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Scandals Aren't Us (Sept. 12 2005)  by Dr John
Can you imaging if Bill Clinton had lied about going to war in Bosnia, and then thousands of soldiers were killed and wounded? Scandal material? Sure thing, so what’s up with the scandal-less or scandal-lite treatment of the Bush administration by the so-called liberal media? Every usual suspect in that liberal media cabal, ranging from the NY Times, to the Washington Post to CNN, have been more than supportive of the Bush administration, including being very helpful in the run up to the war in Iraq. So I thought it would be interesting for both liberals and conservatives alike to do a scandal by scandal comparison of the Bush and Clinton administrations, and the degree to which the media treated the stories as scandals, or not.

Which was worse for the country, “White Water” under Clinton, or failing to connect terrorist dots before 9/11 under Bush? One was a failed Arkansas land deal for $30,000 by a Clinton friend and business partner that occurred 10 years before Mr. Clinton became President. The other scandal concerned an incumbent President ignoring mounting intelligence information that Osama Bin Laden was preparing terrorist cells to attack the US, possibly with hijacked planes. White Water got much more air time, and column space during the Clinton presidency, than the failure to protect the US from terrorists did under Bush.


How about comparing the so-called “Travel Gate” scandal under Clinton with faking and cherry picking Iraq pre-war intelligence under Bush? In one so-called scandal you have an incoming administration replacing the personnel in the travel office of the White House. Well within their prerogative. The other apparent non-scandal was recently described by Colin Powel as a permanent blight on his record; the false allegations before the United Nations that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction aimed directly at the US, and ready to go on 45 minutes notice. The news media went immediately nuts on Travel Gate, but it took them two years before they started to question Colin Powel’s and George Bush’s allegations about WMD in Iraq, and the level of threat posed to the United States.

How would you compare “File Gate” under Clinton, vs. the failure to plan and secure peace in Iraq? Clinton’s “File Gate scandal” was actually humorous in retrospect, with Republicans saying that Clinton was “spying on people”. Note that now, Bush Jr. and friends in the Republican Congress are spying on everyone with the Bush Patriot Act. And then compare this quaint scandal to the “post-mission-accomplished” disaster in Iraq, with the country and its people slowly and inexorably spiraling toward civil war, and US troops unable to stop the slide toward anarchy.

The quintessential scandal of Bill Clinton’s Presidency was the “Trooper Gate scandal” which led to the Paula Jones alleged sexual harassment case. Keep in mind that David Brock, who now runs a liberal media watchdog group called Media Matters, was hired by Republicans as a young man to fabricate the Trooper Gate story. That didn’t stop the media frenzy, nor the impeachment that followed. Compare this media frenzy and impeachment, which started with a documented lie, with the Karl Rove/Bob Novak undercover CIA leak in terms of substance, media coverage, and import for national security. In one case it was a fabricated story, leading to a he-said-she-said tabloid story. In the other case it was political hard-ball at its absolute worst, which in the long run damaged national security, CIA operative covers, and US credibility in terms of being able to secure classified information about overseas undercover operations. The Rove scandal has garnered significant media coverage of late, but the coverage has not had the same ferocity that accompanied most of the Clinton scandals.

One of the more unusual “scandals” of the Clinton Presidency was the suicide of long-time friend, and White House Counsel, Vince Foster. How this became a “scandal” is beyond me; it should have been treated as a tragedy by the press. But by the time the Republican rumor machine was done, Vince Foster had been murdered, and the body moved to a nearby park to make it appear to be a suicide. Compare this with the well documented Abu Grebe and Guantanamo Bay prisoner torture debacles under President Bush. Yes, there was immediate and appropriate media outrage that US troops and intelligence officers would be involved in prisoner torture, but this quickly subsided, even when it was found that thousands more photos and movies of torture were in the hands of the army, who was not going to release them because it would be too “damaging”. This is the “freedom” that Mr. Bush says we are fighting for? US international credibility may not be repaired for decades to come.

The Monica Lewinsky scandal, based on press corps attention, was the biggest Presidential scandal since Richard Nixon and “Water Gate”. But what it really amounted to was Bill Clinton lying about oral sex with Monica Lewinsky during the Paula Jones sexual harassment trial. This incomprehensibly led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment. Now compare this supposed scandal with the growing scandal surrounding Bush and Co. cutting New Orleans levee funding, dismantling FEMA, replacing experienced FEMA staff with inexperienced political operatives, and then not responding properly to hurricane Katrina after the fact. Bush and company oversaw the degradation of disaster preparedness, despite numerous warnings about the levees susceptibility to hurricane damage. You could add to this the fact that the Republicans tried to blame local, Democratic officials for the lack of a national response to the Katrina flooding disaster. That would be like FEMA and the federal government telling NY City to take care of the destruction after 9/11 all by itself.

Notice that in many cases, the non-scandals that plagued the Clinton Presidency have proper names, such as File Gate. There are no “Gates”, or even recognizable names associated with any of the numerous Bush Presidency scandals, suggesting a different journalist mindset with respect to the two presidents. One can only wonder if the “Gate-fetish” will return to the press corps as soon as a Democrat returns to the White House. Of course, there are still over 2 years left of the most scandal-ridden administration of my lifetime in which the press can start acting like government watchdogs again, rather than administration lap dogs. Will we ever start to hear about WMD-Gate, Torture-Gate, Iraq-Gate, Rove-Gate, or FEMA-Gate? Don’t count on it, because the so-called liberal media are anything but liberal. The Bush administration operates under the slogan, “Scandals aren’t us”, and the media are more than willing to accommodate them.
 
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