Scandal-palooza! Obama's Biggest Achievement: Making Al Capone Look Good

Like all of you, I grew up hearing how incredibly clever and wonderful the Feds had been when they busted Chicago's fierce gangster Al "Scarface" Capone. They, of course, couldn't get him on bootlegging, smuggling, corruption, prostitution, murder, or bad fashion sense, but they got him on tax evasion. Al subsequently spent several years as a guest of the Federal prison system, including a stint at Alcatraz, before getting released for health reasons. Not long after this release, he died a relatively young man in Florida. One wonders, however, whether we don't have ol' Al completely wrong. Maybe he was the American Robin Hood or Zorro, or at least a misunderstood hero of the working and entrepreneurial "classes," finding innovative ways to give the people what they wanted; trying to keep his profits; and fighting corrupt, parasitic, and bullying cops and bureaucrats.

Events of the past few days certainly seem to show that the forces that put away Al, now seem to threaten all of us. The tiny government of the 1920s and 1930s has morphed into a monstrous Leviathan-cum-Saturn out to devour us all. It seems altogether fitting that the flurry of scandals now threatening to bury the current administration comes during the watch of another Chicagoan, of a man schooled in the ways of the system that put away Capone.

Obama and his cronies have clearly learned the lesson that the IRS provides a very powerful tool to use against opponents. If you can't beat them fair and square at the ballot box, or at the debate podium, or in the blogosphere, unleash the tax man! Use the powers bestowed on that agency by our bewildering and evermore intrusive tax code to bring opponents into line. Use the data collected to smear and slander, and prosecutors to pursue those opponents. Silence! The Great O demands it! You noisy Tea Party types stop partying! You pro-Israeli Jews, didn't you get the memo? Want your books audited? Data leaked? Reputations ruined?

The scandals--Benghazi, AP phones, and IRS, among others--come not just as some have said because the government is too big, and too difficult to control and manage. These scandals have a root that goes much deeper and will prove more difficult to kill than just trimming the size of government a bit. They are products of the arrogant liberal orthodoxy (see here for some thoughts on that) that rules almost unchallenged within our government, universities, media, and Hollywood. There is an unspoken assumption in these corridors of influence and power that it's the liberal way or the highway. I just came from spending a few days at a major university and was stunned--yet again--by the complete lack of ideological debate, by the denigration of anybody who thinks even remotely different from the prevailing liberal wisdom. There is no diversity of thought, no humility in expressing views, no consideration given that maybe the other side has a valid point. It is, therefore, no surprise that IRS bureaucrats should unquestioningly carry out instructions to give special scrutiny to "Tea Party" groups, or that the State Department spokeswoman should worry about the Republicans in Congress using the truth to criticize the administration, and arguing for the truth to be altered.

Obama is the poster child of this liberal orthodoxy. He is a man of no notable achievement, almost invisible until he became president, but a man who complied and complies with the rules of the orthodoxy more so than any other president or politician we ever have seen. One sees it in his barely contained anger on being questioned or challenged; in his dismissive and condescending attitude towards opponents; the ease and confidence with which he rewrites his own biography and even the most recent events to fit in with the world view of the orthodoxy.

The new Obama Chicago way makes the old Capone Chicago way look positively benign.