Enlarge image i

Lois Lerner, head of the IRS unit that decides whether to grant tax-exempt status to groups, leaves after being dismissed from a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Wednesday.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

The public got its first look Thursday at Lois Lerner, who has gone from faceless IRS bureaucrat to the face that launched what feels like 1,000 congressional hearings and conspiracy theories.

But it was only a brief sighting since she didn't stay long at a House hearing to further probe her role in how some IRS workers came to target conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

The night before the hearing Lerner, who heads the IRS tax-exempt operation at the scandal's heart, made it known through her lawyer that she would invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and would refuse to testify or answer questions. And she did just that, mostly.

She did make a short statement to declare her innocence, however. Lerner's motivation was more transparent than much of what the IRS has done in connection with this controversy. She was determined to get her side of the story out, at least the main points as she saw them. After all, she's had to endure many days of lawmakers and journalists accusing her of deception in her past dealings with them, and worse.

"I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws, I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations, and I have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee," she said.

There was one problem. By reading her statement and acknowledging that a document she was handed contained information she had provided, Lerner prompted some Republicans to claim she had essentially waived her Fifth Amendment right. Rep. Darrell Issa of California, chairman of the House Oversight Committee which conducted Wednesday's hearing, indicated he was seeking legal advice on the matter.

Legal expert Stan Brand told NPR's Peter Overby and The Washington Post, however, he thought it unlikely a court would agree that she had forfeited her constitutional rights.

In any event, Lerner's conclusions about her own rectitude aren't likely to win over many converts.

She was, after all, the IRS official who answered that question at a recent American Bar Association conference — the one that made the IRS trend on Twitter for weeks now. In her canned answer to the planted question, she blamed low-level workers in the agency's Cincinnati office for targeting groups with "Tea Party" and "patriot" in their names.

To say that many people found the planted-question gambit unseemly would be an understatement. That tactic apparently wasn't solely Lerner's idea: The IRS's recently fired acting commissioner, Steven Miller, told senators Tuesday he deserves blame for that one. He and Lerner had discussed how to get the details out before a Treasury inspector general's report on the matter went public.

Still, the mere fact that Lerner is caught up in the scandal has genuinely surprised Bruce Hopkins, a veteran tax lawyer in Kansas City who knows her through numerous conferences where they both appeared on panels or as speakers.

"Overall, I've always had a very high regard for her and I think she is far more qualified and more talented than most" IRS officials he has observed over the years, he said. "I think she's probably as good as can be gotten here for a government position like this.

"That's why I was surprised to learn she was involved with something like this. It didn't fit. It still doesn't fit. I have trouble understanding what has happened."

Hopkins' high opinion, earned over years of his seeing her in action, is no doubt something for her to cling to as she finds herself at the center of a storm. On the other hand, something recently written by David Cay Johnston, a journalist who knows the IRS better than many people who work there, is exactly the sort of thing she may want to put out of her mind:

"Only a person lacking a sense of honor and integrity would cling to their job in the face of the horrendous damage caused to the agency they work for, to her superiors and to the welfare of the Republic if her mistakes prompt even more IRS budget cuts.

"No one in this century has done more to breed disrespect for our tax system than Lois G. Lerner, undermining the public confidence on which voluntary compliance rests."

It would be hard to find stronger evidence for her having become the face of this scandal than that.

Enlarge image i

President Obama answered questions on scandals involving the IRS and Justice Department, at a news conference last week at the White House.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Public opinion about the scandals plaguing the Obama administration is decidedly mixed.

Republicans believe that the trio of controversies — concerning Benghazi, the IRS, and the Justice Department snooping on media phone records — are evidence enough that President Obama is either running a government motivated by partisan politics, or is badly out of touch.

Democrats, however, are proving to be much more forgiving.

"These things are being used for political purposes," says Lois Yatzeck, a retired minister in St. Louis. "Obama's political foes are taking advantage of it."

Yatzeck's read on the situation is widely shared. Public opinion polls suggest that Republicans are paying much more attention to these matters and are much more likely to disapprove of Obama's handling of them. Democrats, meanwhile, have been more steadfast in support.

As a result, even as Congress and the rest of Washington have been consumed by these issues for more than a week, the president's approval ratings have yet to take any noticeable hit.

"Part of the issue is that people's opinion of the president is already baked in," says Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll. "These are rank-and-file Republicans and Democrats, not the leaders in Washington, and yet we found this very large gulf between them."

Consider The Source

A walk along Delmar Boulevard reveals that many people are skeptical about the current trio of scandals — and whether they should even be considered scandals.

The retail-and-restaurant stretch runs through University City, a heavily Democratic enclave just outside St. Louis, near Washington University. Some people there suggest that the current controversies represent opportunism on the part of Republicans and conservative media figures such as Rush Limbaugh.

"It's the same thing as always," says bookseller Scott Bartlett. "The people I hear pointing fingers aren't right about anything."

To the extent that there have been abuses, as with the IRS targeting conservative groups for heightened scrutiny, Bartlett and others along Delmar shrug it off as business as usual.

Michael Kelley, a high school teacher in University City, says that he's inclined to share Bartlett's skepticism about Obama's political opponents. "There's no doubt that the other side of the aisle is taking every opportunity they have to take advantage of these things," he says.

But Kelley is troubled by some of the stories. He feels there are more questions yet to be answered, particularly in regard to the administration's handling of the attack in Benghazi, Libya, last September.

Still, Kelley says, "So far, I haven't seen a trail lead back to the White House."

Not One Simple Scandal

The fact that there are multiple controversies on the political radar helps to complicate matters. And these are not straightforward stories about sex or money-grubbing.

There's a lot of back and forth about these issues and their interpretation. Congressional Democrats may express outrage about the IRS, but in general they have been willing to cut Obama a good deal of slack, as was clear from their questioning of administration officials Tuesday in the Senate banking and finance committees.

The public as a whole is more inclined to react strongly to scandals when leaders of both parties say there's something serious to be upset about, says Adam Berinsky, an expert in public opinion at MIT. That's not happening, so far.

Even as more evidence comes to the fore, the minds of partisans may not be swayed by it, he says. That was the case in 1998, when Republicans impeached President Bill Clinton for lying about his affair with a White House intern.

"People pick their teams and stick with them," he says.

It's normal for partisans to defend the leader of their party and their party's brand. What's striking today, Berinsky says, is that so much more of the public thinks in strongly partisan terms than they used to, meaning presidential approval ratings barely budge in response to changing circumstances.

"As with so many stories these days, it comes down to partisanship," says Regina Lawrence, a journalism professor at the University of Texas who has studied reactions to scandals. "Partisan dynamics are so much stronger now even than they were during the Clinton years."

