President Barack Obama has stubbornly taken a "look forward, not backwards" philosophy to possible criminal acts during the Bush administration. But Republicans are sending signals that they will not take such an approach if they are able to win back the U.S. House of Reprsentatives in the November elections.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is strongly indicating that he will launch numerous investigations of the Obama administration if he becomes chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Issa already has raised questions about possible White House interference in U.S. Senate races in Pennsylvania and Colorado. In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Issa made it clear that aggressive investigations are coming if he replaces Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY) as chair of the Oversight Committee.
As we have stated on this blog several times, Obama could pay a heavy price for his decision to let Bush officials off the hook. Reports the Post:
Veteran journalist Robert Parry has written numerous times at Consortium News about Bill Clinton's decision to let apparent crimes of the Reagan and Bush I presidencies go uninvestigated. Republicans rewarded Clinton by promptly launching investigations of the president when they took back Congress in 1994. Clinton was hampered for the final six years he was in office, and his presidency never fully recovered.