Barack Obama and the dreaded curse of the second term

It's called the “second term curse”. Every recent president fortunate enough to win re-election has been unfortunate enough to have to deal with some sort of scandal, either real or fabricated.

President Obama's second term agenda hit a brick wall last month when a series of these so-called scandals took over the airwaves, as the media filled the gap left by some slow news days.

Just over four months into Obama's second term, he is mired in three scandals that threaten his ability to govern effectively for the remainder of his time in office, or at least until the 2014 mid-term elections.

Obama is facing his toughest time in office after the never-ending criticism of how his administration handled the Benghazi attacks, the IRS' targeting of Tea Party groups, and the Department of Justice's probe into the AP journalists' phone records. The focus has shifted away from the broader policy debates that the president spoke of in his second inaugural address in January.

But do the recent events that the Republicans are calling scandals really rise to the level of scandals, and is Obama really becoming mired in the dreaded “second term curse”?

Historically, Obama seems to be falling into the same pattern as his recent predecessors. Watergate led Richard Nixon all the way to his political downfall. Ronald Reagan got caught up in the Iran-Contra scandal, causing historians to put an asterisk next to his presidency. Bill Clinton made Monica Lewinsky famous, causing a media firestorm that practically overshadowed everything else he did. George W. Bush showed his ineptitude by screwing up the response to Hurricane Katrina and leading us into the Iraq War after false reports that weapons of mass destruction existed.

Obama surely has studied the history of past two-term presidents, and learned that the best thing to do at the slightest hint of a scandal is to get out in front of the story. The Obama administration seems to be playing catch-up to events that, on closer inspection, don't rise to the level of Watergate, Iran-Contra, or WMDs in Iraq.

The Obama administration should have been prepared for the Republican Party to take things one step beyond obstructionism. The GOP's first term agenda was to defeat Obama. The second term, as history has shown, is the time that the opposing party does whatever it takes to pin a scandal on the incumbent president.

The problem with the current trio of events labeled scandals by the GOP and the conservative media is that they don't pack the same punch as Nixon's Watergate, for example.

How many hours of non-stop reporting about the IRS can we watch? The AP phone records scandal? I'm bored already. And Benghazi seems to be more about what it was originally: an attack on Hillary Clinton, and her likely 2016 presidential run. The Benghazi story may or may not fizzle out by 2016, but either way, it could bypass Obama and land on Clinton. But most Americans are as bored as I am about Benghazi, and I suspect that most Republicans don't know where it is.

All of this could have been predicted. The Republicans will do anything to discredit the president, and the longer a president is in office, the more executive-branch decisions cross his desk. With every passing month, it becomes more likely that at least one of his many decisions will turn out to be wrong, ill-advised or worse. By the second term, even the best, luckiest and smartest president will have made an incorrect decision.

Obama has made mistakes, judgment calls and taken risks. The killing of Osama bin Laden could have taken a very bad turn. The attack in Benghazi did turn out badly, as did the IRS debacle and the AP phone record incident. But were these events under the direction of President Obama, and was there a cover-up by the president? If you listen to Republican leaders, Obama is guilty of covering up just about everything. It doesn't seem so long ago that the president was involved in a massive conspiracy to cover up his real birthplace, Kenya.

All of this leads back to the question: Is Obama a victim of the “second term curse”? No, he's a victim of “second term Republican obstructionism”.

Obama trumps Trump, but Trump isn't stumped

Just when it looked like Donald Trump's idiotic ranting was going to be silenced, his private jet landed in New Hampshire Wednesday and hilarity ensued. Trump immediately upped the ante on weird political gibberish.

The White House had just released President Obama's long-form birth certificate and it looked like the matter was settled. Trump's most important political issue, that Obama was unable to produce a proper birth certificate because he was in fact a Kenyan-born Muslim out to destroy America, was nonsensical right-wing paranoia to begin with.

