‘Extraordinarily scandal-free’?

April 30, 2007

Back in December, Paul Mirengoff at Powerline admitted to having a poor memory. “I may be missing someone,” Mirengoff said, “but the only high-profile administration official I can think of who has faced criminal charges or had to resign in the face of scandal is Scooter Libby, who worked for the Vice President and who is not accused of corruption.”

At the time, there were nine Bush administration officials who fell under the “indicted/convicted/pled guilty” category, and 13 more who fell under the “resigned due to investigation” category.

Over the weekend, Powerline’s John Hinderaker followed up on this point, lowering the bar a bit further. Hinderaker seems willing to acknowledge that there have been a series of Bush administration scandals, but he offers a straightforward explanation: they don’t matter because they aren’t real scandals.

That’s the liberal line, of course: the White House is consumed by scandals. Certainly Newsweek, along with pretty much every other mainstream news outlet, has done its best to convey this impression. But what, exactly are they talking about? Are there actual scandals, or faux “scandals” that die like a mayfly when the day’s news cycle is over?

The truth is that the Bush administration has been extraordinarily scandal-free. Not a single instance of corruption has been unearthed. Only one significant member of the executive branch, Scooter Libby, has been convicted of anything. Whether the jury’s verdict was right or wrong, that case was an individual tragedy unrelated to any underlying wrongdoing by Libby or anyone else.

What other “scandals” are consuming the White House? Eight United States Attorneys, who are political appointees serving at the pleasure of the President, were replaced. So what? Was it a scandal when Bill Clinton replaced all 93?

Yes, Hinderaker, one of the right’s leading bloggers, and a man Time magazine named blogger of the year not too long ago, is still clinging to the “Clinton did it, too” nonsense, months after it was debunked.

Even if we put that aside, Hinderaker’s conclusion — an “extraordinarily scandal-free” administration — is rather breathtaking.

Ironically, the comment came literally one day after Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias was forced to resign after revelations that he used the DC Madam to arrange “massages” from Central-American women. Maybe Hinderaker missed the headlines.

Or more likely, he doesn’t think it counts. Reading over the Powerline post, I got the impression that Hinderaker is focused on serious scandals. Alleged prostitution is small stuff, akin to an embarrassing parking ticket. What about the big stuff.

But that’s where Hinderaker seems to miss the point. As I noted over the weekend, the great thing about the Bush administration’s scandals is the variety. We’ve seen the more mundane crimes (shoplifting, prostitution), the more serious offenses (lying about Abramoff connections, Hatch Act violations), the much more serious offenses (perjury, obstruction of justice, soliciting sex from a minor, Cunningham-related corruption), to crimes that undermine democracy (lying a country into a war, using the Justice Department as a tool to elect Republicans).

All from the administration that vowed to return “honor and dignity” to the executive branch.

David Kurtz added an important point about the ideology that might lead Hinderaker to make such an audacious claim.

If you’re a hard-core conservative reading Powerline, does this sort of nonsense make you feel better about yourself or about your beliefs? For the uninformed, maybe it offers the assurance that things are okay. For the semi-informed, maybe it comforts them that things aren’t as bad as they may seem. At what point does the internal dissonance of those who read and write such garbage exact a personal toll — morally, emotionally, spiritually?

After reading several dozen far-right blogs for my other gig, I wonder the same thing every day.

Post Script: Just for good measure, I thought I’d add that Bill Clinton, who was rumored to lead a scandal-plagued White House, fares much better in this category that his successor. The only Clinton official indicted or convicted, after all of those multi-year, Republican-led investigations, was Asst. Attorney-General Webster Hubbell, who was convicted of embezzlement — a crime he committed before joining the Clinton Administration. FYI.

Confidently asserting utter nonsense has been the Republicans’ favorite activity for many years. It’s the genesis of the Colbert line about “Reality has a well-known left-wing bias.”

This Orwellian willingness to enthusiastically embrace obvious falsehood is part of the GOP’s strength. When the time comes that Dems take over and get out of Iraq, the right’s base will segue seamlessly into their “stab in the back” narrative.

As for the Kurtz question, no, embracing the lies doesn’t exact a psychological toll; these are tribalists first and foremost, and their allegiance is to their tribe rather than to the truth.

  • This is the ultimate example of projection. The right in general spent years accusing Clinton and his staff of a multitude of charges that never stuck, and they’re still convinced all of them are true. At the opposite extreme, dozens of charges have stuck to members of the Bush adminstration but there is nothing you can do to convince people like Hinderaker that they’re true. He could personally catch Allen shoplifting or Tobias boinking a prostitute and still write it off as a set-up. I’m not sure if Hinderaker is deluded or sociopathic. Does he really believe all the shit he spins into gold or does he just believe in doing and saying anything to “win”?

  • If Madamgate emerges with details of high ranking blowjobs, then conservatives have no choice but to impeach.

  • What about David Safavian, former (and now convicted) head of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy?

  • “The truth is that the Bush administration has been extraordinarily scandal-free.”

    Uh huh.

    I’d like to see the polls on how many people actually buy that load of BS.

    I’m guessing the 28% number might coincidentally re-emerge.

    jimBOB nails the root cause. Tribalism.

  • Everyone could stop reading at the point where he asserts that Libby’s conviction was unrelated to any wrongdoing.

