Glenn Thrush:
“President Barack Obama genuinely believed he could buck the
second-term curse of fecklessness and scandal that afflicted the last
three two-term presidents, even if history — and his
adversaries — suggested otherwise. The combination of clever and
determined Republican resistance on nearly every front, bad luck,
Obama’s overconfidence in his capacity to leverage a decisive reelection
victory into legislative clout and his own administration’s past
mistakes have left the president feeling deeply frustrated, even
angry — and eager to find a way to recapture the offensive.”

First Read: “For the Obama White House, if there’s one common theme to both the
Benghazi and IRS stories, it’s how slowly it responded to them.”

Investigators have found that the IRS “scrutinized conservative groups for raising political concerns over government spending, debt and taxes or even for advocating making America a better place to live,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The latest details about the IRS handling of applications for tax-exempt status by tea party, patriot and other conservative groups in recent years were provided to congressional investigators by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.”

“It is absolutely chilling that the IRS was singling out conservative groups for extra review. And I think that it’s very disappointing that the president hasn’t personally condemned this and spoken out.”

— Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), in an interview on CNN.

“Not four months after his ambitious inaugural address, President Obama finds himself struggling to move his legislative agenda through an unbudging Congress,” the Washington Post reports.

“And over the past week, two flaring controversies — one over his administration’s handling of the killing of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Libya, the other over Internal Revenue Service employees targeting tea party groups for special scrutiny — have dominated the discussion in Washington.”

“It is far from clear how big a political liability either will turn out to be. At a minimum, they represent diversions working against a president who is keenly aware of how little time he has left to achieve big things. And they are a test of the insular Obama team’s skill at keeping its footing in an environment of hyperpartisan politics and hair-trigger media.”

Stu Rothenberg: “The last five presidents elected to a second consecutive term – Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush – all suffered through problems, ranging from economic and foreign policy to personal.”

“Senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew employees were singling out conservative groups for extra scrutiny as early as 2011, according to a watchdog agency’s report set to be released next week,” Politico reports.

“The disclosure that senior officials knew agents were flagging applications containing the words ‘patriot’ or ‘tea party’ contradicts public statements by former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman. He repeatedly denied that his agency was targeting conservative groups when asked by Congress last year.”

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) told Newsmax that the Obama administration is guilty of disseminating “deliberate misinformation” regarding the Benghazi attack and continues to “stonewall” efforts to uncover the facts behind the tragedy.

He also predicted that the Benghazi affair could lead to President Obama’s impeachment.

Douglas Brinkley’s Rolling Stone interview with Vice President Joe Biden is a must-read but, if you don’t have the time, The Week has seven highlights.

A top Internal Revenue Service admitted the agency “inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status,” the AP reports.

Organizations were singled out because they included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax-exempt status.

Douglas Brinkley: “Never before have a president and vice president been as close personally and professionally as Barack Obama and Joe Biden – just think about the past 80 years. FDR switched out VPs with the regularity of a farmer rotating his crops. Harry Truman had little use for the lightweight Alben Barkley. Dwight Eisenhower never really trusted Richard Nixon. Historian Robert Caro just published an award-winning 736-page biography – The Passage of Power – that essentially chronicles JFK’s deep aversion for LBJ. Nixon’s selection of the pugilist Spiro Agnew in 1968 as his vice president blew up in his face a few years later: A volcanic eruption of ethics charges were levied against Agnew, and he was forced to resign. Gerald Ford and his vice president, Nelson Rockefeller, never quite jelled. Ford, in fact, asked Bob Dole to run as the VP candidate in 1976 – an awful slap to Rockefeller. Although it’s true that Jimmy Carter was extraordinarily close to Walter Mondale, their relationship lacked the two-term gravitas of Obama and Biden’s ironclad bond. Ronald Reagan wasn’t particularly intimate with George H.W. Bush; their wives often feuded. And when Bush became president, he didn’t take Dan Quayle very seriously. (Nor did the country.)”

“Of course, Al Gore and Dick Cheney were formidable presences in the past two White Houses. But by the time both of those men left Washington, their relationships with their bosses were strained.”

Republican resistance to President Obama’s second-term plans “intensified another couple of notches today,” David Hawkings reports.

House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “announced they would simply ignore a provision in the health care overhaul calling on each to pick someone for a new panel with the power to dictate Medicare spending reductions without fear of congressional reversal.”

