President Obama and aides will be spending time Wednesday paying attention to Capitol Hill. Obama's meetings include one with Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, and one of their topics is likely to be the investigation into IRS targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups. Meanwhile, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee holds a hearing on the IRS, though one agency official is expected to invoke her right against self-incrimination.

The controversy over the Obama administration's response to the Benghazi attack last year began at a meeting over coffee on Capitol Hill three days after the assault. It was at this informal session with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that the ranking Democrat asked David H. Petraeus, who was CIA director at the time, to ensure that committee members did not inadvertently disclose classified information when talking to the news media about the attack.

In the IRS scandal and others, Washington and the media are obsessed with the question: What did the president know and when did he know it? That misses the point—Mr. Obama's presidency is much more damaging to the nation than the mistakes of subordinates now coming to light. Most recently, we learn President Obama met with anti-Tea Party IRS Union President Colleen Kelley just before the tax agency began targeting conservative groups. Is that the smoking gun? Was the president in on the plan to harass opponents of big government?