  • And another point — one of the “benefits” of the GOP’s outsourcing of so much work to their crony contractors is that you get to outsource the blame when things go terribly wrong, as in Iraqi reconstruction and Katrina disaster response. Those scandals are still playing out. There have already been numerous legal judgments against several contractors.

    Furthermore, Tenet resigned because of his involvement in the mis-representation of intelligence that led to the buildup to the Iraq war (his new bio notwithstanding — he really didn’t distinguish himself as a leader). Michael Brown resigned because of his total mismanagement of the immediate response to Katrina. And Rumsfeld resigned because of his near total lack of planning for post-war conflict containment and Iraqi rebuilding. We won’t go into the Congress, which enabled much of the Bush agenda for the last six years.

    If you define “scandal” as merely the act of being convicted you fail to connect the dots and perpetuate the unending scandal this Administration has represented from the moment it assumed office.

  • Kali,

    Right on! Here are the lesson that Newt Gingrich taught me in the 1990’s.

    Blowjobs = Scandal/Investigate/Impeach

    When someone goes down, someone goes down!

  • There are three reactions that these wingnuts have when confronted with inconvenient facts:
    1) Fingers in the ears while loudly singing “LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA, I CAN’T HEAR YOU !!!”
    2) “Oh, you liberals….”
    3) “But Clinton….”

    Facts honesty & truth mean nothing to them, holding on to power means everything.

  • Another Clinton official, HUD secretary Henry Cisneros, pleaded guilty to making false statements to a federal official. That was minor compared with what the Bushies have done in the last six years. The Bushies and the GOP Congress cornered the market on corruption. It will take years to clean up the federal government.

  • Boy, I thought I followed the Bush Administration scandals pretty closely, this post has helped show me ones I’d lost track of. I started out thinking you were attributing to the Administration things that other Republicans had done, like referring to Mark Foley when you talk about "soliciting sex from a minor." But you probably meant Brian Doyle,  Deputy Press Secretary at Homeland security, who resigned in an internet child sex scandal.

     

    "Cunningham-related corruption" could cover a multitude of sins, but it took this TPMMuckraker post to remind me that the Cunningham probe expanded to include Dusty Foggo, the former #3 guy in Bush’s CIA, who resigned and is now under indictment.

     

    And if you want to compare indicted or convicted Clinton officials with indicted or convicted Bush officials, there are still at least a dozen from the Bush Administration.

     

    It would be helpful if there were a web page somewhere that kept a running tally of indicted or convicted Bush officials, as well as those under investigation. Sort of like those tickers for the national debt or days left until January 20, 2009.

  • Shorter Hindrocket & Mirengoof:

    It wasn’t a live boy or a dead girl, so it doesn’t count!

    I don’t normally laugh at people who are mentally disabled. It is a sad thing to watch people struggle to cope with a world that is too complex for them.

    But in these guys case: Mwahahaaa snicker, snort guffaw!

  • I wonder how these guys manage in the rest of their daily lives. If their car runs out of gas do they think a terrorist sabotaged it? If their credit card is overdrawn does that mean an illegal alien must have purloined their card number? If they get fired from their job must it be a liberal conspiracy?

    I doubt this ability to lie to themselves stops after they get off their computer from a session of reading Powerline or LGF. The rest of the wingers’ lives must be equally an exercise in self-deception.

  • I have had it with the “Clinton did it too” defense. The appropriate response to this defense is to say that this administration vowed to return “honor and dignity” to the executive branch so the “Clinton did it too” response don’t fly. This administration is supposed to have been better than Clinton’s so, as far as I’m concerned, this defense never has made sense and it never will, despite the protestations of the Republican’ts (of course, what does making sense mean to those who live in a fantasy world).

  • Why do Bushies always rationalize their poor behavior with (false) comparisons to Clinton, instead of pointing out all the things Clinton did better than Bush, like:

    — balancing the budget
    — achieving results through international diplomacy instead of war
    — keeping the North Koreans from obtaining nuclear weapons
    — maintaining the integrity of the Justice Department
    — abiding by the terms of the Hatch Act

    If Bushies would just occasionally acknowledge the things they wish they did as well as Clinton they might maintain a shred of integrity. Instead they shred the Constitution in the name of all manner of crises they act like they are the first ones to face.

  • what about USDA Sec. Mike Espy under Clinton. Tyson Foods pled guilty to giving gifts improperly, did Espy go down also?

  • jimBOB @1 is right on when stating … ‘these are tribalists first and foremost’ That’s part of the reason – being so self absorbed – that they couldn’t see that maybe, just maybe, in Iraq Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds were also very tribal. That must be why the situation in Iraq is doing about the same thing as the Bush administration is doing here.

    If you define “scandal” as merely the act of being convicted @ 8
    T
    hat is exactly what the Bush administration does…. first deny any wrongdoing, then promise that the culprit would be immediately fired, then when evidence reveals involvement, go with the ‘no comment’ during an ongoing investigation, more evidence, and it becomes ‘if indicted then the culprit will be fired, more evidence, and it becomes ‘if convicted then the cuplprit will be fired…. Lucky for them, it never gets to that last part because they al seem to resign before it is needed, so that the GOP can maintain the high ground of not having any convictions.

    Considering that the Bush adminstration – although it is not at the end of its term yet – already has the record on the most indictments, convictions, resignations than any other presidency so far. But then again, I’m sure that Right wingers can spin that one as well…. other than Clinton did it too… 🙂

    • Comments are closed.