Scandaless

Just a month ago the Obama administration was embroiled in scandals: Benghazi; the IRS; the AP. As I blogged last month, some of this was serious stuff, some of it was political theater. It now seems that as we learn more, we are exposed not to scandalous activity, but scandaless activity.

Before I clarify, let me rehash what I wrote last month: Benghazi was never a scandal but a witch-hunt; the IRS case was troubling, not because the IRS was seeking to limit tax-exemptions from groups that are exploiting loopholes to gain tax-exempt status, but because they were supposedly targeting only conservative groups; and the seizure of phone records from AP reporters was - and still is - very troubling.

I will leave the last piece unaddressed until more info is available (I still find it very troubling), and I will continue to dismiss the Benghazi episode for what it was: a chance for Darryl Issa to look angry and important on national television. However new information has changed my take on what is happening at the IRS from scandalous to scandaless.

New documents released by the IRS show that the agency was actually applying the same targeting to both conservative and liberal groups, using a dragnet that included terms like "occupy" and "progressive" as well as "tea party." Far from being an attempt by Obama and Democrats to thwart their political opponents, this seems like an (ill-advised) effort by an overworked agency to determine which groups were trying to exploit 501(c)(4) loopholes and bill themselves as social welfare groups when in fact all they do is advertise for political candidates. That the IRS is tasked with this is a monumental task that reflects the inane influx of private money into politics, but since the law currently allows that, the IRS (or someone) must address it. Furthermore, groups that seemed to have no political inclinations at all were included in the list of suspicious terms.

This wasn't a scandal from on high, in fact it wasn't a scandal at all. This was the IRS doing its job. This new evidence just became public so I'll give Darryl Issa the benefit of the doubt - though I cringe to do so - and assume he didn't know about it, but now that we know what was actually happening at the IRS, perhaps we can get back to the real business of running the country, or at least figuring out what is going on with those AP phone records since the government doesn't seem to concern itself much with running the country even when there aren't scandals upon which to seize.