Should Have Known Better

If you cross the Missouri River from St. Louis, you come into St. Charles County, one of the richest sources of Republican votes in the state. Most of the people walking along the brick-paved Main Street of the city of St. Charles are Republicans, and most of them are highly upset with Obama.

"People should be outraged," says dental hygienist Sylvia Stone. "People should be disturbed that Americans died in Benghazi, and they blamed it on a video that had nothing to do with it."

While Democrats like Kelley — and much of the media coverage — have been concerned with the question of how much the president knew, Republicans say ignorance is no excuse.

"The president saying I learned about it in the press — you're either incompetent or being dishonest," says Bob Sutton, a retiree visiting St. Charles from Pennsylvania. He says he believes it's the latter.

Watch The Independents

Obama was never going to gain much traction with either Sutton or Stone. Politically, he has to worry more about people like Robert Baker, a self-described independent.

He voted for Obama last fall but is "terribly disappointed" in the proliferation of scandals that have broken since.

"The president is our highest office, and we hold it to a higher standard," says Baker. "Without knowing all the details yet, I would like to think he had his finger on what was going on around him, and it seems like he didn't."

Baker worries that most people aren't tuned in. "People tend to pay attention when it hits them in the pocketbook," he says.

Baker recently lost his job in the disaster restoration business, but he thinks most people are willing to cut the president some slack as the Dow Jones average rises and the economy picks up.

"With unemployment getting better and the housing market getting better, people are getting lazy and not paying attention," he says.

Enlarge image i

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. (center), listens to testimony during a hearing on the immigration bill on April 22.

Andrew Harnik/The Washington Times/Landov

After five marathon sessions debating 150 proposed amendments, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a landmark rewriting of the nation's immigration laws this week — and the bill emerged largely intact.

Three Republicans voted with the panel's 10 Democrats on Tuesday night to forward the bill to the full Senate. That strong showing followed a wrenching choice for Democrats on the committee: whether to risk shattering support for the bill by amending it to recognize equal rights for same-sex couples.

How It Played Out

It was the last day for the Judiciary Committee to make changes in the immigration bill, and senators in the so-called Gang of Eight who wrote that bipartisan legislation were worried.

It's All Politics

Some Democrats Back Same-Sex Amendment To Immigration Bill

Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., had not yet ruled out bringing up his own amendment, which would give gay Americans the same right as everyone else to sponsor foreign-born spouses for green cards. Outside the Senate chamber, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a member of the Gang of Eight, warned of the possible impact of Leahy's amendment.

"It'll kill the bill. It'll kill the bill," he said. "We lose evangelicals. We lose the Catholic Church.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., another Gang of Eight member, said he'd vote against the immigration bill if it recognized same-sex marriages.

And yet just as the Judiciary Committee was set for a final vote on the bill, Leahy defied the pressures to hold back his amendment.

"I'd like to turn to an issue very important to me and to many Americans who are suffering from discrimination based on who we, who they love," he said.

Leahy said he first wanted to hear what members of the committee had to say about his amendment, especially the two Democrats and two Republicans in the Gang of Eight. One of those two Republicans, Arizona's Jeff Flake, told Leahy adopting the amendment would mean the bill would not move forward. The other Gang of Eight Republican, South Carolina's Lindsey Graham, agreed.

"It would mean that the bill would fall apart because the coalition would fall apart because no matter how well meaning you are, Sen. Leahy — and I know you are — there are a lot of folks supporting this bill who are not going to agree to redefine marriage for immigration law purposes," Graham said.

The two Democratic members of both the Gang of Eight and the Judiciary Committee were in a tougher spot: They could back Leahy's amendment and risk seeing the bill go down, or they could oppose it despite their strong support for equal rights.

One of them, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told Leahy he had reached a difficult conclusion.

"I believe in my heart of hearts that what you're doing is the right and just thing, and I admire you for it very much, Mr. Chairman," he said. "But I believe this is the wrong moment, that this is the wrong bill."

The other Gang of Eight Democrat on the panel, Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, said that as much as it pained him, he could not support an amendment if it brought down the bill.

"I'm a politician, and that means I have chosen my life's work within the constraints of the system to accomplish as much as good as I can," he said.

What's Next

Steve Ralls, the spokesman for Immigration Equality, an advocacy group for gay and lesbian immigration rights, put it this way: "Democratic senators unfortunately caved to threats from their colleagues."

Ralls says he doesn't blame Leahy for ultimately withdrawing his amendment. And he says a Supreme Court ruling this summer could overturn the Defense of Marriage Act and make equal protection for same-sex married couples a matter of law.

"But senators last night had an opportunity to make sure that if the court ruling isn't good, that lesbian and gay families would still be treated equally under the law," he said. "It was a critical insurance policy, and senators failed to deliver."

The full Senate is expected to take up the bill next month. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a sharp critic of the bill, predicts that is as far as it will get.

"It may well have the votes to pass the Senate, but I do not believe this bill will pass the House of Representatives or become law," Cruz said.

Republicans may soon face their own dilemma: back the immigration bill and shore up support with Latinos or oppose it and risk further alienating those voters.

Enlarge image i

Former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman testifies Tuesday on Capitol Hill, before a Senate Finance Committee hearing.

Charles Dharapak/AP

It was the Senate's turn Tuesday to grill the Internal Revenue Service, or more accurately, former agency officials, about its handling of the scandal involving the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

Unlike last week, when House lawmakers got to beat up only on Steve Miller — until recently the IRS' acting director whose "resignation" President Obama reported at a hastily called appearance before news cameras last week — this time Miller was joined by Douglas Shulman, the former commissioner who left that post in November. They were joined by J. Russell George, a Treasury Department inspector general whose recent report on the politically charged practices sparked outrage on the right and left.

From the start, a few things were readily apparent. Senators from both parties weren't buying the men's version of events, that they only found out about the by-now notorious practices of the Cincinnati office relatively late.

Sen. Max Baucus, the Democrat who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, started the interrogation.

Baucus asked Shulman: "What happened in Cincinnati? What — how'd that — what conditions caused that?"

To which Shulman, whose time leading the IRS from 2008 to 2012 fully encompassed the period when the problems occurred, said: "Mr. Chairman, I can't say — I can't say that I know that answer. I'm six months out of office."

Baucus wasn't letting Shulman off that easily. "Well ... you've got some sense of the office. You were a commissioner for a good number of years. You've got some idea. You've thought about this."

Shulman insisted that he's been away from the agency since late last year, so he was clueless.

"Well, I'm kind of disappointed, frankly," Baucus said. "Because you've got — you've had time to think about this, and you certainly have more thoughts than that."

At one point, a Senate committee staffer who might have earned for himself a moment on Jon Stewart's Daily Show, could be seen behind a senator, visibly shaking his head in disbelief.

