Ari Fleischer served as President George W. Bush’s press secretary and has been a fairly vocal critic of the Obama administration.

Here’s what he tweeted today about the Internal Revenue Service’s revelation that it hassled tea party activists and groups: “I’d b shocked if WH told IRS 2do it, but when O vilifies Tparty & VP likens them 2 terrorists, bureaucrats follow the culture.”

I’m hoping Fleischer is right, that the president did not tell IRS agents to ruffle tea party feathers just for the sake of getting even with that wing of the Republican Party.

But the man does make a point about what bureaucrats will do when their higher-ups say unkind things about their foes. It’s probably unlikely that they acted on orders handed down from the West Wing of the White House. They merely could have assumed it was all right to hassle tea party organizations and their organizers just because President Obama and Vice President Biden made those angry comments about them.

We all know, though, what happens when we assume too much, correct?

It appears to me that a few low-level agency bosses have created a monstrous headache for a president seeking to build a legacy. This isn’t the one he had in mind.