Get on and stay on the offensive.  When your position is indefensible, don't defend it.  Rather than defend, go on offense.  Try to change the subject.  Deride anyone who questions your position.  Accuse the questioners of being racist/bigoted/homophobic/insensitive/offensive.  Make up things if you have to.  The MSM will eat up what you have to say and will widely print/broadcast it.  The MSM will then bury any retractions/corrections they offer in response to your ravings.

That is the first set of rules practiced by politicians -- of every stripe.  The strategy has been used in the past, and it is currently being repeated.

The offensive strategy was perfected by James Carville, friend and informal adviser of Bill Clinton.  When Clinton's sexual peccadilloes became known, Carville derided everyone in sight.  He attacked special prosecutor Kenneth Starr for having the audacity to investigate Clinton.  He attacked Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, and Bob Barr.  But his ultimate offensive strategy had to be his statement about Paula Jones.  Carville, referring to Jones, said,  "Drag a hundred dollars through a trailer park, and there's no telling what you'll find."

The Clinton White House, at the same time, decried Carville's strategy.  Clifford May, communications chief for the Republican National Committee, said, "The White House is saying they oppose the politics of personal destruction, while they are the chief practitioner of it in the United States today.  James Carville has been doing this for a very long time, declaring war, fighting war on any basis."

The offensive strategy worked for Bill Clinton in the 1990s, so the Obama White House is trying it again.

Dan Pfeiffer, communications director for Dear Leader Barack Hussein Obama's 2008 campaign, assistant to President Obama and senior adviser, and current White House communications director, was on all five major network news programs this past Sunday (May 19).  He  appeared on ABC's This Week, NBC's Meet the Press, CBS's Face the Nation, Fox News's Fox News Sunday, and CNN's State of the Union.

Regarding the attempted Benghazi cover-up, Pfeiffer told Fox's Mike Wallace (emphasis Pfeiffer's):

Look, the president was kept up to date on this as it was happening the entire night, from the moment it started until the very end.  I recognize that there's a series of conspiracy theories Republicans have been spinning about it since the time it happened.  The question here is not what happened that night.

When Wallace asked Pfeiffer if Obama was in the Situation Room, Pfeiffer said, "I don't remember what room the president was in on that night, and that's a largely irrelevant fact."  Pfeiffer continued to evade the subject about Obama's location(s).

Pfeiffer told CBS's Bob Schieffer, in response to Scheiffer's questions: "That was just a PR plan, to send out somebody who didn't know anything about what had happened.  Why did you do that?  Why didn't the Secretary of State come and tell us what they knew, and if they knew nothing, say 'We don't know yet?'. Why are you here today?  Why isn't the White House Chief of Staff here to tell us what happened?"

What we do is we want to go out and speak to the problems as they happen.  And what's important here is that when problems happen, the President takes responsibility for them and tries to fix them.  That's what we're talking about in Benghazi.  It's an absolute tragedy what happened.  The question isn't "Who edited what talking points?"  That's largely irrelevant.

Regarding the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scandal, Pfeiffer told ABC's George Stephanopoulous:

What I mean is, whether it's legal or illegal is not important to the fact that the conduct doesn't matter.  The Department of Justice has said they're looking into the legality of this.  The president is not going to wait for that. We have to make sure it doesn't happen again, regardless of how that turns out.

He told NBC's David Gregory:

We've seen this playbook from the Republicans before.  What they want to do when they're lacking a positive agenda is try to drag Washington into a swamp of partisan fishing expeditions, trumped-up hearings and false allegations.  We're not going to let that happen.  The president's got business to do for the American people.

So, doing something illegal or misleading (lying), once discovered, is irrelevant.  The act(s) is (are) permissible as long as immediate action to prevent its (their) occurrence again is taken.  I think I'll try that strategy with the FBI after I rob a bank.  I'm betting that it won't work!  To Pfeiffer's (and Obama's) way of thinking, the only problem was not whether the act(s) were illegal, but that Obama got caught doing them.

Yes, that is the same Dan Pfeiffer who, on February 20, 2013, in his article "Setting the Record Straight About the Sequester," wrote, "The only party unwilling to compromise to avoid these devastating cuts are Congressional Republicans, who would rather see our recovery and middle class economic security be put at risk[.]"

Pfeiffer also wrote, on February 10, 2013, in his "Solving the Sequester: The Facts" article, "... we must make sure we are having a debate over how to deal with these looming deadlines that is based on facts - not myths being spread by some Congressional Republicans[.]"

So it is quite natural for the Obama White House to trot out a political hack and toady to again try to use the "get on and stay on the offensive" strategy.  It worked before.  What is saddest about this current situation is that the MSM, having learned nothing, is again allowing itself to be manipulated and is going along with the strategy.  But Pfeiffer's responses to MSM questions were so fantastic, so "over the top," that the MSM even had a difficult time swallowing them.

Pfeiffer, by taking the offensive, achieved his goal -- he was offensive.  So much for Pfeiffer's, Obama's, and the White House's credibility.  Or can we say that their credibility is "irrelevant?"

Dr. Warren Beatty (not the liberal actor) earned a Ph.D. in quantitative management and statistics from Florida State University.  He was a (very conservative) professor of quantitative management specializing in using statistics to assist/support decision-making.  He has been a consultant to many small businesses and is now retired.  Dr. Beatty is a veteran who served in the U.S. Army for 22 years.  He blogs at rwno.limewebs.com.