“At the same time, all eight Republicans boycotted this morning’s meeting of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which under a wrinkle in the rules prevented the panel from advancing Gina McCarthy’s nomination to run the EPA.”

A new Pew Research survey finds President Obama “continues to hold a substantial advantage over congressional Republicans in public regard. Obama’s job approval is back in positive territory at 51%… By comparison, just 22% approve of the job Republican leaders in Congress are doing, among the lowest approval rating for congressional leaders from either party in 20 years.”

“Furthermore, a record-high 80% say Obama and Republican leaders are not working together to address important issues facing the country, and by nearly two-to-one (42%-22%) more blame Republican leaders than Obama for the gridlock.”

“With the major fiscal issues our country is facing, not to mention
foreign relations issues around the world, anytime you can get the
president’s ear for a few hours, I think that’s a good thing,”

— Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), quoted by the Washington Post, on playing golf this afternoon with President Obama.

Joan Walsh: “If the president can’t single-handedly force reason on Republicans, what can he do to advance his agenda? I’m reminded of his political meltdown after the debt-ceiling deal in August, 2011. He got out of his funk by enthusiastically flacking a jobs bill that had no chance of passing Congress, but that let him connect with voters and remind them that Democrats had plans to make things better, even if they couldn’t implement them because of Republican obstruction.”

“If he can’t get anything done, he should still be telling the story of what he wants to do, what Democrats are eventually going to do, when the country gives them control of the steering wheel.”

E.J. Dionne: “The nation’s political conversation has grown stale, and many Americans have lost the sense of what he is doing to improve their lives.”

Politico: “President Barack Obama is the most powerful man in the world, but he still laments that there is so much still out of his control. Obama told Ohio State University graduates Sunday that it will be their responsibility to make the world a better place, because forces aligned against them still hold substantial power. The dour commencement address touched on Obama’s familiar we’re-all-together theme and included shots at his regular bogeymen: Wall Street, an obstinate Congress and, of course, the press.”

Jon Favreau: “Much has been written over the last few weeks about the limits of presidential power. Some smart observers have pointed out that these limits are not new; that historically they have had less to do with the personalities of our leaders than the structure of our democracy. The founders, reluctant to entrust any executive with the kind of authority that was so abused by the king they revolted against, created a separation of powers between co-equal branches of government.”

“But how boring is that? The more exciting story to tell is how Lyndon Johnson charmed and strong-armed his way to massive legislative victories. Much less interesting is the fact that most of those victories occurred while his party held record majorities in Congress. By the end of his second term, following the loss of 47 House seats and three Senate seats, one aide joked that Johnson couldn’t even get a Mother’s Day resolution passed.”

White House confidant Valerie Jarrett and Commerce Secretary nominee Penny Pritzker “will have overlapping portfolios of outreach to corporate America” but BuzzFeed notes “there is no love lost between the two women, people who know both say: Indeed, Jarrett tried to torpedo the appointment… And their tense relationship could help define the Administration’s attempts to mend ties with the business world that frayed badly during the first term.”

Meanwhile, McClatchy reports Pritzker’s nomination may hit a snag over her role as a pioneer in the troubled mortgage-backed securities industry.

Joe Klein: “During the chaotic week of the Boston bomb attacks, Barack Obama finally did something a lot of people had been waiting for: He got angry. In public. In the Rose Garden. It happened after the Senate had shamefully failed to pass a bill, favored by the overwhelming majority of Americans, requiring background checks for gun purchasers…”

“To which I say, Bring it on, Mr. President. Obama’s anger served a larger purpose. It was directed at the plague affecting–no, paralyzing–our public life: the ability of well-funded extremist groups to thwart the will of the overwhelming majority. This is a problem that goes well beyond the gun issue.”

“Making official what many Democrats have expected for weeks, President Obama plans to nominate Chicago business executive Penny Pritzker, a longtime political supporter and heavyweight fundraiser, as his new Commerce secretary this morning,” the Chicago Tribune reports.

“Pritzker’s nomination could prove controversial. She is on the board of Chicago-based Hyatt Hotels Corp., which was founded by her wealthy family and has had rocky relations with labor unions, and she could face questions about the failure of a bank partly owned by her family.”

The Washington Post reports Obama will also name economic adviser Michael Froman as U.S. Trade Representative.