the Professionals

One of the remarkable things about the Obama administration that those of us on the alledged fringe left have noticed is its continuity with the policies of the Cheney administration in matters of foreign policy and national security.

There've even been moments when big time Dick himself has shown his bitter crooked smile on things the Obama camp has done.

It should probably come as no surprise then, that from mass-murdering drone warfare, to the Justice department covertly wiretapping newspapers, to secret squirrel spywork in Russia, to the IRS targeting mom and pop Tea party operations rather than the Rove-Bush machine or the Goldman-Sachs Obama bankroll connections,  madness is emergent in Washington this spring right along with the cherry blossoms.

There's a difference this year. and it will get more hysterical every year right on up to 2016. Just like the Carter administration, or the last two years of the Clinton administration, there's a professional class in Washington that sees one of its own awaiting the next Presidential coronation- Jebbie Bush.

The difference between the Clintons and Obama is that the Clintons had Carter's lesson at heart: they expected duplicity in their government and expecting it were prepared to deal with it.

plausible deniability

It is difficult to imagine from current events that a President really runs anything more serious than a 24 hour reality show.

He's seemingly not writing the scripts, either.

It is coming so fast and so thick this week that the Editors of the stolid New York Pravda feel the need to point out to their readers that the results of one of the colossal botch-ups benefits the usual suspects:

...Inevitably, the stumble by the I.R.S. will now be used by the Republicans as a point of attack. They are gleefully promising months of hearings, and the National Republican Congressional Committee is already trying to tarnish Democratic lawmakers with what it calls “the Obama administration’s use of the I.R.S. as a political tool.”

This will serve as the perfect distraction from issues, like the budget, gun control or immigration reform. And it will probably prevent any real progress on campaign finance reform, which, in turn, will make it vastly more difficult for the I.R.S. to prevent abuse of the tax code.

The greatest benefactor of this? Crossroads and the re-emergent Bush juggernaut, of course, poised to take official control of a Washington whose attitudes they've seemed to keep covert control of anyway, regardless of two overwhelming Presidential electoral losses and a nation hoping for progressive change.