Trump was presumably on the plane to New Hampshire devising a few new sound bites about Obama's big birth certificate cover-up conspiracy. It seemed like Obama's big announcement to the media, that “We don't have time for this silliness. We've got better stuff to do,” was timed to silence Trump just as his plane was about to land. He would be walking, dumbfounded, into a sea of reporters.

What happened next should have been anticipated by anyone familiar with Trump's flair for pulling reality-show craziness out of the hat like a circus magician.

“I feel I've accomplished something really, really important, and I feel honored by it”, Trump boasted to reporters. He noted that it was “amazing” that this long-form certificate finally “materialized,” and he went on to portray the release as vindication. “I hope we've accomplished a lot by what I've been talking about the last few months,” he said as the group of reporters looked on stone-faced, acting as this was an actual news event.

So that left us to wonder what was next. Would Trump question Obama's marriage certificate? Could the Obama's dog be a secret Soviet spy? Or maybe Obama had a secret hair transplant, and his college Afro was really an elaborate comb-over.

No, the nation's most famous snake-oil salesman and closet racist now wants us to focus on Obama's questionable college degree. He demanded that Obama release his records from Occidental College, part of Trump's new effort to convince us that Obama only made it into the Ivy League, transferring from Occidental to Columbia, then going on to Harvard, because of affirmative action.

Trump wonders how Obama, a poor, “terrible student” can get into Ivy League schools? The fact that Trump didn't ask this question of George W. Bush, who had trouble putting coherent sentences together, could be one indication that Trump's remarks are racially motivated. Or maybe Trump is just plain stupid, and we should be questioning how he got into an Ivy League business school. I've been wondering myself how on earth Trump ever got into the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.

Dan Golden's book, “The Price of Admission”, is a well-reported critique of what amounts to affirmative action for rich people. Did Trump's rich father help him out, perhaps? I'll have to send my investigators out to look into this matter.

Putting all this speculation about the Ivy League admission process aside, I am waiting breathlessly for Trump to release his tax returns. After all, the real-estate mogul turned reality TV show host had promised to release his tax returns if Obama produced his birth certificate.

In the category of 'what else is new', Trump continued the media laugh-a-thon by telling reporters outside a New Hampshire cigar store that he'll release his tax returns once he announces a presidential bid, further proof he's not actually running.

The media keeps buying what this fast-talking carnival huckster is selling. It makes great entertainment, but it's not news.

Obama: Multi-Tasker-In-Chief

Yesterday President Obama gave a major speech about health care to the American Medical Association. It was a tough crowd - he was talking to doctors, who feel they will be negatively impacted financially if there is major health care reform. David Donnelly, national campaign director of Public Campaign Action Fund, said that Obama was "speaking to a group that is acting more like a typical Washington special interest than one that is concerned about the well-being of all Americans." But Obama was speaking to the American people. The speech was carried live on the major cable news outlets, and the evening news focused on the highlights. Obama's big sound bite was heard around the world: "If we do not fix our health care system, America may go the way of GM." This is a tough issue to tackle, as the country is on the verge of economic collapse, and many Republicans are saying we just can't afford to do anything about it right now. But clearer heads are prevailing on the Democratic side. Obama has the support of Democrats when he says that fixing health care right now is paramount to begin fixing the economy. In a speech on March 25 at a DNC fundraiser, Obama talked about why the issue is important in the overall plan to fix the economy: "Because we know that the crushing cost of health care is bankrupting families and businesses, and bankrupting the federal government and the state government, our budget reflects reforms that will bring down costs and improve care, and guarantee Americans their choice of doctors and hospitals." Since coming into office, Obama has has to deal with the collapse of the banking and auto industries, two wars, the nuclear threat of Iran and North Korea, the issue of stem cell research, the Guantanamo prison, "Don't ask, don't tell," abortion legislation and other less relevant issues. Obama has repeatedly reminded us that President John F. Kennedy didn't choose between Civil Rights and going to the moon. But Kennedy didn't have to deal with an economy that has been described as "the worst since the Great Depression." The $100 billion it took to land on the moon would have come in handy right now, although we're talking trillions, not millions, of taxpayer money to deal with fixing the economy. George W. Bush handed over a giant mess to Obama when he left office. Bush seemed out of his league when trying to deal with the imploding economy - he seemed to want to leave it to his successor. Obama said in his DNC speech March 25 that "the American people don't have the luxury of focusing on one problem at a time." In his whirlwind first 100 days in office, Obama proved he has the ability to multi-task, and he has continued all the way up to the AMA speech and beyond. While Bush can't walk and drink Red Bull at the same time, Obama seems capable of tackling an enormous workload. "I'm not going to kick these problems down the road for another four years, another eight years, for the next President, the next generation. I'm going to tackle them now," Obama said in his March 25 speech. "That's why I ran for President. That's why you helped me become President. That's why we are not going to stop until we get this thing done." He was talking about his comprehensive economic recovery plan, but he emphasized that health care reform is a key component. I'm betting on Obama, not the doctors representing the AMA, who may have to give up a little so the country can gain a lot.

Dan Rather Says Cheney Detests Obama

Because of my busy schedule, it wasn't until today that I came across an interesting Dan Rather interview which aired on Tuesday on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show." My DVR saved the day, because this was an interview worth watching, especially for a Dan Rather fan like myself. Although the former CBS anchor is known for his eccentric and sometimes biased reporting - he was forced off of the CBS anchor desk for reporting as news, then pathetically defending beyond all reason, clearly forged documents pertaining to George W. Bush - Rather sometimes speaks the truth. He spoke about his upcoming interview with a Guantanamo prisoner who says he was tortured for years before being released two weeks ago. The interview will air on "Dan Rather Reports" on HD Net next Tuesday. The prisoner, Lakhdar Boumediene, described how he was forced to run with shackles on his legs until they were bloody in order to soften him up. He told Rather he continued to be tortured even after Barack Obama became president. "They tortured me in the Obama time more than Bush," he said. Maddow asked Rather how credible he found Boumadiene's allegations. With Rather's spotty record as to what is true and what is not, that was a good question, especially when you're talking about a disgruntled ex-Guantanamo detainee. Rather told Maddow that "he seems believable," but he added, however, that the admiral in charge of Guantanamo for the last year denies the allegations. So whether the allegations are true or not, they keep the debate going as to what to do with the Guantanamo detainees. Maddow asked Rather whether he thinks the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan is taking Guantanamo's place. Rather said there is "a school of thought which believes this to be the case." He pointed out that prisoners have been brought to Bagram from other countries and that "some of the contentions that were made about Guantanamo are starting to be made about Bagram." He went on to say: "The critical thing is, there is no transparency." Bagram or not, a recent USA/Gallup poll shows that 65% of Americans don't want Guantanamo closed. Rather calls it a "not in my neighborhood" mentality, as many Americans feel that terrorists would be released near them if not convicted of anything. "It gives Vice President Cheney some traction," he said. Dick Cheney is being joined by his daughter Liz on the "We Used Enhanced Interrogation Techniques Because They Worked" tour. Maddow asked Rather what he believes is motivating Cheney in his whirlwind torture tour. Rather cited four reasons, saying they were in no particular order. First, he cited Cheney's concern for the Bush Administration's legacy: "He knows the outlook as to how the Bush-Cheney Administration will be seen in history books is not good." Rather said the second thing was that "Cheney seeks to solidify and play to the Republican base, what some might call the most right-wing part of the Republican Party that stuck with him and President Bush all the way through." Rather continued: "Number three, I think he really believes what he's saying. I don't think he's posturing." Then Rather let out what is probably the most accurate assessment of the situation. "The fourth thing, and I could be wrong about this - I think he really detests President Obama, his policies, and everything he stands for." No, Dan, you've been wrong before, but this time you're not.