How Hillary Clinton Is Trying to Have It Both Ways on the IRS Scandal

National Journal ^ | June 18, 2014 | By Ron Fournier

[Oldeconomybuyer]

With an eye on the presidency in 2017, another Clinton is parsing words and pandering.

Obama, as you might remember, dismissed the undisputed fact that the IRS targeted political groups. He called it a "phony scandal" and declared that "not even a smidgen of corruption" exists inside the IRS—this without an independent investigation or the least bit of transparency from his administration.

Stretching the bounds of credulity, the IRS announced Friday that countless emails to and from Lois Lerner were "lost." As a former head of the IRS division that did the screening, Lerner is a key to determining whether the activity was directed by Obama's political team and whether conservatives were overwhelmingly targeted.

But on the question of whether she distanced herself from Obama on the IRS scandal—whether she would hold the IRS accountable and demand transparency from government like she did as a Watergate prosecutor—the answer is, unfortunately, no.

After all these years, Clinton is still reacting to a controversy by deflecting it. The public is left with a mound of words to parse.