scandals that the obama administration was sort of having to deal with all at once. remember back in may it was scandal overdrive, right? you had headlines like this one from the ap obama s second-term agenda waylaid by controversies. do you remember this period in the spring, right? the early summer? trio of controversies roiling washington, emboldening republicans, a establishment willing to second guess the white house. so, one of those was benghazi, which is still a tragedy and a terrible terrorist attack, but it has never really caught fire as a partisan scandal or as a democratic conspiracy in the way republicans really wanted it to. hence, you get darrell issa and his half the room photo desperation tactic where he is only excited about missing democrats and not at all excited about missing republicans. so, that was one of the three scandals. the second one was the irs, where it initially appeared like the irs was singling out tea party groups for special scrutiny on appli
he s only outraged by the missing democrats. and you know, maybe it s just an honest mistake. maybe he has a stiff neck or something. had he bothered to turn the other way, he might have been outraged by all the other mitsing people over there. but he only turned. he was only outraged by the democrats missing, not the republicans. the benghazi attack happened in 2011. excuse me, happened about a year ago. but it was about four months ago, it was may of this year that republicans decided that they had a new partisan angle on it, that they were going to use darrell issa s committee and use the house to make the benghazi conspiracy the most important issue in the country. and that month, back in may, the new republican outrage over benghazi was one of three scandals that the obama administration was sort of having to deal with all at once. remember back in may it was scandal overdrive, right? you had headlines like this one from the ap obama s second-term agenda waylaid by controvers
what this also is doing is it is really pummelling obama s second term. he s already very unpopular. he s being shown as a weak and ineffective leader but this the idea that the executive branch can just unilaterally say, we re not going to actually implement these reporting requirements and we re not going to do the finds. there s a real question here of whether or not the executive branch even has the right to do that. that s something that s haunted the obama administration since he took office. why does the executive get to put us get us to put us at war? why does the executive get to call shots that typically are supposed to go through legislative channels? so i think this opens up a much broader discussion than even simply obama care. one point, nick, you and i have talked about this before. there s been a lot of accusation that the obama administration is, in effect, taking things over. many of the congressional functions. but the other side of that is that congress is p
enough. if he gets if we get to the end of obama s second term and he did health care in his first term and does immigration reform in his second term. if. immigration reform looks like it has a fairly good chance. it has a reasonable chance. a chance. a chance. won t people look back and say actually those were fairly big accomplishments for the president? that s two pretty major pieces of legislation to be remembered for? i m not saying that it s been an inconsequential presidency. i would add to that climate change. if he s able to get at least part of what he wants to have a bigger if. he holds in executive power the ability to create a different political environment for the climate change issue and to get some significant, if not comprehensive, things done. if you add all that up, it s not a terrible presidency. but, you know, we ve reached this period where there s still a significant time left in his
the words, what else is being done? later in the show we re going to talk about the fallout and our relationship specifically with china. jon: well, revelations about america s top secret surveillance programs thanks to mr. snowden just one more issue adding to the strain between president obama and some of his core supporters on the left, many of whom already testy about the lack of progress on democratic legislative goals in mr. obama s second term. on the environment, gun control and immigration reform, to name a few. let s talk about it with joe trippi, former campaign manager for howard dean s presidential run and a fox news contributor. the polls recently have shown some softening of support for the president among young people, among independents and now according to the wall street journal even among his most hard core supporters. should he be worried, joe? well, i think he s got to be a little bit worried for his agenda. i mean, the problem here is he s not going to satisf