Countdown to Calling VA a Phony Scandal

Nobody wants to get to the bottom of the problems with Veterans Affairs more than the outraged President Barack Obama.

(WhiteHouse.gov)

When have we heard that before?

It might almost seem like a stretch to say Obama and his apologists will begin calling the VA waiting list debacle a “phony scandal.” But it will happen. Six months, possibly a year.

The pattern is already playing out like the past controversies. If anything, the President pro-actively responded more quickly to the previous controversies the White House now calls phony scandals.

In the case of tea party targeting for example, Obama personally announced he was replacing a guy who was already leaving his position at the IRS. VA announced in press releases, no Presidential address, that a guy who was already retiring was being ousted over the waiting list. In both cases, "firing" someone who was retiring anyway was how the administration showed accountability, while promising to leave no stone unturned going forward.

So now we have an investigation led by White House staffer Rob Nabors on top of the Inspector General probe. When the IG report is complete, the administration will either attack the IG; say they cannot comment because the White House-led investigation is still going on, or both.

The White House-led investigation will likely be ongoing, because it allows the administration keep saying: “It would be premature to comment on a pending investigation. But I can assure you nobody wants to get to the bottom of this more than the President.”

Keep saying that until the media hopefully loses interest.

Eventually, Congress will begin more aggressively investigating the VA matter and issuing subpoenas. This is where the administration – and probably much of the media – will call it a partisan investigation. Jay Carney will probably even say “it is shameful that Republicans would play politics with veterans’ health care.” Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, probably the New York Times and definitely MSNBC will all declare it’s time to shut down this witch hunt/conspiracy mongering and move on at long last.

At this point, it will officially be dismissed as a Phony Scandal, and anyone in the media, the government or the general public asking questions about it will be labeled a crackpot or a dupe, because all the questions have been answered – even if we don’t know anymore next year than now.

But wait. Won't it be tougher to be dismissive of this since people died? 

Well, people died in Benghazi and Fast and Furious. Both of which have mountains of unanswered questions that much of the public is bored with. The run-out-the-clock strategy has worked extremely well so far. So there’s no reason to think it won’t work again.

To be fair, Obama really did inherit some of this problem from the Bush administration. Bush inherited it from Clinton. Clinton inherited from … The point is that the VA is a bureaucracy that has never fully kept faith with our soldiers, sailors and airmen. 

But this is worse, with massive waiting lists potentially being to blame for the death of people who risked their life for this country, and government executives allegedly lying about it to secure taxpayer-funded bonuses.