It’s only Thursday

June 9, 2005

There was a point, in the late 1990s, when conservatives would frequently whine about “scandal fatigue.” Every time they picked up the paper, they’d say, there’d be another controversy surrounding Clinton’s White House. They insisted it was time to elect a Republican to help give the country a break after years of constant outrages.

Most of these so-called scandals were utterly void of any substance. Whitewater was meaningless, while investigations into Travelgate and Filegate were pointless. Nevertheless, by way of comparison, I’d like to point out what we’ve learned about the Bush White House — not since January 2001, but from just this week.

* The Bush White House let a former lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute re-write a government report on global warming, editing out scientific conclusions he didn’t like.

* Bush’s Interior Department offered to overpay a wealthy Republican donor for oil and gas rights on Everglades land that the government apparently already owns, overruling the advice of career officials.

* The Pentagon’s inspector general released a report on a lucrative Air Force contract for Boeing that cost too much for planes the military didn’t want. Bush, who has enjoyed generous campaign contributions from Boeing, was involved with the contract, personally asking White House aides to work out the deal and dispatching Chief of Staff Andrew Card to participate in the contract negotiations. When the inspector general’s report came out, 45 sections were deleted by the White House counsel’s office to obscure what several sources described as references to the Bush gang’s involvement in the lease negotiations and its interaction with Boeing.

* Documents from the U.S. State Department published this week show that the president backed away from the Kyoto global warming treaty after being pressured by ExxonMobil, the world’s most powerful oil company, and other industries.

* Bush officials at the Justice Department inexplicably decided to reduce its settlement request with the tobacco industry from $130 billion to $10 billion, and urged government witnesses to soften their recommendations about sanctions.

Again, these stories were published just this week — and the week’s not over yet. Just as importantly, this isn’t a particularly unusual week by Bush standards.

Any one of these stories could prompt congressional hearings, investigations, and massive media attention. They won’t, of course, but they could.

Clinton caused “scandal fatigue”? Right phrase, wrong president.

I believe that you are in fact suffering from “lack of scandal” fatigue.

  • I agree. Why are there no scandals? Because the press is either AFRAID or because of course the owners of the papers support BUSH.

  • Right on, SoloD!

    I was going to ask how can one be fatigued by something when one pays no attention to it? Just askin’, ‘ya know …

  • Without congressional investigations and hearings, most of these things wither away and die.

  • The difference between the bullshit scandals of the ’90s and the serious but under-reported non-scandals of 2005 can be summed up in three words: control of Congress.

    Congressional Republicans had vast resources and a big media platform, through their ability to set their own agenda, with which to hound Bill Clinton. We’ve got neither, which is why we’re playing defense 90 percent of the time.

    For that matter, I have no doubt whatever that if Democrats had held the Senate in 2002 Bush would not have won last year. Investigations into war profiteering, Abu Ghraib, Valerie Plame and myriad other instances of chicanery would have helped crowd out Swift Boat and other slime that obscured our issues in 2004.

    Our side seems to be getting somewhat better at informing the public agenda and promoting Republican misdeeds, but too late to save the country from four more years of this disaster.

  • C’mon people…easy on the conspiracy theories. Certainly control of Congress is a big factor, but more than anything it is a nature of the 21st century news media. So called scandals involving sex will trump policy-oriented mis-deeds everytime.

  • Is there a statute of limitations associated with congressional action on abuse of power? If someday we were in the position, perhaps it would be worth sinking some teeth into a few of these to see if we could bleed some money to help pay off this tremendous deficit. Money is always the motivation behind all these scandals. What a greedy lot…

  • Don’t forget about apathy. A large part of the population just doesn’t care anymore. It doesn’t matter who’s in office, Democrat or Republican, the fact that they are a politician makes them unethical and corrupt. The so-called “scandal fatigue” that conservatives suffered from in the 1990’s was a product of their hatred for Clinton and their attempts to taint his name turning every minute incident into a full blown scandal. Wasting hundreds of millions (or billions) of taxpayer dollars to payoff friends and contributors is little more significant than a $10 million dollar land deal gone bad. Lying to the American people about the justification for going to war in Iraq might be a skosh more important than lying about creative cigar utilization. Republicans are benefitting from their actions in the 1990’s because the public is tired of hearing about scandals. Unfortunately now there is more at stake for Americans and as long as Republicans control Congress nothing will be done. Just call me cynical.

