On Sunday Steve Chapman compared Richard Nixon’s misuse of the Internal Revenue Service with what has happened in the IRS in the last couple of years under Barack Obama, and he finds no comparison.
As Mr. Chapman notes, President Nixon wanted the IRS to audit big contributors to the Democratic National Committee, as investigate his potential opponents. According to Mr. Chapman:
“In 1971, weary of improper pressure, Commissioner Randolph Thrower asked for a meeting with the president to advise him that ‘the introduction of political influence into the IRS would be very damaging to him and his administration, as well as to the revenue system and the general public interest.’ Nixon refused to see him.
When another commissioner closed down a unit that was used for political retribution, the president tried repeatedly to fire him -- while griping profanely in private that he, as The New York Times paraphrased, ‘was prissy about legal procedures.’”
On the other hand, Mr. Chapman says this of President Obama:
“Here is what the 44th president had to say about how the agency should operate: ‘Americans have a right to be angry about it, and I'm angry about it. It should not matter what political stripe you're from. The fact of the matter is the IRS has to operate with absolute integrity.’”
A valid point. Still, I wonder which situation we should be more worried about: (i) A President who tries to use the IRS to go after his political opponents but the IRS refuses to do a lot of what he asks; or (ii) An IRS so out of control that it targets one side of the political debate (which happens to be the President’s opponents) without being told to – and that continues to do so even after being told to stop.
An out-of-control president can be impeached. An out-of-control bureaucracy? I don’t know.
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