As we finish up the 52nd month of the Obama administration, it seems pretty clear that it has been among the least scandal-ridden in recent memory. No impeachments. No outing of CIA operatives. Just some minor mistakes blown out of proportion by the Republicans but that gained little traction.
Enter the Internal Revenue Service.
The Internal Revenue Service’s special scrutiny of small-government groups applying for tax-exempt status went beyond keyword hunts for organizations with “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in their names, to a more overtly ideological search for applicants seeking to “make America a better place to live” or “criticize how the country is being run,” according to part of a draft audit by the inspector general that has been given to Capitol Hill
The head of the division on tax-exempt organizations, Lois Lerner, was briefed on the effort in June 2011, seemingly contradicting her assertion on Friday that she learned of the effort from news reports. But the audit shows that she seemed to work hard to rein in the focus on conservatives and change it to a look at any political advocacy group of any stripe.
But, and this may be key to the way this scandal will unfold, she was not particularly successful doing so and the IRS appears to have continued with a ideological targeting of conservative groups.
The IRS, of course, offers the perfect stock villain for anti-government fantasists. No one likes the tax-collection agency and most people view it with a level of contempt generally reserved for Congress. (Actually, recent polling shows the IRS to be more popular than Congress.) The IRS is viewed, for the most part, as holding too much power over individual taxpayers and having too great a say over how individual taxpayers and groups function in American society.
So a scandal involving the IRS targeting non-profits for political reasons — a scandal with echoes of Dick Cheney’s outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame and Nixon’s use of the federal government to target his enemies — is likely to have legs.
The difference is that this, at least at the moment, appears to have nothing to do with the White House. Obama can cut the scandal off at the knees by immediately calling for an investigation that goes beyond an audit report and by making it clear that his administration will not stand for this kind of behavior.
This won’t stop a Congressional investigation — and it shouldn’t. Congress must investigate, though I have no confidence that its approach will be any less partisan and ideological than the actions allegedly undertaken by the IRS.
A partisan investigation is not an investigation at all and will do nothing more than add to the noise in the political chattersphere. It will not prevent this kind of thing from happening again, which is what the goal should be, and may instead encourage more bad behavior in the future once the White House changes hands.
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Hank Kalet 