Henry Payne

In the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde existence of America’s Hope and Divide president, Hyde has ruled too often. The corrupt Benghazi-IRS-AP outrages are the lowest points in a year in which the campaigner-in-chief has politicized even White House school tours for party gain.

So it is refreshing when the brilliant Dr. Jekyll makes an appearance. He emerged at this weekend’s Morehouse College commencement for a memorable address.

America’s only all-male, historically black college – the alma mater of the great Martin Luther King – welcomed our first black president at a time when black unemployment is nearly double that of whites – 16 percent. But the president didn’t play the victim card. Instead, he spoke candidly to the Class of ’13 about responsibility and the biggest problem facing America today: Fatherless homes.

“If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that too few of our brothers have the opportunities that you’ve had here at Morehouse,” said Obama after celebrating the graduates gathered before him. ” In troubled neighborhoods all across this country – many of them heavily African American – too few of our citizens have role models to guide them.”

“One of the things that all of you have learned over the last four years is there’s no longer any room for excuses,” he continued. “Not because racism and discrimination no longer exist; we know those are still out there.  It’s just that in today’s hyperconnected, hypercompetitive world, with millions of young people from China and India and Brazil – many of whom started with a whole lot less than all of you did – all of them entering the global workforce alongside you, nobody is going to give you anything that you have not earned.  Nobody cares how tough your upbringing was. . . . And moreover, you have to remember that whatever you’ve gone through, it pales in comparison to the hardships previous generations endured – and they overcame them.  And if they overcame them, you can overcome them, too.”

Powerful stuff. And what a break from the paralyzing victimization taught by a generation of Jackson, Sharpton, and Conyers.

“Keep setting an example for what it means to be a man,” Obama continued. “Be the best father you can be to your children.  Because nothing is more important.”

The speech was a reminder of what might have been (and still can be) from this president. America’s#1 problem are inner cities (and rural areas like my home Appalachia) where family implosion has doomed a generation of young males. The #1 cause of poverty in America is single-parent homes – an epidemic in places like Detroit that breeds an endless cycle of illiteracy, joblessness and crime.

Rather than dividing America for political ends, Obama might have committed himself to cultural change. For the best of Barack Obama, you can read the entire speech here.

Will the IRS and AP scandals distract from President Obama’s agenda?

The White House is reassuring its supporters that the flood of scandals won’t deter the president from pursuing an aggressive second term agenda. In truth, the scandals are more than a distraction – they are a direct warning against implementing Obama’s Big Government vision.

Prior to Trifecta-gate – Benghazi, IRS, and AP – Obamabots in government and media reacted to any pushback to their expansionist agenda of Washington power with dire warnings of a government-less world.

“One of the reasons I was opposed to these (sequester) cuts is because . . . they cut into muscle and into bone — like research and development. . . creating all kinds of spinoffs that create good jobs and good wages,” scared President Obama at Argonne University last month over a mere 2 percent cut in a $3.8 trillion budget.

“The sequester could also cost this country – and humankind – a cure for AIDS or Parkinson’s disease or cancer,” warned Harry Reid on the Senate floor.

Small government meant planes falling out of the skies, unpaid teachers, unemplyment. Now, the narrative has flipped.

The scandals have exposed Big Brother unleashed.

You want bigger government? How about the Justice Department taping AP phones? How about the IRS snooping into every corner of your non-profit? How about the IRS expanding into your health records to enforce Obamacare’s individual mandate?

Obama’s agenda – cap and trade, Obamacare, more spending – is about expanding Washington’s power into Americans’ lives. The scandals are a cautionary tale of what that means for civil liberties.

“And suddenly three days ago this gets spun up as if there’s something new to the story,” said President Obama this week in reaction to the Benghazi scandal.

There is a kernel of truth in what Tricky Dick Obama says: Political junkies have known the IRS and Benghazi details for some time. Obama is now engulfed in these scandals – not because they are new – but because the election is over and the majority, Democratic media has stopped covering  for him.

Consider: The Benghazi cover-up – that the president was lying about a YouTube video a full two weeks after the murder of U.S. personnel – was immediately exposed last September by Fox News and other conservative media. But the MSM abetted the cover-up (most famously Candy Crowley in the second presidential debate).

