Carney Slinks Away

          I shouldn’t kick a man when he’s down.  But in this case I will.

          No, I’m not talking about Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki.  The man was incompetent and paid the price for his incompetence.  But he was an honorable man.  He served his country admirably as a military officer and doesn’t deserve further humiliation.
          Not so for Jay Carney.  The Minister of Propaganda, a man called a professional liar for hire, is resigning.  Except perhaps for his boss, President Obama, nobody is calling him an honorable man.
          Some would say that Jay Carney was only doing his job.  But what kind of job calls for bending the truth, covering-up facts, and just plain lying to protect his boss?  If President Obama was the Liar-in-Chief, Jay Carney was his echo, his abettor.  When he first began his stint as Press Secretary, the Washington press corps gave him a pass; no one asked him tough questions.  Nobody pinned him down when scandal after scandal broke and he covered for the lies coming from the White House: Obama’s false promises on health care, the phony Benghazi video story, the denial of corruption in the IRS, the claim that the president only found out about the VA scandal by reading the newspapers. 
          This last one is what did Carney in.  In the face of clear, recorded evidence ot the president’s knowledge of VA problems from the day he took office, Carney insisted his boss didn’t know.  The press corps had had enough and hammered Carney mercilessly.  Finally, he’d had enough, too.  He resigned with his record of shameless mendacity hanging from his neck.
          Kimberly Strassel on Fox News Sunday put her finger on the corrosive culture in the White House.  She said, “You almost have to wonder if there is a scandal manual in the top drawer of the president’s desk. It isn’t just the ‘I heard it from the media.’  There [are] five steps the administration keeps repeating every time a scandal comes up.  Step one is, well, I didn’t know about it.  Step two is to express great outrage.  When that doesn’t work, step three is to fire some low-level bureaucrat. The study comes next.  Then…we’re going to wait to see what the I.G. [Inspector General] says or the FBI investigation…And then… six months later it’s either A: Done, or B: all the results are partisan, pushed by the Republicans…When you listen to some of his [the president’s] press conferences, they’re eerie.   It’s the exact same language every time.”  And there’s Jay Carney right there next to the president, ready to parrot those same lines, word for word.
          Jay Carney has been perhaps the most visible pawn in the president’s phalanx of prevaricators.  In an administration beset over and over by accusations of incompetence and scandal, Carney’s famous smirk became the symbol of this administration’s disdain
for honest reporting, his words the expression of the president’s disrespect for the truth.  Jay Carney’s tenure as Press Secretary marks a period when the leaders of this government lost two things they must demonstrate to earn and keep our confidence and our respect: moral leadership and personal integrity.  
          That is not a legacy to be proud of.