If the three-strikes rule were in effect, President Obama would be heading for the dugout, bat in hand. First the alleged Benghazi cover-up, then the kerfuffle about the I.R.S. targeting conservative groups, and now the revelation that earlier this year the Justice Department secretly seized two months of phone records involving editors and reporters at the Associated Press.
Among the many questions that the phone-records story raises are these two very basic ones: What were they thinking? And who, precisely, were they?
In moderate and liberal circles, at least, the phone-records scandal, partly because it involves the dear old A.P. and partly because it raises anew the specter of Big Brother, may well present the most serious threat to Obama’s reputation. There’s nothing like an Administration allegedly trampling on the First Amendment to get the great and the good of American journalism all riled up, and the fact that it’s the Obama Administration makes it worse. On the watch of a Richard Nixon or a George W. Bush, such an outrage might be expected. But from the government of a high-minded former lecturer in constitutional law? Surely not.