"Tricky Dick" to "Slippery ba'Rock"?

As the Watergate scandal unfolded, many true believers on the political right remained in denial that President Richard Nixon — 'Tricky Dick' as he would be remembered — had any knowledge of the illegal activities of his underlings. True believers on the political left are having the same problem today with the multiple scandals swirling around President Barack Obama. Will this president discredit his followers and perhaps be remembered as '"Slippery ba'Rock"?

In "A Crisis of Authority," WSJ's James Taranto writes:

Democracy is in peril: That is an emerging theme of the liberal left’s response to the Obama scandals. The argument misses the point, no doubt deliberately. What we are witnessing now is not a crisis of democracy but a crisis of authority. The administrative state, in thrall to a decadent cultural elite, has lost the consent of the governed.

Cataloguing several examples of denial and deflection by the political left's true believers, Taranto ponders the deeper meaning behind the Obama scandals: