Commentator George F. Will thinks the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS joins Watergate and Iran-Contra as one of the three most serious presidential scandals of the past 40 years.
The difference, Will said last night on Fox News’s “Special Report,” is that Republican presidents were part of those two other major scandals “involving the distortion and abuse of institutions” – Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, respectively – and those scandals were “ravenously covered” by the mainstream news media.
The IRS scandal under President Obama, a Democrat, however, has been the subject of relatively little in-depth investigative reporting.
“This is not being pursued, and the president knows that,” Will said. “Hence his sense of weariness and boredom as he discussed this with Bill O’Reilly.”
In an interview with O’Reilly aired by Fox before the Super Bowl, Obama said there is “not even a smidgen of corruption” evident in the targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups by the IRS – despite the ouster of a top IRS official who had pleaded the Fifth Amendment in refusing to testify before Congress.
“We’ve reached the point that it was just [what Obama called] ‘bone-headed decisions,’ which, amazingly, seemed to affect primarily the president’s critics,” Will said last night.
