Matt Margolis - The Scandalous Presidency of Barack Obama

Also by Matt Margolis

The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama

A BOMBARDIER BOOKS BOOK

An Imprint of Post Hill Press

The Scandalous Presidency of Barack Obama

2018 by Matt Margolis

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-1-68261-581-2

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-68261-582-9

Cover Design by Cody Corcoran

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Post Hill Press

New York Nashville

posthillpress.com

Published in the United States of America

To my wife, Beth,

whose loving support made this book possible.

Contents

Introduction

On November 20, 2016, while speaking at a news conference on the last foreign tour of his presidency in Lima, Peru, Barack Obama claimed, Im extremely proud of the fact that over eight years we have not had the kinds of scandals that have plagued other administrations.

He actually said those things.

Its true that Obama often distanced himself from controversies as they arose in his administration by claiming he heard about them on the news. However, given the volume of scandals from which he distanced himself, such claims are hard to swallow.

Yet the mainstream press frequently echoed his dubious sentiments. Obamas top advisor Valerie Jarrett told CNNs Fareed Zakaria, The president prides himself on the fact that his administration hasnt had a scandal.

This should surprise no one. The press made a habit of pressing the same scandal-free talking point throughout Obamas two terms. Rana Foroohar, managing editor of TIME magazine, said on MSNBC back in May 2013, ...the president has been very rightfully proud of the lack of scandal in his administration so far.

Here are a few other examples of this remarkable consistency of narrative among the press. The New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote, The Obama administration has been remarkably scandal-free.

The media could not have been more consistent with their scandal-free messaging if the press operated right out of the Oval Office. Even when The Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler addressed these claims of a scandal-free administration, a bumbling litany of nuances and excuses for various controversies resulted in no rating for a four-Pinocchio lie. He claims that scandals are in the eye of the beholder.

Liberal media bias is well documented, but with Barack Obama, something worse is happening. In 2007, Ezra Klein, blogger and columnist for The Washington Post, founded JournoList.

Members of this group trashed conservative figures, but they also collaborated to protect candidate Obama when stories, such as his association with anti-American pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright, threatened his campaign. If they failed to kill or bury a story, they tried to smear his critics. Jonathan Strong, a contributor at The Daily Caller , reported, In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obamas relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obamas conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who caresand call them racists.

JournoList may have disbanded in 2010, but organized left-wing collusion to protect Obama continued unabated, and wasnt limited to the media. Academia also played a role in covering up the scandalous Obama years. When TIME magazine asked ten historians to weigh in on Obamas legacy, their comments often sounded much more like propaganda than analysis. Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin said Obama would be remembered for his dignity, grace, and the lack of scandal. James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, said Obama was virtually scandal free. Timothy Naftali, Clinical Associate Professor of History and Public Service at New York University, said Obama would leave office scandal-free. Nikhil Pal Singh, Associate Professor in the Departments of Social and Cultural Analysis and History at New York University, said Obama avoided scandal. Are these so-called experts in history ignorant of the recent past, or co-conspirators in whitewashing Obamas record?

When I coauthored The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama, I warned you this was coming. After all, even before Obama took the oath of office on January 20, 2009, greatness of messianic proportions was bestowed upon him and his presidency. Americans learned the hard way that hope and change werent all they were cracked up to be. Obama couldnt possibly live up to such premature canonization, so his allies constantly made excuses. The media turned a blind eye, and academics are now covering his tracks for posterity. While the impact of his policies will be debated for years, no one can pretend that the Obama years werent plagued from the beginning by controversy and scandalunless, that is, theyre either ignorant or dishonest.

Obama was one who liked to feign ignorance in order to distance himself from his scandals. When a scandal broke, Obamas default response was to claim he had learned about it from the media at the same time the rest of country did. Thats not a rejection of the scandalous nature of any given outrage; its an admission that the outrage was warranted. Only Obama could get away with spinning his responses as proof of the lack of scandal in his administration.

Is the media so left-biased that spying on journalists or waging war on whistleblowers is seen as problematic only when conducted by a Republican? What do historians think there is to gain by downplaying the significance of Fast and Furious, the IRS Scandal, or the Benghazi cover-up? Why are they protecting Obama from us instead of protecting us from Obama? If we refuse to recognize teachable moments in history as they happen just because they reflect poorly on the political savior du jour, we will learn nothing from our mistakes, and are, thus, doomed to repeat them.

While it may be clich to do so, its worth quoting George Orwell here. In his classic dystopian novel, 1984 , he wrote Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. Today, historians control the past and journalists control the present. If theyre both getting it so terribly wrong, then it is safe to say that the facts surrounding the scandals, that so many pretend never happened, will be lost to the memory hole. If people like you dont expose the truth about Obamas scandal-ridden administration, were going to wake up, one day, in a world that thinks hes Santa Clausa savior as fictional as a fairy tale.

Of course, Kesslers point about scandals being in the eye of the beholder forces us to more carefully define our terms. In one sense, hes right. In 2016, polls showed that the Hillary Clinton email scandal was a much bigger deal for conservatives than it was for liberals. The eye of the beholder may be biased, but journalists should be focused on reporting the objective facts. Theyre not, and thats why I wrote this book.

In The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama , Mark Noonan and I detailed the many failings of his presidency, but we also noted that history will be the ultimate judge of Obamas legacy. While we are confident that our assessment, and the plethora of facts to back it up, will stand the test of time, it will take years before Obamas presidency can be more objectively assessed by the masses. We wrote that book because we saw so clearly that the media wasnt speaking truth to power and that academia was a willing accomplice in a massive cover up to protect Obamas presidency from proper scrutiny. While that book covered all aspects of his presidency, this book will focus specifically on the scandals and controversies that marred Obama eight years in office, putting an end to the fallacy of a scandal-free administration.