  • Part of this is due to the sad degeneration of media. From the courage of the Watergate era, reporters fell for every piece of anti-Clinton bullshit that was fed to them on a spoon by the extreme right. Now, they don’t have the guts to follow a real story. It’s not just Fox; CNN is as bad. The mainstream media is now little better than Pravda in the old days, or Xinhua today. They grapple for attention with “pervert of the day” stories as Ted Turner put it. Who cares about Michael Jackson, Whats-his-name Peterson, or the latest white blond girl to be kidnapped. What about genocide in Darfurs, and all the scandals at home. Where is their sense of decency?

  • Metsfaninca,
    You might want to read Blinded by the Right by David Brock. It has become painfully obvious that the vast right-wing conspiracy that Hillary Clinton talked about is now a reality.

  • “Whitewater was meaningless, while investigations into Travelgate and Filegate were pointless”

    Come on now, Whitewater was not meaningless. Many people went to jail because of it. It seems to me the Clinton’s were not guilty of anything but some bad stuff happened. To ignore the fact that people went to jail diminishes your credibility.

    Travelgate was pretty pointless but it did show some terrible judgement on the part of the Clinton’s.

    You do have to admit that finding the billing records in such a strange place allows people to speculate.

    I agree with your general point but you seriously weaken it when you make statements that others can attack.

  • THe big question I have is, how do you choose which ones to investigate? Even if we had strong Demcocrats in charge it seems like it would be hard to investigate all of them.

    Carpetbagger, do any of the people on Air America know of you? I’d love to hear your work highlighted there.

  • Mark is right–why weaken your point by sounding biased? People are crying out for a politician who even seems to relate to the real world. That’s why we have some idiot cowboy wannabe in the whitehouse. It really did seem better than a zombie, even if the zombie might have been a better president.

    FYI–Dems get PLENTY of media time, but they squander it responding to the Republican agenda rather than setting their own. Frist and Dean get plenty of time, but to what end?

    You don’t need a majority in either house to call people to account. Every senator and every member of the House has a bully pulpit from the day they’re elected. Call them, write them, let them know you want to see them out there asking questions about all of this. Sure, politicians can be puppets, but they let anyone pull the strings. So try pulling.

  • Don’t you understand it’s a deliberate strategy ?

    Pile on the media with an avalanche of scandals and the media just cannot keep its focus on it. One scandal a day. No, make that two. How do you want the media to do its job in such an hostile environment ? A real scandal must have multiple news cycles, may be as many as five or six consecutive news cycles to develop. You need time to understand and verify facts, to call people. Scandals take time. Scandals are complicated. Scandals are hard work.

  • I am just as horrified at the actions of the Bush administration as the next person, however I do have to object to calling Exxon Mobil the world’s most powerful oil company… it might be the largest non-governmental oil company, but I think world’s most powerful would have to go to Aramco, the privately held Saudi Arabian oil firm that dwarfs XOM by almost any measure (revenue, reserves, barrels per day, etc).

    Not trying to nitpick, but overuse of superlatives will weaken an argument.

    Cheers,
    Jamie

  • Fifi is exactly right — real scandals do take time and are complicated. That is one reason why everytime a Democrat complains about voting irregularities in Ohio, or some other non-scandal, we lose ground on bringing to light the real outrages.

  • One scary thought. What about the scandals that we know nothing about? Paul Krugman in one of his columns before the election prophetically stated that the Republicans couldn’t afford to lose because the American public would find out what had really been going on.

    The only thing that pisses me off more than corrupt politicians is corrupt politicians that are arrogant about it.

  • voting irregularities in Ohio, or some other non-scandal

    This kind of statement is an illustration of the kind of apathy that has overcome the populace. The disenfranchisment of minority voters is a scandal. The un-verifiability of modern electronic voting machines is also a scandal. How anyone could think otherwise is beyond me.