Senate Republicans were no less frustrated than Baucus. They pressed Shulman and Miller on how it was, exactly, that at the same time GOP senators in the spring of 2012 were asking the men to address allegations by Tea Party groups that the IRS was targeting them for political reasons, the men denied knowledge of the dubious practices.

Shulman, who was appointed by President George W. Bush to the IRS post, got no quarter from Senate Republicans who showed varying degrees of unhappiness, from the grandfatherly disappointment of Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah to the prosecutorial chilliness of Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina.

Hatch spoke for many of his colleagues when he asked Shulman how it was that, after the then-IRS commissioner learned of the controversial targeting in May 2012 — even that there was a "be on the lookout" list, or a BOLO — just weeks after he told senators the IRS was doing no such thing, Shulman never followed up with a revision.

"But you knew this was going on, and you had represented that it was not going on, and then you found out that it was going on, and you never came to us and let us know what was going on," Hatch said.

Shulman, a lawyer, gave a very lawyerly response:

"I certainly don't believe, and I don't have any memory of representing that this — that the BOLO list was not going on at a time that I knew it was going on."

While Senate Democrats shared their Republican colleagues' outrage, like House Democrats and President Obama, they said the scandal proves that Congress should clarify the law that now permits organizations with 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status to conduct political activities. Leaving it up to the IRS to decide just how much political activity is permissible is partly the reason the scandal happened in the first place, Democrats argue.

As at most hearings like Tuesday's spectacle, part of the political show was about the senators wanting the disgraced witnesses to demonstrate adequate levels of contrition. For much of the hearing, the lawmakers seemed disappointed with what they were getting.

Eventually, they wrangled something resembling contrition from Shulman.

"I certainly am not personally responsible for creating a list that had inappropriate criteria on it," he said. "And what I know, with the full facts that are out, is from the inspector general's report, which doesn't say that I'm responsible for that. With that said, this happened on my watch. And I very much regret that it happened on my watch."

Close but no cigar, said Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican:

"Well, I don't think that qualifies an apology. It qualifies as an expression of regret, which I think is well-deserved."

Enlarge image i

Richard Nixon says goodbye to members of his staff outside the White House as he boards a helicopter after resigning the presidency on Aug. 9, 1974.

AP

The phrase "second term curse" is so familiar that it's become a cliche of American politics. Whether it's President Richard Nixon's resignation or President Bill Clinton's impeachment, presidents tend to have a tough time during the back half of an eight-year presidency.

Nothing on President Obama's plate comes close to those historical examples. But right now the White House is defending itself against three controversies that distract the president from the agenda he would like to be pursuing: Benghazi, the IRS and the Justice Department seizure of AP phone records all have the administration scrambling.

Why do presidential second terms tend to be so fraught?

'Troublesome' Terms

Alfred Zacher, a real estate agent in Indiana, says there's no single explanation.

After reading about Thomas Jefferson's second-term stumbles, Zacher started thinking — obsessively — about the presidencies he had watched.

"I'm old enough to remember Franklin Roosevelt's packing of the Supreme Court and his difficulty," Zacher says. "Lived through the retirement of Richard Nixon and seeing Lyndon Johnson with his difficulty. I said, 'This second term is troublesome. What's going on here?' "

So Zacher spent eight years writing a self-published book, Presidential Power in Troubled Second Terms. By his subjective tally, only about a third of the presidents who won re-election had a successful second term.

"A rather prominent historian asked me last year: Which presidents had a better second term than first term?" Zacher says. He came up with two names: James Madison and Andrew Jackson.

The downward trajectory can be traced to a variety of different pitfalls, from wars to personal scandals to congressional gridlock.

Donna Hoffman at the University of Northern Iowa studies that last measure. After analyzing the amount of legislation presidents got through Congress for the past 50 years, she's dubious that the second-term curse is all that bad.

"We oftentimes see that there is a little bit of a drop in terms of what presidents are able to accomplish in the second term," she says, "but it's not such a drop that one would go, 'Aha, there it is. They're always less successful.' "

The drop is a little more than 10 percent. She says in a second term, lawmakers start to envision Washington without the sitting president.

"So their political fortunes may start to diverge in that sense, even members of his own party," Hoffman says, while members of the other party have more interest than ever in investigations and subpoenas.

A 'Scandal Backlog'

Enlarge image i

President Clinton walks to the White House Rose Garden to deliver a statement on the impeachment inquiry on Dec. 11, 1998.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Then there are scandals — self-inflicted wounds that seem to pop up more often after re-election. Partly that's because these things can take years to come to light.

"President Obama actually went the longest of any contemporary president without a scandal," says Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth College. "So you can think about the current context as also reflecting a kind of scandal backlog."

Nyhan has studied when presidents are most vulnerable to scandal. His research shows that the danger zone comes during slow news periods when the president's popularity is especially low among members of the other party. In other words, this moment is a perfect storm for Obama.

"President Obama is unpopular with the Republican base, and there's not much going on in the news," Nyhan says. "When you add the Republicans' control of the House and the committees there to investigate the administration, President Obama is at a great deal of risk."

But no presidency is black and white. In fact, many who endure beatings after re-election go on to accomplish a lot.

Clinton was impeached. Then he worked to get legislation passed, oversaw a growing economy and left office more popular than when he started. President Reagan endured the Iran-Contra scandal. Then he had major foreign policy victories and wound up an icon.

As David Greenberg, a historian at Rutgers, puts it: "In a way, if we define the curse so broadly that it could include bad policies, scandals, personal failings, then you look at presidents' first terms and there's also a first-term curse."

In fact, out of the 44 U.S. presidents, only 21 have served more than a full term. So there may be a second-term curse, but for more than half of the presidents, a first-term curse never even let them get that far.

Enlarge image i

The Senate Judiciary Committee meets to work on immigration legislation on May 9.

Michael Reynolds/EPA/Landov

It's been a long slog already for the bipartisan immigration overhaul proposed by the Senate's Gang of Eight.

The legislation has been the target of more than 300 amendments during days of debate and votes by the Senate Judiciary Committee. But while the bill has largely held its own so far, its prospects for getting through Congress remain uncertain.

In Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy's view, the immigration overhaul is "moving very well."

"It's moving a lot faster than people said it would," says Leahy, a Vermont Democrat.

Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, one of two Republican members of the Gang of Eight who sit on the Judiciary Committee, says he thinks with the adoption of 15 GOP amendments so far, the bill has become more appealing to conservatives.

"It's a better bill for, I think, those of us who care about border security and interior enforcement — it's a stronger bill," he says.

But that's not how fellow Republican and committee member Jeff Sessions of Alabama sees it.

