David Axelrod Admits "Government Is Too Vast" For Obama to Control

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say David Axelrod — Obama's top adviser — is sounding like a Republican:

Blaming bureaucrats for idiotic and dangerous actions? Government is simply too vast to control?

Whoa there. Let me see your credentials. You’re starting to sound too “extremist,” “dangerous” and “out of touch” with the American people, sir.

Of course, that’s what progressives and media pundits would be claiming if he happened to have an (R) next to his name.

But you have to admit, watching this White House scrambling to point fingers and shift the blame elsewhere on all these scandals is a little amusing.

“Spying on AP reporters’ phone records and sources? Hey, that was the deputy attorney general’s call, not ours! The IRS thing? Um … talk to Treasury. Benghazi? What about Benghazi? Oh, the talking points, that … um … that was CIA. No, I mean the State Department! Er, no CIA - hey, look over there!” (tires screeching)

Welcome to Washington, where there’s no such thing as personal accountability in the public sector.

So then why is it that every time someone talks of reducing government spending, size and scope back to a sane level of accountability and efficiency, they’re automatically labeled as “extremist,” “dangerous” and “out of touch?” I’d expect as much from big government Keynesian progressives, but what gets me is how enough of the American public freak out and buy all the hysteria every time (with the rare exceptions of 1994 and 2010).

It’s also nice to see the press stepping up to the plate and finally doing their job. They’ve had a school girl crush with Barack Obama for the last six years, and the infatuation finally seems to be wearing off. The press was crucifying Richard Nixon 40 years ago for doing exactly this kind of excessive abuses with federal power. I was beginning to wonder if the era of Woodward and Bernstein journalism was truly extinct of if they were finally going to stop bending over for this administration.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom even gathered a media coalition to protest Attorney General Eric Holder’s actions (finally) and released a letter that can be read here.

Naturally, Democrats will protest that this is nothing more that a “political witch hunt.” Funny how “it wasn’t” during Watergate, Iran-Contra or the Iraq War. Washington will do what it always does: politicize everything. You can’t take the politics out of politics.

But to simply dismiss any wrongdoing as “politics” is not right either. This administration has a long list of Constitutional abuses and overreaching federal power grabs as often as Nixon and Bush II on their best days. Progressives can’t take the FDR/Anastasio Somoza defense (“He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”) and think they can bury these scandals with that.

More importantly, when will the majority of the American public finally realize what Axelrod just admitted in probably his most honest moment on television? That government has gotten too large to control.