CHRIS WALLACE, "FOX NEWS SUNDAY" HOST: Brit, let me pick up on that, because the White House is putting out the word, indeed, over the course of this weekend that this president, you know, despite his problems, that he's going to deal with the problems, is determined to pursue his agenda on immigration, on jobs, on the budget, on energy. But again as somebody who's been around a while, when you can -- in the middle of these scandals, it's hard ...



BRIT HUME: No, it's radio silence. I mean you -- it happens in campaigns, too, when you get some blunder. It's all the news coverage is about. It does suck up all the oxygen in the Capital City, and it's hard to move an agenda forward. And there's also this point, you're beginning to see now a line of defense emerging on these cases, these three cases, which basically is, yeah, we screwed up. There is this -- Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News has a very interesting story based on conversations with the senior administration official, unnamed, in which they are talking about Benghazi, and what they didn't do that night. And yeah, we should have sent the emergency team, we should have -- and we screwed up. This is an incompetence defense. You see the same thing with the IRS. Bungling in the Cincinnati office is blamed. You see it emerging perhaps with regard to the subpoenas -- or the -- the monitoring of the phone calls of the A.P reporters. And that is that somebody overdid it, overcooked it, went too far. The problem with all of that is at the core of liberalism is the idea that government is a great mediating force, acting on behalf of the national electorate to balance the competing interests of people.



To protect the weak from being dominated by the strong, and so on, and that government agencies can and should do this fine work and are well capable of doing it. When you have simultaneously three scandals affecting different agencies of government, different people, and the White House, and it's all chalked up to bungling, it really diminishes the argument for that side of the political divide. (FOX News Sunday, May 19, 2013)