"None of the significant amendments have been accepted," he says. "It's pretty clear that the Gang of Eight's original statement that they would resist any significant changes to the bill is coming true."

Earlier this week, Sessions brought up an amendment putting the bill's promised path to citizenship for 11 million unauthorized immigrants on hold until biometric data, such as fingerprints or iris scans, are used to screen the entry and exit of every international traveler.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a member of the Gang of Eight, helped defeat it.

"I want biometrics as far as the eye can see, in as many ways as possible, post-9/11, to protect this nation," he says. "But to make it a trigger in light of how much it costs and how long it takes, I just think goes too far."

But the issue has exposed a crack in the Gang of Eight's unity. One of its members who is not on the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., says he supports a biometric entry-exit system.

"The fundamental question is: Can it be done in a cost-effective manner? And I think that's what we're going to hopefully explore here over the next few days leading into the floor debate," he says. "I hope that we can. I think it makes the system more effective."

Additional Information:

Related NPR Stories

The Two-Way

Bipartisan House Group Says It's Reached Immigration Deal

It's All Politics

Some Democrats Back Same-Sex Amendment To Immigration Bill

And even though Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., voted against the biometric amendment, she says she would like to see it considered when the bill goes before the full Senate, probably next month.

"I don't think it's a deal-breaker," she says. "But I think we need to do our work, and I'm one Democrat that would like to see it eventually used ... if it is cost-effective — cost-efficient, I should say."

Meanwhile, opponents of that path to citizenship are warning it could doom the entire bill.

"The way to avoid the bill being voted down in the House of Representatives is to reach a reasonable common-sense compromise," says Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, "and, in particular, to take off the table a path to citizenship. So I hope that's what they choose to do."

That would be the wrong choice, says Rubio, the Florida Republican.

"If ... we can put in measures that ensure that we're ... not going to have another wave of illegal immigration, people are willing to support a bill that deals with the 11 million that are here now," Rubio says. "And if we don't, I don't think we'll have immigration reform."

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, could end up voting next week to send the immigration bill to the full Senate, a move that could persuade other key Republicans to get behind it. But Hatch first wants the committee to vote on changes he has offered boosting the number of visas for highly skilled workers.

"If they want to pass this bill through both houses, they've got to give on those," he says. "I've got to have them."

But Hatch will have to get past the opposition of Gang of Eight member Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

"Some of his amendments are acceptable, with some changes, and some are unacceptable," Durbin says. "And, you know, when a senator basically says it's take it or leave it, [he] puts himself in a very weak bargaining position."

Adding to the bill's uncertainty is an amendment that Leahy, the Judiciary Committee chairman, has yet to bring up that would allow gay U.S. citizens to sponsor foreign spouses for green cards. Republicans in the Gang of Eight warn such a measure, if adopted, would be a deal-breaker.

Ousted IRS chief Steve Miller (right) and J. Russell George, a Treasury inspector general, take the oath before testifying on before the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday.

Charles Dharapak/AP

Of all the controversies swirling around the Obama White House, the Internal Revenue Service scandal seems likeliest to have the longest shelf life.

While the Benghazi affair has long been in the news, it's never really taken off as an issue beyond the Republican base.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration's position that national security considerations justified the Justice Department's gathering of journalists' phone records in a leak investigation may be enough to remove fuel from the outrage. Voters typically give presidents a wide berth when commanders in chief invoke national security, especially since Sept. 11.

But the IRS has a relationship with Americans that's far from warm and fuzzy. Indeed, as the agency that enforces the nation's tax laws, it's the part of government Americans most love to hate.

So the revelation that some of its workers were doing something as objectionable as singling out applications for tax-exempt status from conservative groups is just one more log tossed on a raging anti-IRS bonfire.

And that's even before you get to the IRS's role as the agency vested with enforcing the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate.

That feature of Obamacare is perhaps the one most detested by conservatives. The scandal provides them with a new and possibly potent anti-Obamacare talking point.

Add to that how readily the scandal feeds the American appetite for conspiracy theories and it's easy to see how the administration may be dealing with this crisis far longer than its other current controversies.

"Talking to my clients on the Hill, one of things you're hearing is that [of all the scandals] the IRS might be the most permanent and may be the most egregious," said Jim Innocenzi, a long-time Republican communications strategist. "From a partisan perspective, it's the gift that keeps on giving ..."

Innocenzi, whose firm makes ads for Republican political candidates, said it's still too early to know how the IRS scandal will play out. But he's fairly sure it it's not going anywhere soon unless the president goes much further than he already has. For instance, replacing one bureaucrat most of the public has never heard of, fired acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller, with another bureaucrat the public has never heard of, new acting Commissioner Daniel Werfel, is not nearly enough.

But though Innocenzi thinks the IRS scandal has legs, even he isn't willing to go so far as to say that President Obama will be plagued by it until the end of his term.

If a special prosecutor were appointed, for instance, and exonerated the White House, that could go a long way to clearing the air. "If he did nothing, if it had nothing to with him, then appoint a special prosecutor and find out who did. Because they [the IRS] trampled on a lot of Americans' civil liberties." (Obama has dismissed such calls. Congress has the power to appoint special prosecutors.)

While it's surely in Republican interests to keep the IRS story going and to say it's far from running its course, Democrats obviously hope that isn't true.

"There's absolutely no evidence that anybody at the White House was pushing any buttons or pulling any levers on that stuff," said Peter Fenn, a veteran Democratic communications strategist. "There's no there there. I just don't think this is going anywhere.

"The American people want to get something done. They want to see the Congress do something. Why is it in the latest poll today today [when] they ask if you're going for a Democrat for Congress, a Republican or independent, third party is ahead? They're so mad at Congress they can't see straight. They want to pass immigration reform. They want to see real movement on the economy and jobs. This stuff [like the IRS scandal] is just another ... sideshow."

Enlarge image i

President Obama checks to see if it's still raining as a Marine holds an umbrella for him during a joint news conference with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the White House on Thursday.

Charles Dharapak/AP

President Obama's first term was free from the kind of scandal that consumes every ounce of political oxygen in Washington. Now, in light of a trio of controversies, his supporters find themselves in the uncomfortable and unaccustomed position of having to defend some hard-to-defend events.

Democrats have offered up a range of responses. They view the issues — Benghazi, the IRS and the Justice Department snooping on The Associated Press — as separate issues that shouldn't be lumped together.

"It is shriekingly frustrating to me to learn a narrative is taking shape that utterly misses the main contours of the event now taking place," says Rick Perlstein, a liberal journalist and historian. "Three scandals or alleged scandals, all very different from one another in substance, seriousness and nature of their relationship to presidential accountability, being packaged together in a Scandal Moment."