  • Future game plan to get a Dem in the White House must start with control of one branch of Congress. Without this, the Dems cannot effectively confront Bush’s chicanery (look it up).

    Donate to your local rep challengers in 2006.

  • Mark:

    One scary thought. What about the scandals that we know nothing about?

    A highly-placed anonymous official informs me that the Democrats have twice as many scandals we know nothing about than the Republicans do.

  • So called scandals involving sex will trump policy-oriented mis-deeds everytime.

    Yeah, remember when the Republicans planted a gay male hooker in the press corps and how that was a huge scandal and it brought down the presidency?

  • Yeah, remember when the Republicans planted a gay male hooker in the press corps and how that was a huge scandal and it brought down the presidency?

    He lacked obvious ties to any mainstream Republican figures. If, say, it turned out that he was a gay escort and was close friends with President Bush, that might have made for more of a scandal. As it is… a squabble over a nuance that few people care about — the press corps.

    It’s a lot harder to build a scandal out of hypocrisy than it is to build one out of burglary, perjury, and other such illegal things. (There are a lot of things I’d like to see the Bush administration called on, but I suspect that there’s not much in the way of illegal activities that you can tie directly to senior administration officials.)

  • Future game plan to get a Dem in the White House must start with control of one branch of Congress.

    I beg to differ. Future game plan to get a Dem in the White House must start with repair of our electoral system. Weren’t Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004 enough to convince Dems that the voting system is broken? Why in Zeus’s name aren’t they pushing a fix for this? Are we going to go through the 2006 election relying on Diebold et al to tell us who will control the Congress? I have a huge amount of difficulty listening to Dems strategize about 2006 and 2008 when they’re not addressing the fact that it won’t matter a damn bit as long as the electoral system is corrupted. I’m in mourning for what was at least a semblance of democracy.

  • Sad to see some of Kevin Drum’s trolls have found the Carpetbagger. Please go back to whatever holes you came from, tbroz et al. You contribute nothing, only worse. Why not frequent someplace where you can find others of your ilk, like the Freepers? Do you get paid for being obnoxious on liberal blogs? Or is it just a twisted hobby?

  • I’m with you prez lindsay. I’m sure that the Republicans don’t have the entire market cornered on bad governance but it’s close enough to call it a monopoly in my book.

    And for the trolls:
    Trolls are large, ugly humanoids, armed with an oversized, wooden hammer. Unfortunately most of them have really bad aim and continually hit themselves in the head with the aforementioned hammer.

  • A highly-placed anonymous official informs me that the Democrats have twice as many scandals we know nothing about than the Republicans do.

    tbrosz is a typical Republican. When faced with unpleasant truths, he just makes stuff up to make himself (herself?) feel better.

  • Read David Brock’s “Blinded By the Right” – most of the mock “scandals” involving Bill and Hillary Clinton were fabricated nonsense or recycled backwoods Arkansas political myths.

    For true, third generation war-profiteering, mass-murdering corruption, no one can touch the Bush family. From grandpappy Prescott being Hitler’s fiancier George H.W. being mentioned by the Warren Commission as a “person of interest” in the Kennedy assasination, the Bush family down through the miscreant grandson Dubya, are the most corrupt, secretive and absolutely ruthless and yes, evil, family in American political history. How 30 – 40% of the American population think these reptiles are anything but human sewage is one of the great success stories of political propaganda. Karl Rove is truly the Michael Jordan of propagandists.

    There should be an entire wing at Fort Leavenworth reserved for the Bush family – Neil, Bar, hell, even thier dog Barney….

  • A highly-placed anonymous official informs me that the Democrats have twice as many scandals we know nothing about than the Republicans do.

    I thought that was some good satire until I saw it was written by a troll. Apparently it’s a troll so dense that they didn’t realize they were inadvertatly mocking the Republican’s new MO– we’re not doing anything wrong, because everybody is doing it! (Well, yes, we’re doing it worse, on a much grander scale, but we want the American public to think that everyone is corrupt to save our own asses– that way we can gey away with more and more!)

    Very nicely done, carpetbagger. Very, very nicely done.

