With the scandals in Washington,  each of us must come to one of three conclusions:

1. that the accusations are all part of a vast, right-wing conspiracy;
2. that the President is an evil man intent on being a tyrant; or
3. that the administration is led by by bureaucrats and department heads with no integrity, and that the President’s administrative style has not been able to keep them in line.

Based on history, I choose the third.

This is not like Watergate, where the President was directly involved in conspiracy to commit and cover-up crimes.  This is more like the scandals that haunted Presidents Grant and Harding.  In each case, they chose the wrong people to lead the executive departments, and then they didn’t watch and control them closely enough.  When you read about these two “scandal-plagued” Presidents, you will not find any corruption or criminal activity directly tied to them–it is always attached to the people they failed to supervise because they thought that they could trust them.

Was the response to Benghazi politicized to help the Obama campaign?  Yes, but neither by the candidate himself nor the secretary of state.  They both should have known about it and put a stop to the lies, but they didn’t authorize them.

Was the abuse by the IRS a political strategy to hinder conservative groups?  Yes, but led from within the Treasury department, and not from the White House.

Was the outrageous raid on the AP’s phone records a power grab by a justice department that used the phony excuse of  “national security” to violate the first Amendment?  Yes, but by now it must be obvious to everyone that the CIA is far less effective than we thought, and is desperate to avoid being embarrassed again, especially by a leak from within. 

And nobody is even talking about the Department of Homeland Security, which considers angry white Constitutionalists more a threat than Muslim extremists, and is buying more ammunition than the army.  I won’t mention the tanks they recently bought, which could only be used within our own borders, and against our own people.

A true leader would see the illegitimate motives and directions of these department and agencies, and would replace their leadership with ones more in love with this nation and its values.  But maybe that is the administration’s greatest failing:  they don’t seem to understand or appreciate the traditional values of this land, and so their vision is directed more by discontent than by love for the USA.