‘It’s an explosion of corruption and scandal’

October 3, 2006

In November 1998, Dems had just shocked the political establishment by gaining seats in the midterm elections; Clinton was impeached; then-Speaker Newt Gingrich was forced to resign; and Bob Livingston was about to become Speaker, but a sex scandal forced him to resign, too. All of this unfolded in the course of a few weeks.

It seems to me, that was the last time politics in this country was this interesting.

Is it me or is all hell breaking loose in this country’s politics? We’re in the last month of an election cycle and there are maybe four or five stories, each of which could totally dominate the national political news on their own. And each is flaming out of control at once. You’ve got the Foley debacle. The revelations in the Woodward book. The NIE revelations that almost seem like old news now. A major part of the pre-9/11 story that somehow never saw the light of day and may bring down Condi Rice. And did I mention the election?

The New York Daily News reported today, “Congress has never been faced with so many criminal corruption scandals at once, ranging from suspicions of sexual misconduct to the biggest influence-peddling scam to hit Washington.” American University historian Allan Lichtman added, “You’ve got to scour awfully hard to find anything compared to what we have now in Congress. It’s an explosion of corruption and scandal.”

MyDD’s Chris Bowers noted that “the last 10 days have been amazing.”

Starting with Bill Clinton fighting back against Faux News, we have now seen:

* The National Intelligence Estimate declare that the war in Iraq in increasing terrorism worldwide

* Colin Powell say he was fired

* Rice is on the verge of having to resign.

* Bill Frist say that the Taliban should rule Afghanistan

* The White House met with Jack Abramoff 485 times, and had a huge amount of influence.

* Bob Woodward comes out with a book saying the Bush administration is lying about Iraq.

* Droves of Republicans are under investigation for something.

And then, of course, there’s that Foley scandal, which may end up causing a major shake-up in the House GOP leadership and affecting the midterm elections in a major way.

All the while, right-wing bloggers are talking openly about quitting the GOP altogether.

I don’t have an over-arching point here, necessarily, except to point out one thing: Ain’t politics grand?

This place is better than Sports Center–even with all of those video highlights!

  • don’t know how long it will be up, but the website mentioned above has the top two headlines as –

    Dow surges to new closing high

    followed immediately by –

    Job cuts soared in September

    I wonder if one had anything to do with the other, and I wonder who’s benifiting from this great economy we have going here in america?

  • It’s great news, the gaggle of simultaneous scandals but could it be too much of a good thing? It’s so massive and so unbelievable, will it make the sheeple tune out? La la la la la. And can Rove paint it so that it sounds like all politicians are the same? That seems to have worked somewhat with the Abramoff scandal. It seems like we’re on our 14th Krispy Kreme glazed donut here. When is it so much that those of us not used to sweets and grease (ie, those who are not political junkies) just puke? (Meanwhile, yes, I love them Krispy Kreme glazed. Can’t get enough.)

  • Every once in a while, I wonder to myself, “Why in the hell do I follow politics so closely?”

    Then stuff like this happens — corruption, sex, lies, war, a bunch of millionaire crybabies … it’s almost like a professional sport, except that real life is affected.

    Well, and I’m a KC sports fan, so it’s nice to know that, in politics, my team has a realistic chance to win it all every now and then.

    🙂

  • Schadenfreud is fun. Just sitting here on the sidelines watching the Great Republican Meltdown of 2006.

    However, keep your eye on the WH. They play a mean game of 3-card Montie. Turd Blossom may pull an attack on Iran out of his ass just to change the subject.

  • I am (or have been) a Seattle Mariners’ fan. The nice thing about the M’s crashing and burning (as they every season since their founding in 1977) is that it opens my consciousness so I can enjoy the full impact of all these GOP crises. Whoopee!

  • I think Boehner should lead the Republican House. His name says it all.

    After November 2004 I figured I would drop blog reading for lack of anything really interesting happening. D’oh!

    Caution might be necessary. What were the scandals 5 weeks ago about?

  • Wow thats kind of funny, just this morning I was saying the same thing and decided to compile a list of october surprises on a board I frequent. Here’s what I got:

    September 18: George Allen (R, VA), a man once considered to be a shoe-in for the republican 08 presidential ticket, continues his fall from grace continues with the ‘my mamma aint no jew’ scandal, less than a month after the infamous “Macaca Incident”

    September 22: Bill Clinton’s finger-pointing, knee-poking interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.

    September 24: Osama Bin Laden: “Rumors of my death…have been highly exaggerated.”a

    September 27: The National Intelligence Estimate from april is leaked to the new york times. It says things are not only going to get worse in Iraq in the next year, but also that Iraq has created more terrorists than before, and emboldened them further. Also creates a good draw for converting more extremist muslims.

    September 28: The University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes releases a poll it conducted showing that 3 in 5 Iraqis support attacks on US forces, 4 in 5 want the US gone.

    September 29: Rep Mark Foley (R, FLA) resigns from congress for getting busted by ABC news on reports that he sent naughty IM’s to a 16 year old congressional page.Now under FBI investigation

    October 1: Bob Woodward’s scathing book State of Denial hits the shelves, stirring up a hornets nest of tardy debate

    October 3:The far right Washington Times calls for House Speaker Dennis Hasterts resignation due to his (mis)handling of the Foley scandal.

  • it does sort of remind me of Fall 2004 when, no matter what, Kerry just couldn’t get the discussion going to what he wanted to talk about because the media was fixated on Swiftboat and then Kerry ran out of time. Now it really does seem like the shoes on the other foot – the Republicans simply aren’t able to get their issues talked about. Unless, of course, we do some sort of October surpirse and bomb Iran…

  • Steve, I love your (inadvertent, I presume?) snark in the fifth bullet point:

    – The White House met with Jack Abramoff 485 times, and had a huge amount of influence.

    That is, the White House had a huge amount of influence over the real power broker, Abramoff.

    And ditto the various sports-politics metaphors. This A’s fan is loving life right now.

  • Don’t get too excited, guys. Reaily is fighting with two hands behind his back these days, and it is only a matter of time until Un-Reality recovers from getting kicked in the balls.

  • Now it really does seem like the shoes on the other foot – the Republicans simply aren’t able to get their issues talked about. Unless, of course, we do some sort of October surpirse and bomb Iran…

    And that’s supposed to HELP the GOP? Who wants another unnecessary war?

  • @12

    Perhaps that is why congress has a job approval rating under 28%.

    And I’m really starting to wonder about those folks. Who are they? Crooks who want to support their fellow criminals? The bimbos who marry mother raping, father stabbing creeps who are doing multiple life sentences? Lobotomy patients? Perhaps they’re just in a hurry and answer yes to everything to get the pollster off the phone.

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