Jay Carney insisting that it is not involved. The Justice Department, for its part, said it values press freedoms, but that the public interest outweighed them. Well, that’s not really comforting. Attorney General Eric Holder [below] told reporters that the leak “put the American people at risk and was among the most serious—“if not the most serious”—leak he has ever seen. He said he had recused himself from the leak investigation last year.

Read it at The Guardian

May 14, 2013 6:49 AM




Facing a barrage of questions from reporters, Holder said he had ordered an investigation into the IRS's targeting of conservative groups, and that the FBI and Justice Department were coordinating on the matter...An inspector general’s report described a failure to stop the singling out of conservative groups as Congressional aides sought to determine if knowledge of the effort went beyond the Internal Revenue Service. .

Read it at Talking Points Memo

May 14, 2013 1:56 PM

Drew Angerer for The New York Times

Gregory Hicks, center, a State Department official, presented on Wednesday the first public testimony from an American official who was in Libya during the siege of the diplomatic compound in Benghazi last Sept. 11.

N.Y. TIMES

A veteran diplomat gave a riveting minute-by-minute account on Wednesday of the lethal terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, last Sept. 11 and described its contentious aftermath at a charged Congressional hearing ...

During a chaotic night at the American Embassy in Tripoli, hundreds of miles away, the diplomat, Gregory Hicks, got what he called “the saddest phone call I’ve ever had in my life” informing him that Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was dead and that he was now the highest-ranking American in Libya. For his leadership that night when four Americans were killed, Mr. Hicks said in nearly six hours of testimony, he subsequently received calls from both Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Obama.

But within days, Mr. Hicks said, after raising questions about the account of what had happened in Benghazi offered in television interviews by Susan E. Rice, the United Nations ambassador, he felt a distinct chill from State Department superiors. “The sense I got was that I needed to stop the line of questioning,” said Mr. Hicks, who has been a Foreign Service officer for 22 years.

He was soon given a scathing review of his management style, he said, and was later “effectively demoted” to desk officer at headquarters, in what he believes was retaliation for speaking up....

 

The accounts from Mr. Hicks and two other officials, Mark I. Thompson, the former deputy coordinator for operations in the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau, and Eric Nordstrom, an official in the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security who had testified previously, added some detail to accounts of the night of Sept. 11 in Benghazi. Armed Islamic militants penetrated the diplomatic compound, starting the fire that killed Mr. Stevens and an aide, and later killed two security officers in a mortar attack; in Tripoli, where frantic diplomats fearing a similar invasion used an ax to destroy classified hard drives; and in Washington, where officials struggled to keep up with events. ...

 

 The three witnesses challenged both the Obama administration’s initial version of events — long ago withdrawn — and its claim to have exhaustively investigated the attacks.

When Ms. Rice suggested on Sunday talk shows days after the attack that it had begun with protests against a crude anti-Muslim video that had been posted on YouTube, Mr. Hicks said: “I was stunned. My jaw dropped and I was embarrassed.”

Her remarks angered the president of Libya’s National Assembly, Mohamed Magariaf, who had said on one of the Sunday shows that the attack was the “preplanned” act of militants, including some from Al Qaeda, Mr. Hicks said. He asserted that Mr. Magariaf’s fury at being undercut caused Libyan officials to drag their feet on cooperating with F.B.I. investigators. A State Department official said the delays were caused by security concerns in Benghazi.

The witnesses also said they felt that the administration’s official investigation, led by a retired diplomat, Thomas R. Pickering, and a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm.Mike Mullen, was inadequate.

“They stopped short of interviewing people who I personally know were involved in key decisions,” Mr. Nordstrom said....

 

Mr. Nordstrom said that when he pressed for additional security personnel, he was told, “Basically, stop complaining.”

 

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AP? IRS? Benghazi? How does it feel to be compared with Nixon? White House spokesman Jay Carney fielded questions from a rowdy group of reporters today on the bevy of controversies facing the administration. For the most part, he tried to bat them down. He refused to answer questions on the Department of Justice’s seizure of Associated Press phone records, saying he couldn’t comment on an investigation. “The president is a strong defender of the First Amendment,” he told reporters. (He used the word “unfettered” an awkward number of times.) Carney also called Benghazi a “political sideshow and a political effort to exploit a tragedy.” Anyone comparing Obama with Nixon “needs to check their history,” he announced.

Read it at Talking Points Memo

May 14, 2013 2:00 PM