(NaturalNews) When he was investigating and co-reporting details of the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., in the early 1970s, a politically motivated crime that eventually led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon, Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward was a hero to the Left.
Today, not so much.
That's because Woodward, an old school reporter who definitely has his own points of view but who nonetheless has a stellar reputation for holding politicians of all stripes to account, has turned his attention to President Obama, the left's political equivalent of mankind's savior, over the commander-in-chief's hypocrisy regarding the current budgetary sequester. And for that, suddenly, he is the left's reincarnation of Sen. Joe McCarthy.
First, a little non-revisionist history.
Obama and his team own this sequester
Beginning with the third presidential debate last year, Obama blamed the sequester on Congress: "The sequester is not something I've proposed. It's something Congress has proposed."
Within days, Obama's chief of staff at the time, Jack Lew, echoed the president's claim, adding that the sequester wasn't just Congress' idea but specifically it was the brainchild of Republicans in Congress.
"There was an insistence on the part of Republicans in Congress for there to be some automatic trigger," Lew said, in direct refutation of claims made by Woodward in his book, "The Price of Politics." The sequester "was very much rooted in the Republican congressional insistence that there be an automatic measure at the end."
In recent weeks, as Obama gallivanted around the nation still blaming the sequester's looming budget cuts on the GOP, Woodward penned a column reaffirming what he had written in his book and reminding readers that, no, the sequester idea came from Obama and his team:
The president and Lew had this wrong. My extensive reporting for my book "The Price of Politics" shows that the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors - probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government.
Obama personally approved of the plan for Lew and (White House congressional relations chief Rob) Nabors to propose the sequester to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). They did so at 2:30 p.m. July 27, 2011, according to interviews with two senior White House aides who were directly involved.
'You will regret telling the truth'
In a follow-up to that column, Woodward went on to to criticize Obama for what he sees as irresponsible national security decisions he has since made, which he subsequently blamed on the sequester (and Republicans by default).
In an interview on MSNBC, he said Obama was showing a "kind of madness I haven't seen in a long time" for a decision not to deploy an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf because of budget concerns.
"Can you imagine Ronald Reagan sitting there and saying, 'Oh, by the way, I can't do this because of some budget document?'" he told the Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough. "Or George W. Bush saying, 'You know, I'm not going to invade Iraq because I can't get the aircraft carriers I need?' Or even Bill Clinton saying, 'You know, I'm not going to attack Saddam Hussein's intelligence headquarters,' ... because of some budget document?"
Such truth-telling has raised the ire of the left, up to and including the White House, which has since threatened Woodward. The veteran Post reporter has said in recent press interviews that Gene Sperling, the director of the White House Economic Council, told him in an email he would "regret" his decision to report the truth about who actually came up with the idea for the sequester.
"It makes me very uncomfortable to have the White House telling reporters, 'You're going to regret doing something that you believe in,'" he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "I think they're confused."
The thug-like behavior of this president was foretold
Make no mistake: This "warning" is nothing more than a thuggish attack on freedom of press, period. And since Obama has not disciplined Sperling in any way, you have to believe he doesn't think his own staffer did anything wrong - which means he a) directed the email or b) sanctions it.
Then again, it's not like some media figures didn't see this coming.
In October 2008, a month before Obama defeated Sen. John McCain to begin his first term, National Review's Michael Barone warned of "The Coming Obama Thugocracy."
"In this campaign, we have seen the coming of the Obama thugocracy, suppressing free speech, and we may see its flourishing in the four or eight years ahead," Barone wrote in his nationally syndicated column.
How visionary.
Sources:
http://articles.washingtonpost.com
http://www.businessinsider.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com
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