Is rage against IRS wasted emotion? Column

Don Campbell | USATODAY

Kathleen Burch and Rodger Gamblin are a self-described "ordinary" married couple who live in a rambling 97-year-old house on a street lined with massive trees just over the border from Dayton in Oakwood, Ohio. She's a retired clinical psychologist, and he's a retired physicist and inventor (and owner of 46 patents).

Neither was active in politics until about six years ago, but they sure are now, and the reason they are explains why their pleasant demeanor masks a quiet but seething rage. A long-running, on-again, off-again feud with the IRS over complicated business-expense deductions left Burch and Gamblin in hock to the tax agency for $50,000 in back taxes and penalties.

But the money involved is not why their story — their summary of which is 46 pages long — is interesting, or why they've become so active in the Tea Party movement and in efforts to effectively eliminate the IRS.

Their furor stems from the way they were treated by several IRS agents, including one who arrived at their driveway in a Chevrolet muscle car with a large "Intimidator" logo on the side and spent seven days measuring rooms in their house and poring through records.

Their doubts about the agency's motivations grew when, after more than a year of dead silence, the IRS issued a new series of demands six weeks after Burch made an April 15, 2009, Tax Day speech on the steps of Dayton City Hall calling for passage of the Fair Tax, which would replace all federal taxes with a national consumption tax.

Government too intrusive?

I suspect there are thousands of stories like that of Burch and Gamblin, but that fear of the IRS will leave many of them untold. They illustrate a growing divide in the country between those who believe that government is becoming too big, powerful and intrusive, and those who don't — or who don't care. The Obama administration's pursuit of reporters' personal records and the growing concern about the implementation of ObamaCare only adds detail to the picture.

Polls reflect the divide. The Pew Research Center earlier this year found that 53% of respondents — an all-time high — think the federal government threatens their own personal rights and freedoms. But public opinion doesn't always translate into action, which is why I hope that the issue of trust in government will be forced relentlessly on all candidates in the next two national elections.

Some pundits have compared the IRS scandal to Watergate, which is ridiculous, but each was and is rooted in government abuse of power. For that reason, the 2014 midterm and 2016 presidential elections could be at least a mild reprise of what happened in the wake of Watergate.

In the 1974 elections, 48 U.S. House Republican and five GOP U.S. Senate seats were lost three months after Republican Richard Nixon resigned his presidency to avoid impeachment. A month after that, a little-known Georgia Democratic governor named Jimmy Carter launched a campaign for the White House on the theme that America deserved "a government as good as the people." Carter's presidency was, to put it charitably, mediocre, but his first campaign — focused on restoring trust in Washington — was spot-on.

Watergate a different time

There are problems with predicting a repeat scenario, however: The country has changed dramatically. Partisanship in Washington is much more pervasive now. There's no sign that President Obama, who campaigned in 2008 on a pledge to unite Americans behind a bipartisan agenda, is losing support from his base, and no reason to think he ever will.

Ignorance is bliss. Watergate riveted the nation like a long-running soap opera. Now, large numbers of Americans are distracted and uninformed. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 42% of respondents didn't know that ObamaCare is the law of the land. A Pew survey found that only a small minority of Americans is paying attention to the scandals in Washington.

And how do you wage a campaign based on trust in government when so many people are dependent on government benefits? And if you don't pay federal income taxes — as nearly half of Americans don't — why should you care whether IRS agents act with civility and integrity?

This is what Burch and Gamblin — and the millions who share their beliefs — are up against. Seething rage against the IRS and Washington is a wasted emotion unless it's turned into the kind of activism that makes political candidates quake in their shoes.

Don Campbell, a former Washington journalist and journalism lecturer, lives in Oakwood, Ohio, and is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.

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