What if Bush had . . . . . . ? #6

Here is another example of boorish behavior by President Obama that would have been critiqued and widely criticized by the extremely left wing media. Add this to the paranoid delusions of government abuse during the Bush administration and the howling over a comment like this would have been deafening.

At his Arizona State University commencement speech last Wednesday, Mr. Obama noted that ASU had refused to grant him an honorary degree, citing his lack of experience, and the controversy this had caused. He then demonstrated ASU's point by remarking, "I really thought this was much ado about nothing, but I do think we all learned an important lesson. I learned never again to pick another team over the Sun Devils in my NCAA brackets. . . . President [Michael] Crowe and the Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS."

As the Wall Street Journal editorial that I pulled that quote from points out, abuse of the audit power of the Internal Revenue Service is nothing for the head of the executive branch to joke about regardless of setting. There have been many instances of prior administrations (Johnson, Nixon, Clinton, etc) using the power of the federal government to exact payback against political rivals or "enemies."

An IRS employee who made a similar comment would face discipline and likely have their employment terminated. I'm not claiming that a president should be removed from office for something that would get a subordinate canned. Rather just saying presidents should attempt to exceed the level of behavior expected of subordinates. It is somewhat analogous to the Clinton misbehavior. Sure, the crime he was prosecuted for committing was perjury. However, his behavior (sexual harassment, assault, adultery, fornication in the work place, etc) was of such a nature that most other government employees would have faced serious sanctions and potentially be fired.