Democrats who hope this will all blow over may have been encouraged by a Gallup poll released Thursday, which suggested that a "comparatively low" number of Americans are closely following the IRS and Benghazi stories.

But most of those surveyed said the two cases deserve further investigation. Knowing that Obama is in for weeks, if not months, of further scrutiny and criticism, progressives have offered a range of responses about what has happened and how it should be judged.

It's not exactly akin to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' five stages of grief, but that well-known outline is still a useful model for looking at the state of the left in this time of trouble for the Obama White House.

1. Denial

From the White House on down, Democrats believe the controversy over the terrorist attack last September on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, has been overblown.

Much of the debate, after all, has centered not on questions of security failures, but who offered edits to which draft of talking points after the fact. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has repeatedly asserted that administration critics are attempting to "politicize" the issue.

In the case of the IRS targeting Tea Party chapters and other conservative groups, the administration initially sought to deny responsibility, suggesting it was the unfettered work of low-level officials in the Cincinnati office. It has since conceded that decision-making took place at a higher level.

The Justice Department is investigating and Obama forced the resignation of the acting IRS commissioner, Steven Miller, on Wednesday. Miller told the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday that "foolish mistakes were made," although not with partisan intent.

Still, some commentators on the left have argued that the IRS was just trying to do its job in checking out applications from politically oriented organizations that were claiming to be "social welfare" groups.

Having "slogged through" the report of the Treasury Department's inspector general, blogger Brad Friedman doesn't find any evidence of the kind of "misconduct" the president himself has complained about.

"Further investigation may uncover such behavior, but if there was purposeful or criminal misconduct by anyone in the office, the IG's report doesn't seem to offer any actual evidence of it," Friedman writes.

2. Anger

There's plenty of anger — not just at Republicans for exploiting the scandals, but at the media for playing along with them.

"The right sees these contretemps as vehicles for creating an atmosphere of scandal," writes Heather Parton, who blogs under the pseudonym Digby. "And the press, caught up in the daily churn of information, fails to see the forest for the trees every time."

But there are also Democrats who are angry at the administration for its mistakes.

"I just think this has been handled so wrong," Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said Wednesday, referring to the Justice Department's broad pursuit of phone records in its hunt for the leaker who gave the AP information about a foiled terror plot.

3. Bargaining

Bargaining is the fallback position in the early stages of any scandal. If we release such-and-such cache of documents, won't that make the questions go away? How does our guy's transgression compare to what your guy did during his administration?

A key type of bargaining that takes place in the midst of scandal is the attempt to point out that there wasn't an intent to sin. Or, sometimes, that the sins under discussion are not unique.

At DailyKos, senior political writer Joan McCarter writes that liberal groups seeking tax-exempt status received the same queries from the IRS as Tea Party affiliates. "In fact, the only group to have its application denied was a liberal group," she writes. (On average, progressive groups received far faster approvals, though.)

Obama played the ultimate bargaining chip himself when he forced Miller to resign from the IRS.

"Based on my twitter feed, Washington scandal volcano does not find Steven Miller an appropriate sacrifice," tweeted Daniel Malloy of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Meanwhile, some have pointed out in the AP snooping story the DOJ may have been motivated by pressure from congressional Republicans. Those lawmakers may be piling on now, but they were demanding answers about the AP's source.

And, with last week's reports of damaging emails about Benghazi turning out to be incomplete or misleading, former Obama adviser David Plouffe tweeted, "How is this not a 'scandal' with wall to wall coverage?"

4. Depression

If, as is often said, depression is anger turned inward, some Democrats are depressed.

From the president on down, most Democrats recognize that the IRS and AP situations, at least, are serious matters. Not everyone has been happy about how the administration has responded.

"His crisis-management communications team is absent without leave," Lanny Davis, formerly a top spinmeister for President Bill Clinton, told my colleague Frank James on Monday. "I've wondered if there's anybody there trying to get out in front of the facts."

The White House has since become more aggressive about releasing documents and responding to the various charges.

Some Democrats are still unhappy. MSNBC host Chris Matthews, an Obama fan, was notably very critical. On Tuesday, Matthews said Obama's "a ship with the engine off."

By Wednesday, Matthews was complaining that Obama "obviously likes giving speeches more than he does running the executive branch."

5. Acceptance

Like a diver unable to find the bottom, Democrats know the president's season of scandal is nowhere near its end.

They may believe what's been revealed so far is not crippling, especially as Obama himself has not been implicated personally in any of the three controversies. Still, no one knows what the coming weeks of congressional hearings and media coverage may bring.

Greg Sargent, an online columnist for The Washington Post, suggests that the scandals will prevent Obama from engaging in an impulse many progressives consider his true flaw: his willingness to compromise with Republicans.

"Liberals who are dreading the scandal-mania that is taking hold should note that it contains a potential upside: It could make a Grand Bargain that includes cuts to Medicare and Social Security benefits even less likely than it already is," Sargent writes. "That's because when scandal grips Washington, a president actually needs his core supporters more than ever to ward it off, making it harder to do anything that will alienate them."

Appearing on MSNBC Thursday, Democratic strategist James Carville sounded optimistic, describing the Benghazi and AP stories as nonstarters and suggesting that the IRS controversy would "burn itself out" in 30 days.

Given the polarities of our time, perhaps it's not surprising that some Obama supporters took greater heart from a prediction by conservative pundit Dick Morris that Obama could ultimately face impeachment.

"Dick Morris says IRS scandal could lead to Obama's impeachment," tweeted David Corn, Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones. "Which means ... it won't."

This weekend, President Obama will give a speech that very likely won't be about the controversies of the moment.

Every year, a few schools get the president of the United States as their commencement speaker. And this Sunday, at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Obama will get an opportunity to take a step back and describe the big picture.

The graduation speeches that the president gives almost seem to be his real State of the Union addresses. An official State of the Union speech reads like an annual to-do list. But in commencement speeches, Obama talks about where the country stands and where it's going.

And his assessment has changed over the past four years.

Here's what he said at Arizona State in 2009:

"We gather here tonight in times of extraordinary difficulty, for the nation and for the world. The economy remains in the midst of a historic recession, the worst we've seen since the Great Depression."

Compare that with Ohio State earlier this month:

"Where we're going should give you hope. Because while things are still hard for a lot of people, you have every reason to believe that your future is bright. You're graduating into an economy and a job market that is steadily healing."

Here's what he said at the Naval Academy in 2009:

"In an era when too few citizens answer the call to service, to community or to country, these Americans choose to serve. They did so in a time of war, knowing they might be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice."

And, in contrast, at the Air Force Academy in 2012:

"Today, you step forward into a different world. You are the first class in nine years that will graduate into a world where there are no Americans fighting in Iraq."

