Obama’s own self-comparison with Richard Nixon becomes more apt with each passing day.

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Back in 2008, Barack Obama brashly aspired to a Reagan-like “transformative” presidency: 

“I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not, and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.  He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.  I think they felt like, you know, with all the excesses of the ‘60s and ‘70s and, you know, government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating.  And I think people just tapped into, he tapped into what people were already feeling, which is, ‘we want clarity, we want optimism, we want, you know, a return to that sense of dynamism and, you know, entrepreneurship that had been missing,’ alright?” 

Accountability, clarity, optimism, dynamism and entrepreneurship?  One would be hard-pressed to identify terms less descriptive of the Obama presidency, now into its sixth year. 

Nevertheless, in a slip surely more revealing than he intended, Obama this week retreated to citing that very same “non-transformative” Nixon for comparative illustration during a pre-Super Bowl interview with Bill O’Reilly. 

O’Reilly:  Are you the most liberal president in U.S. history? 
Obama:  Probably not. 
O’Reilly:  Probably not? 
Obama:  Probably not.  That’s – that’s fair to say. 
O’Reilly:  Who would be? 
Obama:  You know, the truth of the matter is that when you look at some of my policies, uhh, in a lot of ways, Richard Nixon was more – more liberal than I was.  Started the EPA.  You know, uhh, you know, started, uhh, uhh, a whole lot of the regulatory state that, uhh, has helped make our air and water clean. 
O’Reilly:  That’s interesting – Nixon – that’s interesting.  I thought you were going to say FDR. 

Obama’s shift certainly illustrates the dramatic diminution of his presidency well. 

In addition, however, new revelations this week returned a much more sinister Nixon/Obama similarity to the fore:  Internal Revenue Service (IRS) targeting of political enemies. 

Recall that use of the IRS, which is perhaps the federal government’s most feared and menacing arm, to target groups his administration opposed was one of the grounds for impeachment against Nixon.  While evidence has obviously not surfaced to trigger similarly severe charges against Obama, any level of IRS abuse is by nature a grave matter. 

Obama dismissively assured O’Reilly that “not even a smidgen of corruption” exists in today’s IRS scandal, but that simply doesn’t square with the facts or investigative inertia.  After all, the simple fact that former IRS Director Lois Lerner refused to answer questions and invoked her Fifth Amendment rights during interrogation suggests more than a “smidgen of corruption” in and of itself. 

This week, during a House hearing involving new IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R – Michigan) revealed a very damning 2012 internal email from Treasury Department lawyer Ruth Madrigal to Ms. Lerner and other IRS personnel.  Ms. Madrigal suggested targeting non-profit 501(c)(4) groups outside of public scrutiny, saying, “Don’t know who in your organizations [sic] is keeping tabs on c4s, but since we mentioned potentially addressing them (off-plan) in 2013, I’ve got my radar up and this seemed interesting.” 

“Off-plan” is bureaucratic language for behind closed doors, and this email was sent fully one year before the IRS scandal broke.  Additionally, as The Wall Street Journal notes, “The current rules for governing 501(c)(4)s have existed, unchanged, since 1959.  Prior to 2010, the IRS processed and approved tax-exempt applications in fewer than three months with no apparent befuddlement.”  In other words, Obama’s rationalization that the IRS’s recent activities are simply an effort to bring much-needed clarity to the law is transparently false. 

On top of all that, we also learned that Barbara Bosserman, the IRS’s in-house attorney leading the internal investigation into the scandal, donated the maximum amount allowed by law to the Obama campaign.  That hardly suggests a legitimate investigation, let alone the absence of even “a smidgen of corruption.” 

Accordingly, Obama’s own self-comparison with Richard Nixon becomes more apt with each passing day.  That has less to do with his strange conception of presidential liberalism, and more to do with IRS scandals and elevated levels of justified public distrust.