There is no curse on the second term of presidents. When presidents lose credibility, when trust vanishes and their word is no longer accepted, they have only themselves to blame. That was true for President Nixon, among many others, and now itÂ’s true for President Obama.
In confronting the Benghazi and IRS scandals, Obama has relied on the three tactics favored by politicians in trouble: lies, spin, and obfuscation. The main objective is to mislead the press and public. A lesser aim is to sidetrack the controversies and reduce them to a debate over tangential issues.
• Lies. Even when he’s been publicly corrected, Obama repeats mistruths. At his press conference last week, the president spoke of the attack on the American facility in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012. “The day after it happened, I acknowledged that this was an act of terrorism,” Obama said. Only he hadn’t.
What Obama actually said in the Rose Garden on September 12 was: “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.” It was a generic mention of terror, not directed at the Benghazi attack.
We know this because Obama was interviewed immediately after his Rose Garden statement by Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes. “Do you believe that this was a terrorist attack?” Kroft asked. “Well, it’s too early to know exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans,” Obama answered.
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