Consider: Congress has been receiving complaints  from tea parties of unfair treatment since 2011- and holding hearings. IRS officials lied at those hearings when asked about politicized IRS investigations.  The media ignored them. Wall Street Journal columnist Debbie Strassel’s  superb reporting uncovered an Obama’s Enemies List of eight Romney donors (some, like Frank Vandersloot, have subsequently been harrassed) targeted by the Obama campaign for IRS scrutiny. The media ignored it. Michigan Rep. Sander Levin asked the IRS in April, 2012 to harass the conservative, non-profit Mackinac Center. Michigan’s media ignored it. In 2010, Senator Max Baucus asked the IRS to target conservative groups. The media ignored it. And so on.

The priority was getting President Barack Obama re-elected.

Some of the partisan press continue to ignore these stories – The Detroit Free Press, for example, didn’t print a single story on the Benghazi hearings last week while burying the IRS witch hunt on the inside pages over the weekend. But with the continued, relentless reporting of Fox News, Congressional hearings on Benghazi, and the stunning revelation – in a legal forum, not a press forum – of IRS corruption, the stories have become too big to ignore.

That, and with the partisan fever of the campaign past, journalists are returning to their jobs.

Pat Caddell, the youngest Democrat on Richard Nixon’s Enemies List thanks to his staff position on George McGovern’s 1972 Democratic presidential campaign, knows dirty politics when he sees it.

“We have not had a White House where the incumbent tried to affect the other side’s primary since Nixon,” Caddell, now 62 and one of America’s most respected political analysts, told me last year after the Obama campaign’s unusual intervention in the Michigan Republican primary to try and affect an upset of Mitt Romney. “On the 40th anniversary year of Watergate, that’s worth pointing out. I am a Democrat and I am offended by it. There is a reason parties hold their own primaries to choose their own candidates.”

The Nixon parallels multiplied last week after the shocking revelations of House Oversight Committee hearings into the Benghazi cover-up and an IRS admission that it had targeted tea party groups during the 2012 election. Michigan primary interventions, enemies lists, Benghazi talking points, FAA sequester delays . . . while not illegal, the Obama administration’s actions portray a campaign-obsessed White House that sees every event as a partisan, political opportunity.

Tricky Dick, meet Tricky Barack.

The testimony of three State Department whistleblowers in Benghazi suggest election politics were paramount — to the point that the administration lied about the al-Qaida attack for fear it would compromise the president’s campaign theme of winning the War on Terror. Then came the IRS revelation targeting tea party groups, an eerie echo of Tricky Dick’s IRS intimidation tactics. That in turn was a reminder of an Obama enemies list that surfaced in April 2012 of eight Romney donors shamed by the Obama campaign for alleged legal irregularities.

“When you have the power of the presidency — the power of the IRS — what you have effectively done is put these guys’ names up on ‘Wanted’ posters in government offices,” former U.S. solicitor general Theodore Olson, told The Wall Street Journal.

From Michigan to Washington, the Nixonian echo is causing bipartisan unease.

“For anyone over 50, this news couldn’t help but stir memories of Richard Nixon’s Political Enemies Project,” wrote former Michigan Democratic Congresswoman Lynn Rivers in The Detroit News.com Monday. “To use Dan Rather’s ‘duck test,’ the IRS probe of ‘hostile’ ideological groups looks like, swims like, and quacks like government dirty tricks.”

“The IRS has admitted that its agents intimidated conservative groups based on their political beliefs,” says Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Brighton. “I don’t care if you’re a conservative, a liberal, a Democrat or a Republican, this should send a chill up your spine.”

The American Center for Law and Justice represents tea party groups from 18 states concerned about IRS harassment, though none are in Michigan – perhaps because Michigan groups have not pursued fundraising strategies requiring non-profit IRA status. Political IRS probes were made famous by a Nixon administration memo that sought to “maximize . . . our incumbency in dealing with persons known to be active in their opposition to our Administration; stated a bit more bluntly — how we can use the (IRS) to screw our political enemies.”

Obama’s campaign-style tactics have continued this year as he exploited sequester cuts — targeting the public with flight delays and canceled White House tours as part of a Republican blame game.

In the February 2012 Republican Michigan primary, Democratic consultant Caddell called out the Nixon-like activity that attempted to influence a Santorum upset of frontrunner Mitt Romney. Consistent with what he called “Obama’s Chicago hard-knuckle politics,” Caddell cited $250,000 in Obama Super Pac ads targeting Romney, an Obama speech to the UAW on the day of the vote, Obama allies writing anti-Romney op-eds in Detroit newspapers and Democratic operatives like state Democratic Party chair Mark Brewer urging Democrats to vote Santorum.

“Why doesn’t anyone hold this president accountable for this?” Caddell demanded at the time. “Barack Obama says he’s for a new kind of politics.”

This week, more people are asking the same question.