Since Obama took office, he has delivered 14 commencement addresses. Among them: four at military schools. Two at high schools. One community college. One historically black college. And one women's college.

Sometimes the president road-tests lines in these speeches that come up later in more high-profile venues. Remember this, from Obama's second inaugural?

"We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths — that all of us are created equal — is the star that guides us still, just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall."

That line echoed for days, tying together historic fights for women's suffrage, civil rights and gay equality.

Turns out, he used the same line eight months earlier in a commencement speech at Barnard College:

"What young generations have done before should give you hope. Young folks who marched and mobilized and stood up and sat in, from Seneca Falls to Selma to Stonewall, didn't just do it for themselves; they did it for other people."

That speech at a women's school focused on gender equality. And when Obama visited a historically black school, Hampton University, in 2010, the commencement speech focused on African-American struggles:

"I want you to think about Ms. Dorothy Height, a black woman, in 1929, refusing to be denied her dream of a college education. Refusing to be denied her rights."

Many of these speeches are tailored for the specific group of graduates in the crowd. At Miami Dade College, where 90 percent of the students are minorities, in 2011 Obama talked about immigration :

"Whether your ancestors came here on the Mayflower or a slave ship, whether they signed in at Ellis Island or they crossed the Rio Grande — we are one people. We need one another."

While these speeches each have a unique message, there are also universal themes. The idea of unity and community runs through every one of Obama's 14 commencement addresses, including this one at Notre Dame in 2009.

"Unfortunately, finding that common ground — recognizing that our fates are tied up, as Dr. King said, in a 'single garment of destiny' — is not easy."

This is the brand of politics that Obama has always aspired to, but that he so rarely attains in Washington. A few times every spring, he gets to leave the capital and tell Americans: We're all in this together.

Obama pushes these values of community on a large scale, and a small one.

"You may look in the mirror tonight and you may see somebody who's not really sure what to do with their lives. That's what you may see, but a troubled child might look at you and see a mentor. A homebound senior citizen might see a lifeline."

Sometimes in these speeches when Obama talks about society and citizenship, he argues that government is the vehicle to implement those values. That's a core democratic idea that Obama has always promoted, including at the University of Michigan in 2010.

"When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us."

It's All Politics

Romney And Obama: A Tale Of Two Commencement Speeches

In a way, this paean to citizenship, shared responsibility and government has become the central idea of the Obama presidency. It was a major part of his campaign as well.

These ideas are rooted in Obama's work as a community organizer. And today he hopes these ideas will energize people to move lawmakers.

"If they don't represent you the way you want or conduct themselves the way you expect, if they put special interests above your own, you've got to let them know that's not OK. And if they let you down often enough, there's a built-in day in November where you can really let them know it's not OK."

This is a project that Obama has been pushing since long before he reached the White House.

But today, with controversies shining a harsh light on federal bureaucrats from the Internal Revenue Service to the Justice Department, convincing these young Americans they should trust their government may be a harder sell than at any time in the past four years.

Heritage Action, the political activist offshoot of the conservative Heritage Foundation, has some advice for House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor: focus on the scandals plaguing the Obama administration and stay away from legislation that could "highlight major schisms" within the House Republican Conference.

In a letter this week to the leaders, Heritage Action CEO Michael Needham says "outrage over Benghazi" and the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups has "rightly focused the nation's attention squarely on the actions of the Obama administration." The letter goes on to say the House must continue holding oversight hearings, "but it would be imprudent to do anything that shifts the focus from the Obama administration to the ideological differences within the House Republican Conference."

The letter specifically mentions the Internet sales tax bill (which recently passed the Senate with lots of Republican support) and the farm bill (the Senate is working through it now and is likely to pass it soon). Needham says both bills, which House conservatives dislike, could prompt the press to write another " 'circular firing squad' article."

"Rather than scheduling such legislation for consideration, we urge you to keep the attention focused squarely on the Obama administration," Needham wrote in summation.

One might ask why Boehner and Cantor would even think about taking advice from a group that at times has worked at cross purposes with the House leadership agenda. But Boehner's spokesman didn't take the bait, choosing not to comment on the Heritage Action letter.

The Speaker has made it clear he thinks the House can and should walk and chew gum at the same time. On the investigations, he said at a news conference Thursday: "When you're trying to seek the truth, and if that is the goal to seek the truth, there is no line." That is, no line where they risk taking the investigations too far, something other Republicans are worrying about.

And Boehner said he doesn't think these investigations would get in the way of the House legislative agenda. "We've got a job here to legislate," he said at his on-camera Q&A Thursday. "We're trying to do everything to create jobs and we're going to continue to do everything we can to do that."

Next week the House is expected to consider a bill dealing with student loan interest rates and a measure that would approve construction of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline.

Few things likely please the Obama White House as a political battle fought on social media. Above, President Obama participates in a "Twitter Town Hall" in 2011.

Charles Dharapak/AP

A simple idea: attack Obamacare tersely.

On the same day House Republicans scheduled their latest symbolic vote to repeal Obamacare, as part of their full-court press against the law they also took to Twitter to say, in three words, why they oppose the legislation.

Speaker John Boehner led the GOP tweet slaps that used the trending hashtag #ObamaCareInThreeWords: "Repeal for jobs" and "Scares small businesses" showed up on his timeline.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor attacked with a fusillade of his own tweets:

"Run by IRS," "21 Tax Hikes" and "2000 IRS Agents" were a few that surfed on the wave of public outrage at the Internal Revenue Service for allowing some employees to target for greater scrutiny conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

But while the White House may have had a tough time figuring out quick and effective responses to GOP hits on Benghazi and the IRS, a war fought in the succinct world of social media is one fought on a battleground the Obama White House knows as well as anyone in Washington.

The White House let slip the trolls of political war. Aides struck back with the tweet "It's.The. Law." and provided a photo of President Obama's signature on the Affordable Care Act. Later, they added "No lifetime limits" and "Young adults covered" among other tweets. And they invited those helped by the law to "Share your story."

So it went between partisans much of Thursday. "No gender discrimination," tweeted Stephanie Cutter, an official at Organizing for Action, the reincarnation of the Obama 2012 presidential campaign apparatus. "IRS in control" tweeted Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota.

Ah, good times.

Tea Party leaders and lawmakers in the House Republicans' Tea Party Caucus rallied Thursday on Capitol Hill, expressing alarm over the IRS's targeting of conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status as 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., invoked the axiom, "The power to tax is the power to destroy."

But elsewhere on Capitol Hill, some lawmakers want to extend the IRS debate to look at the heavily financed activities of existing nonprofit groups in the 2012 elections.

