Schieffer On Scandals: "It's Very, Very Disturbing What We're Seeing"
CHARLIE ROSE: You have seen lots of second terms. This one came in on a big political victory, wanting to do things. And you have this picture, one, of intrusive government and yet a president who seems like a bystander in his own government.
BOB SCHIEFFER: People were talking in Washington about -- some people were saying, "Are we back to the Nixon administration? This is what they did in the Nixon administration." This is not the Nixon administration, where you had burglars and people talking about blowing up the Brookings Institution. This is more of a case, is anybody home?
I mean, just all of a sudden you have this thing with the Justice Department where they’re getting all these phone records of all the reporters. The Attorney General, well he didn’t know anything about it. You get to the IRS, they don’t seem to know anything about the Tea Party thing. You come to White House, they don’t know anything about Benghazi. Somebody’s got to grab hold of this thing. It’s very, very disturbing what we’re seeing here.
NORAH O’DONNELL: What do you make of the president’s actions yesterday? He dealt with all three things yesterday: He fired the head of the IRS. Released 100 pages of emails that deal with Benghazi. And then on the third scandal the snooping into the AP reporters’ phone records, the president then put out that he’s for this shield law for journalists. The White House took a lot of proactive action yesterday.
SCHIEFFER: They did. But that was yesterday. How is it these things all – nobody seemed to be taking very seriously up until this point? There is no question though, that the administration was trying to get the story out that the War on Terrorism, the threat of terrorism had been lessened, wasn’t as serious as it had been pictured, and that erupts into this thing with all these emails. We see at the State Department, the spokesman there saying “my higher-ups in the building are worried about this.” Well which higher-ups? Why?
O’DONNELL: You’re speaking about Victoria Nuland, who is the State Dept. spokesperson, and in these emails back and forth, she was saying “my higher ups were worried about this.” And the question is, was it the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton?
SCHIEFFER: And we still don’t know the answer to that. It’s a pretty easy thing. Obviously, I think the president did the right thing in letting the temporary head of the IRS go, but what happens now? Where does this go from here? That should not have happened.
ROSE: It all goes to the center of government: The Oval Office, doesn’t it? The president has to take control of his own government.
SCHIEFFER: Well, that’s where you’re seeing some of the criticism now, there’s no question that the situation in Washington is as toxic as I’ve ever seen it. But you are now seeing those on the left saying that the president got to start participating in the presidency, I believe is the way Dana Milbank phrased it in the Washington Post – this is not somebody coming at him from the right. The president has got some serious problems here, and can he grab hold of this? If he doesn’t he’s not going to get anything done in the second term.
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