  • Whether it is the Republican MO, we should all be up in arms regarding how the Ehtics committee seems to have been stymied because Democrats are not willing to take the heat. Until there is a defining moment or person around which the public can coalesce to form some instrument of protest, all will get worse before it gets better.

  • neil hecht:

    Come on now, Whitewater was not meaningless. Many people went to jail because of it. It seems to me the Clinton’s were not guilty of anything but some bad stuff happened. To ignore the fact that people went to jail diminishes your credibility.

    Whitewater was absolutely meaningless. It shouldn’t have been a national story, much less. It had next to nothing to do with anything but a con man named Jim McDougle who died in jail. “Bad Stuff happened” is setting the bar low for the mindbreaking malfeasence of what’s happening today. What happened in Whitewater? What was it other than a bunch of rubes buying useless swamp land and getting screwed by a politically connected double-dealer? No public money was involved, the Clintons got screwed and were innocent of any wrong doing — and by far the worst things to happen as a result of the actual crime was the Republican response, David Hale, Ken Starr, the capitulation of the media, the criminal treatment of Susan MacDougle and the destruction of a Presidency for no legitimate reason.

    Travelgate was pretty pointless but it did show some terrible judgement on the part of the Clinton’s. You do have to admit that finding the billing records in such a strange place allows people to speculate.

    Speculate? It’d be irresponsible not to!

    Oh Lord — to accuse Carpetbagger of diminished credibility because he/she dismissed Whitewater THEN to blame the Clintons for doing something that allows people to ‘speculate’ is pathetically hollow. Substantive criticisms can be laid at the feet of the Clinton Administration — their terrorism policy, how they responded to the Chinese, bombing the Chinese embassy, the bombing in the Sudan, their lack of response in Rwanda, etc. But these manufactured scandals aren’t them, and to equivocate them to what we’re discovering about the dealings of the Bush Administration on a daily basis completely obliterates YOUR credibility.

  • Last night’s Nightline compared the scope of the Michael Jackson trial to that of the Noriega multiple murder trial going on next door. The Jackson trial has three times as many prosecutors and defense lawyers, five times the investigators, and about 100 times the amount of media coverage. Which is the more socially significant?

    But this is the environment we live in. Democrats must find ways to turn the environment to their advantage, not whine about it.

  • We need a leader to speak the truth, over and over again. Dean? Hillary? Over and over….

    Hi Old Hat!!

  • Whitewatergate was the biggest pile of political crap in existence. The only reason – THE ONLY REASON – for Whitewatergate was REVENGE for Watergate.

    Recent moron repuke comments have attempted, yet again, the moronic and stupid equating of Whitewatergate and Watergate. The two are alike only in the understanding of Repukamorons.

    Nixon was a crook. Clinton had a big dick.

  • Some people say, I’ll find out about the Downing Street Memo on Faux news just as soon as Rupert’s boys figure out how to pre-chew it so it looks harmless.

  • I think that few Dems realize just how thoroughly we have been lied to over the years by the right’s puppetmasters.. In eight years of Clinton, we started to get an idea of some of the misdeeds of the previous 20 or 30 years of covert actions, but what we saw was probably just the tip of the iceberg.. And now it is disappearing again.. But the Clinton years also brought us a huge aid in the form of the Internet, which would not have been able to emerge the way it did if the GOP had been in power. Because of that, the fundamental balance of power in the entire world has shifted significantly.. The huge, despotic power blocs are slowly, steadily being exposed, the ‘paradigm has shifted’ so to speak – and their time is fading.. The right in the US is now clearly desperate.. what we see is a last hurrah of sorts directed against the changes of the last 75 years or so.. But you can’t turn back the clock to the Gilded Age.. It just wont happen.. If they go too far, the backlash will be uglier than I think any of us want to imagine.. Like what we narrowly averted in 1934. I don’t think that they are THAT stupid to waken the sleeping tiger of the American public, who are still largely apolitical.. But NOT right-wing…

  • Corruption is nothing new to power- seeking sociopaths. It is an end in itself. The Bushes simply have borrowed the book from Goebbels re propaganda.

    And for some reason the Africa debt reduction package proposed by the G8 is tied to conditions of reducing corruption?

    Black humour?

    • Comments are closed.