The agency has been under attack since Friday, when a top official admitted — after years of IRS denials — that groups using "Tea Party," "patriot" and other likely conservative names had received special scrutiny between 2010 and 2012, with long delays or no action at all. President Obama ousted the acting IRS chief and the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation.

'Take On These Groups Or Else'

Additional Information:

Related NPR Stories

U.S.

For Tax-Exempt Groups, How Much Politics Is Too Much?

It's All Politics

IRS To 'Social Welfare' Groups: Show Me The Political Ad Money

It's All Politics

Bill Would Expand Disclosure Of Political Money

It's All Politics

A Review Of 2012 Confirms A 'Pulverizing' Level Of Political Ads

Republican consultant Karl Rove and others say the IRS scrutiny was instigated by congressional Democrats. During an appearance on Fox News this week, Rove cited letters from congressional Democrats to IRS administrators.

"Maybe they were influenced by Democrats in the Congress writing them letters saying: 'Take on these groups or else you're going to face the consequences in front of us,' " Rove said.

But an inspector general's report says the extra scrutiny started with lower-level IRS employees. And, in fact, those letters from Democratic lawmakers did not deal with 501(c)(4) applicants.

What they did advocate was a crackdown on big-budget 501(c)(4)s that were already active in the 2012 campaign — groups on both sides, including one co-founded by Rove himself, Crossroads GPS.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., wrote several letters citing a dozen 501(c)(4) groups, liberal and conservative. He said anonymous donors were funneling in millions of dollars.

"They do so covered by a fig leaf that the nonprofit groups to which they donate are dedicated to quote 'social welfare' rather than partisan politics," he said on the Senate floor in July 2012. "That fiction dissolves the moment one looks at these social welfare attack ads that the IRS is so far blind to."

Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers were warning the IRS to back off, and some outside groups were calling for stronger enforcement.

'Dead Wrong'

Lawyers from the groups Democracy 21 and Campaign Legal Center wrote to IRS officials more than a dozen times about conservative and liberal 501(c)(4)s. Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21 says nothing ever happened at the IRS.

"They were dead wrong in going after the conservative groups. And they have been dead wrong in not taking on groups that are abusing and misusing the tax laws," Wertheimer says.

One basic argument here is that there's often no difference between TV ads from the transparent political committees called superPACs and ads produced by the secretive social welfare organizations.

For example, take these two ads attacking President Obama.

The first ad comes from Crossroads GPS, with its anonymous funders:

"He's added $4 billion in debt every day. The economy's slowing, but our debt keeps growing," it says.

The second, with almost identical voice-over and music, comes from Crossroads GPS's sidekick superPAC, American Crossroads, which discloses its donors and is not as well financed:

"He wants more spending, just like his failed stimulus. After trillions in more debt, with nothing to show for it, we can't repeat those mistakes," the narrator says.

An NPR analysis found that the big 501(c)(4)s spent more than a quarter-billion dollars trying to shape the 2012 elections.

Paul Streckfus, who edits EO Tax Journal, a newsletter covering the IRS section on exempt organizations, says the IRS's response was basically: "Can we sort of ignore this? The law isn't very clear, and we don't want to make anybody unhappy on the Hill over this."

Streckfus says the IRS probably should have made an active decision on regulating the social welfare organizations. Then Congress could react, and any unhappy 501(c)(4) groups could sue.

But now it's too late for that.

Enlarge image i

The John Weld Peck Federal Building in Cincinnati, where many of the missteps by IRS workers who targeted conservative groups occurred.

Al Behrman/AP

Scintillating isn't how you'd describe the report issued by the Treasury inspector general's report on the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups.

It was written, after all, by government bureaucrats for government bureaucrats. Enough said.

Still, peel back the careful, cautious and colorless language and there are some eyebrow-raising tidbits in the report that give a sense of the dysfunction in the tax-exempt unit that allowed the controversial targeting to occur.

Here are 10 of them:

• The IG report was our first source without skin in the game (like IRS and White House officials) to report that agency employees said no outsiders influenced them to target conservative applicants. (Page 7)
• The IRS employees responsible for applying greater scrutiny to groups with "Tea Party" or "Patriots" in their names were evidently incorrigible. After their boss told them to cease and desist they did, temporarily. Then they went back to doing their own thing, which meant using inappropriate filters to select applicants for additional review. (Page 7)
• At one point, in an agency of 106,000 workers, just one, presumably very overwhelmed, bureaucrat had the job of reviewing applications for tax-exempt status that were selected for greater scrutiny because the information raised questions about their political activities. (Page 5, Footnote 14)
• The inspector general says "it's considering" following up its first evaluation with a deeper dive into exactly how the IRS unit it studied monitors the political activities of the "social welfare" groups it grants tax-exempt status. It wants to make sure the unit knows when such organizations cross the line to engage in too much politics. (Page 4, Footnote 12)
• Even employees in the IRS's tax-exempt unit were stupefied by the rules about which they had to make decisions. They were so confused, their bosses decided they needed hands-on training — after which an absurdly low and slow 2 percent application approval rate soared. Given the political sensitivity of this part of the IRS's work, you might have expected the training to happen sooner. The problems remain, however, according to the IG, and the guidance the workers labor under is vague at best. (Page 14)
• Some applications for tax-exempt status were, astonishingly, under review for as long as three years. What's even more remarkable is that even though the law gives applicants the right to sue the IRS if they failed to get a conclusive response from the agency within 270 days, none did, at least not during the two years of the IG's investigation. Maybe Americans aren't as litigious as they're often given credit for being. (Page 16)
• Even after the IG pointed out the error of their ways, IRS officials were, to some extent, still not seeing things as clearly as the IG thought they should. For instance, IRS officials said issues the IG raised had been resolved. The IG flatly contradicted them, saying no, they hadn't been fixed. (Opening memo)
• Some applications from groups with evidence of substantial political activity weren't forwarded to the team that had the task of giving applications extra scrutiny. Others that lacked evidence of significant political activity weren't sent to the IRS review team for further investigation. (Pages 9-10)
• IRS workers must watch a lot of TV cop dramas: They described their list of names to watch for as the "be on the lookout for" or BOLO list. (Page 6)
• When the agency asked for additional information — information the IG ultimately deemed to be irrelevant to the applications in question — the IRS would ask applicants to meet their requests within three weeks even though the IRS had essentially sat on some of the applications for more than a year. That's what New Yorkers would call chutzpah. (Page 18)
  

Enlarge image i

The sudden eruption of second-term scandals is likely to cost President Obama his fondest dream for his presidency: the opportunity to transcend the partisan wars of Washington.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

The sudden eruption of second-term scandals in his administration will have many costs for President Obama, but surely the most grievous will be the lost opportunity to transcend the partisan wars of Washington. That aspiration was his fondest dream for his second term, much as it was for his first. Now it seems destined to be dashed once again.

