If President Barack Obama needed any more incentive to go all out for Democrats this fall, here it is: Republicans are planning a wave of committee investigations targeting the White House and Democratic allies if they win back the majority.
Everything from the microscopic — the New Black Panther party — to the massive –- think bailouts — is on the GOP to-do list, according to a half-dozen Republican aides interviewed by POLITICO.
Republican staffers say there won’t be any self-destructive witch hunts, but they clearly are relishing the prospect of extracting information from an administration that touts transparency.
And a handful of aggressive would-be committee chairmen — led by Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Lamar Smith (R-Texas) — are quietly gearing up for a possible season of subpoenas not seen since the Clinton wars of the late 1990s.
Issa would like Obama’s cooperation, says Kurt Bardella, spokesman for the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. But it’s not essential.
“How acrimonious things get really depend on how willing the administration is in accepting our findings [and] responding to our questions,” adds Bardella, who refers to his boss as “questioner-in-chief.’
That’s feeding anxieties within the West Wing — even if administration officials won’t admit it publicly.
“I actually think it will be even worse than what happened to Bill Clinton because of the animosity they already feel for President Obama,” says Lanny Davis, a deputy White House counsel who lived through Clinton’s trials.
With that in mind, here’s a list of six possible committee investigations if Republicans take back the House in November, culled from GOP aides, Democratic insiders and outside experts:
Sestak, Romanoff and Jobgate. Most of the Clinton-era investigations — from Whitewater to Vince Foster to the Lewinsky scandal — targeted the president personally.
Most potential GOP probes of Obama, by contrast, seem to be aimed at the administration’s periphery or policies — with the ironic exception of the one that revolves around none other than Bill Clinton.
Issa has made no secret of his interest in getting to the bottom of muddled, mishandled White House attempts to force Democratic Senate candidates Joe Sestak and Andrew Romanoff from races in Pennsylvania and Colorado.
White Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina sent Romanoff an e-mail with several potential non-Senate job possibilities; Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel enlisted Clinton to dangle the possibility of several unpaid executive branch appointments to Sestak in exchange for allowing Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter to run unopposed. Sestak said no — and trounced Specter.
White House counsel Bob Bauer — the veteran election lawyer who would be Obama’s first legal line of defense against the GOP — has said no laws were broken. So have some GOP lawyers, but Issa isn’t convinced and has called on Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate.
Privately, Issa’s staff is afraid of taking it too far. The backlash against Republican investigations in the Newt Gingrich era is fresh in his mind.
He’s told associates he doesn’t want to be labeled another Dan Burton, referring to the overzealous Indiana Republican oversight chairman who once shot at a pumpkin in his backyard to reenact Vince Foster’s death.
“If Republicans go on an investigative witch hunt when and if they gain power in November, then their power will be very short lived,” said Mark McKinnon, a former George W. Bush adviser sympathetic to Obama. “The American public wants Congress to work together, not to investigate each other.”
Bailouts, Bailouts, Bailouts. No investigation poses a more significant political danger to Obama than a no-holds-barred GOP probe into TARP, the AIG bailout, the Freddie-Fannie sinkhole and the administration’s de facto takeover of GM and Chrysler.
Reason One: Perhaps the only issue uniting all voters is a shared hatred of all bailouts — so few Democrats, even die-hard liberals, would be willing to stand in front of a bus to defend Obama against attacks.
Reason Two: One GOP aide described the bailouts as a “huge pool” from which to make document and e-mail requests — and issue subpoenas. The prospect of a massive and popular fishing expedition at the West Wing’s expense would delight the Republican base and create a political headache for the president’s team.
Issa seriously rattled Democrats earlier this summer by revealing the lengths he is willing to go to obtain information, asking Google executives if they would be willing to turn over Gmail messages pertaining to administration business.
“If he comes at them, the White House will then have to make up its mind: Will they let their lawyers take over, or will they let the political people run the show?” says Lanny Davis, who counsels Obama to turn over as much as possible as quickly as possible to avoid allegations of stonewalling.
“If Rahm Emanuel is still chief of staff, they will have a huge advantage. He’s been through this before, and he’ll push back against the lawyers,” added Davis.
Countrywide Mortgage and “Angelo’s List.” Sen. Chris Dodd’s embarrassing placement on the company’s VIP mortgage list played a major role in the Connecticut Democrat’s involuntary retirement earlier this year.
Issa — using only the bully pulpit — has already forced Countrywide’s parent, Bank of America, to turn over reams of documents. If he becomes chairman, Issa will use the committee’s power to obtain more information on sweetheart deals, even if it involves GOP politicians, according to a person close to him.
“I think the White House is underestimating him,” says a top congressional Democratic aide. “What makes him so dangerous is that he’s willing to turn on Republicans, too.”
The New Black Panther Party. Smith, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, has already pressed Holder to look into charges that members of the New Black Panther Party intimidated voters at a Philadelphia polling place in 2008.
The San Antonio-area conservative — whose first campaign was managed by Karl Rove — is already on record criticizing Holder for dropping the Justice Department case against three Panthers, including one who brandished a police-style baton.
“Congress, in furtherance of its oversight obligations [needs] to receive answers” on the Panther case, he wrote in late 2009.
“Congressman Smith thinks it’s far too early to discuss any possible investigations before the voters have spoken,” said a Smith spokesman, before adding:
“But, yes, we would definitely want answers about the Black Panther case.”
ACORN. A whole host of Republicans — led by Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Steve King (R-Iowa) on the party’s right wing — have demanded an investigation into the defunct community organizing group’s ties to the Obama campaign.
Still, neither Issa nor Smith are said to be enthusiastic about jumping back into the controversy — considering the fact that ACORN is out of business and most Democrats already have signed on to a bill barring federal funding of the group.
Related: Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), who stands a chance of leap-frogging Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), the ranking GOPer on the House Financial Services Committee — is pushing for a large-scale investigation of the Community Reinvestment Act.
Minerals Management Service. The juiciest Bush-era revelations about the agency’s shortcomings have already been aired, including the fact that some MMS employees allegedly had sexual relations with workers they were supposed to oversee.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has admitted MMS officials were asleep at the switch in monitoring BP’s Deepwater Horizon platform before it blew up. But Issa is bent on finding out which Obama administration officials were responsible for missing the warning signs and why clean-up and response efforts didn’t take place more quickly.
