RUTHFULLY YOURS

Hey, Bob, you can’t say we didn’t warn you. We knew this White House was capable of attacking even the great Bob Woodward for telling the truth.

You could have listened to Michael Barone. He saw it coming even before Barack Obama was elected. In October 2008, he penned “The Coming Obama Thugocracy.”

I experienced it when DOJ press harpy Tracy Schmaler yelled at a half dozen reporters, as the White House official did to you, about my under-oath testimony involving the New Black Panther dismissal. Her victims included Pete Williams, Quin Hillyer, and Shayrl Attkisson. After Schmaler’s thug tendencies were well known, she was nurtured and promoted within the Thugocracy instead of being canned as any administration before this one would have done to her — Republican or Democrat.

Schmaler has since been appointed a Made Man of sorts, entering the rarefied private sector air of David Axelrod’s shop.

Schmaler’s story is typical of this gang. Her shouting, threats, and rants at reporters would have rendered her unqualified to serve in the press shop of a state department of agriculture.

But there is something unique about the Obama White House. It borrows tactics and standards from the darker figures in history — threats, projection, unrepentant dishonesty, towering columns in stadiums, and even bloody mayhem like Fast and Furious hatched for political purposes.

Richard Nixon seems like a fluffy kitten compared to this crowd.

Which brings us back to you, Mr. Woodward. What’s happened when you, of all people, are the bad guy? Had you ventured into any cocktail party in Silver Spring or Takoma Park just a few years ago, you would have been treated like a hero – liberal Washington’s very own version of Pittsburgh Pirate Bill Mazeroski who with one swing of a bat brought down the reviled Nixon. “Maz” never had to pay for a meal in Pittsburgh after that October afternoon in 1960 when he delivered a World Series.

That used to be you, Bob. But now, you’re the problem!

You, of all people, threatened by a Democrat White House. So where are your defenders? Where are the new hipster reporters of the left to defend you? Where have all the flowers gone, they used to ask.

But this is serious stuff. When the elder statesman of the industry that guards the First Amendment is threatened by the White House, it marks a dangerous turn. When other “reporters” join in, it is even more dangerous.

Perhaps this will be enough for the usual phalanx of fools at places like Mother Jones, TPM Muckraker, and The Nation to at last wonder if we’ve come full circle, back to those days of righteous triumphs of August 1974. Outrage toward abuse of power was so in vogue. Where is the righteous indignation that seized a nation beginning in May 1973?

Maybe it was all a show, Bob. Did the wave you started have more to do with the “R” after Nixon’s name than principle? With you, I’d say it was principle. But with the rest of the liberal left, it’s starting to look like poor Dick Nixon got a raw deal compared to this mischief of rats.