Of course, there are those who believe Barack Obama never intended to be anything but a conquering hero of the left. The most intractable of his detractors see the recent revelations about the IRS and certain conservative groups as caught-red-handed confirmation of a White House plot to destroy its opponents. That impression of abused power is only reinforced by news of the Justice Department's swooping down in secret on the telephone records of The Associated Press.

Attorney General Eric Holder has said that his department swept up the AP records last year in investigating "a very grave leak" related to national security. That is a justification Americans have heard often enough to inspire skepticism. Holder was not able to describe the security breach in question, so we are left to take its gravity on faith. And there's precious little of that in Washington, even in the best of times.

Holder has also joined the dog pile on the IRS, which has admitted it sent extra-onerous questionnaires to groups starting in 2011 if they had "Tea Party" or "Patriot" in their names. While that may have begun as a way for IRS bureaucrats to prioritize within a mountain of new applications for tax exemption, it smacks of using the power to tax to persecute.

Obama's Vision

These episodes recall the excesses of previous administrations, back to Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson, two strong presidents whose landslide victories propelled them to the heights of political power. Subsequent overreach brought each to earth with such force that the craters are still visible in the American political landscape.

Obama's aspirations were different. He never thought he could win 40 states or 60 percent of the popular vote. He knew he was struggling for just enough votes to win. But beyond Election Day, he was no less ambitious than his predecessors in the breadth and loft of his program. He set out to remake the health care and immigration systems, as well as to redefine financial regulation and the tax code and the nation's balance of energy and environment. And beyond these goals, he wanted to make a clear majority of Americans stakeholders in his program.

By so doing, he believed, he could build a coalition of the middle around solutions more practical than ideological. Were he able to do all that, he would be remembered as more than the champion of one party and the victor in two presidential elections. He would be a president who moved the nation, as a nation, in a certain direction. That has been the judgment of history on FDR and Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan — all partisan warriors in their rise to power who are widely revered in retrospect.

Was it hubris that made Obama hope for a place in such company? His first term began with tremendous momentum. Not only was his election itself historic, but the banking crisis of 2008-2009 forced the warring parties in Congress to act in concert — if only for a season. Early on, the new president and his inner circle thought they could negotiate on health care and other issues on a bipartisan basis. They saw a Republican Party chastened by the election of 2008 and ready to deal. They saw the prospect of a new consensus.

Opposition To President

But within the first few months of that term, a more virulent form of opposition developed within conservative ranks. It manifested itself in protest marches, angry town hall meetings and primary challenges to mainstream Republican officeholders. Call it the Tea Party or the anti-Obama movement or just the resurgence of traditional attitudes. By any name, it dominated the elections of 2010, especially at the state level. The enactments of 2009 and 2010 gave way to the fiscal wars and confrontations of the past 24 months.

The Obama team endured all that and kept its focus on November 2012. Re-elected, the president hoped his return to the Oval Office might occasion "a fever break" in Washington. There could be a sense of capitulation, a season of acceptance. Given the distinct demographic evidence from Election Day, Republicans would want to appeal to a younger, more diverse electorate.

But it hasn't happened that way. Set aside the urgings of one report offered up by the Republican National Committee in March, the standard posture of the GOP has been anything but conciliatory. From the fiscal cliff and the debt ceiling to gun control and the immigration laws, the opposition party has been as unified and as oppositional as ever.

Even before the IRS and AP stories burst into view, the Republican focus was on the Benghazi tragedy of last September. And this week, the House will have yet another vote to repeal Obamacare, the 37th such attempt to repeal the law in whole or in part. In the Senate, Republican Lamar Alexander of Tennessee is incensed that the secretary of health and human services is coordinating efforts with private groups to promote participation in the new health care law.

We can now be sure that the capital's pre-existing condition of partisanship will worsen with complications from multiple investigations, probes and Hill hearings as far as the eye can see. Whatever else that means, it means that the President Obama we have will not be the President Obama he wanted to become.

Enlarge image i

The controversies facing his administration could be creating a stiff headwind for President Obama's second-term agenda.

Jack Plunkett/AP

This was the critical moment, the brief time between his inaugural and when the nation's collective focus turns to whom his successor will be, when President Obama had to make real progress on his second-term agenda and thus forge his legacy.

Instead, the president finds his administration, the public, Congress and the news media distracted by controversies over Benghazi, the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups and a leak investigation in which the Justice Department secretly obtained months of phone records of Associated Press journalists.

The result? Precious time White House officials and other Democrats hoped to spend on pushing the president's goals is instead being spent on damage control, and with dubious effect at that.

It's certainly too early to declare that the Obama presidency is, for all intents, over. But the cluster of controversies puts the president's ambitious second-term agenda at risk, says long-time Washington watcher James Thurber, director of American University's Center for Presidential and Congressional Studies.

"He really only has about five months to deal with some major issues like gun control, but also, of course, immigration and the grand bargain," said Thurber, referring to a deficit-reduction deal with Republicans to reduce spending and increase tax revenues.

"In terms of the long-term, historical evaluation of this presidency, they're probably not going to be that important," Thurber said of the controversies.

"But certainly, given the way he has to build momentum for domestic issues, he has to reframe and it's very hard to reframe while he's being hammered over these two issues." (I talked with Thurber before news came late Monday of the Justice Department's AP probe.)

Given his sense, based on available information, that the IRS's targeting of conservative groups for higher scrutiny for tax-exemption purposes, "wasn't ordered by the White House, that there wasn't a Richard Nixon-style enemies list," Thurber said the controversies will likely fade and be supplanted by larger policy questions, like what to do about Syria.

But all the controversies taken together "takes what little central core political authority away from him and he has to pursue his policies in other ways, like through the regulatory process, executive orders and a variety of other things," Thurber said.

The greatest danger now, he said, comes in the form of the drag the controversies could create to stop major legislative efforts dead in their tracks.

"The immediate problem may be with immigration. It's so close, anything could upset it," Thurber said. "It could take the political oxygen out of the air for the survival of immigration. ... They'll have to do it between now and August or it's going to be very hard to get one through. This slows it down."

Legislation, especially of the controversial kind, requires a head of steam to overcome opposition. The confluence of controversies, "certainly slows things down. And there needs to be a certain amount of momentum and speed on that or we will not have an immigration bill," Thurber said.

The best hope the president has to save immigration and the rest of his agenda from stall speed is to get out the truth about the controversies and fast. That is the hard-earned lessons of scandals that harmed past presidencies from Nixon to Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton.

"You just have to get to the basis of it quickly and reveal it and move on," Thurber said. "Yes, it hurts but it will go away. Unless he lies."