Monday, May 18, 2009

Like a Teenager with whisky and his father's gun

Glenn Reynolds (aka instapundit) has an opinion piece up in The Wall Street Journal about Obama's stupid IRS "joke" at the ASU commencement.

Just a joke about the power of the presidency. Made by Jay Leno it might have been funny. But as told by Mr. Obama, the actual president of the United States, it's hard to see the humor. Surely he's aware that other presidents, most notably Richard Nixon, have abused the power of the Internal Revenue Service to harass their political opponents. But that abuse generated a powerful backlash and with good reason. Should the IRS come to be seen as just a bunch of enforcers for whoever is in political power, the result would be an enormous loss of legitimacy for the tax system.
I agree with Glenn. That joke was dumb, dumb, dumb. And as I said in a previous post, that joke is not only completely inappropriate for Obama to make but displays incredibly poor judgement.

Just like the poor judgement that impelled him to bow to the Saudi King. Just like the poor judgement that places tax cheats in key cabinat positions. Just like the poor judgment to cheat our allies while hobnobbing with our enemies.

Obama's poor judgement in threatening IRS audits on innocent civilians - even in jest - makes Bush's occassional misproununcations look good. Real good.

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