Eric Holder, standing joke

Thomas Lifson

As Barack Obama's political guru Saul Alinsky instructed, ridicule is among the most potent political weapons. That is another reason (besides that awkward perjury investigation being conducted by the House) why the president's longtime political ally may be looking up at the underside of a bus pretty soon.

A Daily Beast interview with the AG in which he claimed "the gravity of the situation didn't fully sink in until Monday morning when he read the Post's front-page story, sitting at his kitchen table" is the sort of raw material late night comedians hope for. Rich Lowry of National Review points the way:

President Barack Obama has been mocked for learning about untoward conduct in his administration from the press. But he's on the ball compared with his attorney general, who wouldn't know about his own poor judgment without reading about it in the papers. Let's hope he has a Google alert set for "Eric Holder." (snip)
Yes, Eric Holder was beginning to wonder whether Eric Holder had made the right call. Eric Holder is typically very supportive of Eric Holder, but in this case, Eric Holder had his doubts. "Holder knew that Justice would be besieged by twin leak probes," the Daily Beast relates, "but according to aides, he was also beginning to feel a creeping sense of personal remorse."
That creeping sense of remorse may get worse if Eric Holder gets around to reading in the papers that Congress is investigating whether Eric Holder lied to it under oath. (If the controversy gets any worse, the Justice Department might want to assign an aide to clipping out stories in the papers about Eric Holder before Eric Holder gets a chance to read them in the morning - just to keep his spirits up.) It turns out that Eric Holder did indeed make a false representation about Eric Holder.

As Ed Lasky sums it up: Eric Holder just doesn't understand why that guy Eric Holder would do what Eric Holder did.