Believe it or not, I expected better from John Fund, the noted conservative columnist and Fox News Channel contributor/pundit.
He said President Obama has told a final “whopper” by declaring his administration is finishing its work in Washington without suffering a major “scandal.”
Fund disagrees, as he writes in an essay attached to this post. Here it is:
He calls Obama’s “fast and furious” deal that resulted in drug cartels getting weapons from the Justice Department; he notes the Benghazi massacre in which four Americans died in a firefight with Islamic terrorists; he mentions the IRS targeting certain political groups for intense tax scrutiny.
Fund writes: “Obama has, in fact, presided over some of the worst scandals of any president in recent decades.”
All of those matters were deplorable. They weren’t illegal. They might have been careless, perhaps reckless. They didn’t break any laws.
Scandal? In the strictest sense, President Clinton lying to a grand jury — under oath — about his relationship with the White House intern qualifies as a scandal. He broke a law, which served as the pretext for the House of Representatives to impeach the 42nd president. One can argue the merits of the impeachment about whether lawmakers were truly interested in protecting the law; or whether they were motivated by the salacious aspect of the whole ordeal.
The issues cited by Fund do not, in my mind, constitute “scandalous” behavior.
Therefore, I will stand behind the president’s assertion that his administration served the country in a scandal-free environment.
Of course, one man’s mere controversy is another’s scandal. Fine. If that’s the case, then bring it on!