Scandal Mania!“So far, Mr. Bush has paid no political price for his shameful penny-pinching on domestic security and his refusal to provide effective protection for America's ports and chemical plants. As Jonathan Chait wrote in The New Republic: "Bush's record on homeland security ought to be considered a scandal. Yet, not only is it not a scandal, it's not even a story." Paul Krugman, NY TIMES “The Falling Scales” Like the rest of this site, all the information on this page is
freely available out there thorough a variety of news sources, but I think
that this page is especially important to outline, in one place, the top scandals
of the Bush administration. Now, I'm not downplaying a President having an affair in the White House. Whether you believe it was morally unforgivable or just really embarrassing, it was a ridiculously bad judgment call by a usually smart man. But if after 8 years of rabid investigation, this is the worst thing discovered, then I actually feel kind of relieved. He may have screwed over Monica, but he didn't actually screw over the American people. The Bush Administration takes a different tactic, and so far it seems to be working for them. They’ve decided to generate SO much new, fresh and unrelated scandals, that the media cannot hope to keep up and investigate each one. If any nosey members of Congress try to look too deeply, they are publicly torn down by the Administrations attack dogs, if any nosey reporters ask too many questions, their press access to the White House is taken away. Lets take a quick gander at the top scandals that we happen to know about. All of these are definitely big enough to get slapped with the label “scandal” although there are plenty of other, smaller discretions that I won’t mention here.
The 2000 Florida Election I am often haunted by the thought that if this is what we already KNOW about one of the most secretive administrations in the history of the presidency, then the things we don't know about must be absolutely frightening. Like Rats from a Sinking ShipThere are always resignations in any administration, but the sheer amount of resignations under the Bush administration should be a clue that things aren’t running so well behind the scenes. And since it seems impossible to actually get fired from this administration, (Rumsfeld? Wolfowitz? Anyone?) the only way to get out is to get out while the getting is good. Here is a handy-dandy reference list of the many resignations/retirements from the Bush Administration. This is certainly a clear sign of no confidence . . . rumor has it that Tom Ridge may be next and Colin Powell certainly won't last a second administration. So, try as they might to keep it together, the Bush Administration (and in fact the entire GOP) is showing clear signs that it is starting to fall apart at the seams: "Yet as Congress closed shop for the summer, divisions between Republicans had meant the House couldn't pass a 2005 budget, a depressing signal of failure. Meanwhile, the percentage of Americans who disapprove of the job being done by Congress, which had been hovering around 40 for the past five years, leapt to 52. Several polls taken in the spring and early summer showed that voters preferred Democratic positions to Republican ones on every single domestic policy issue. And the grinding, bloody fight in Iraq had some of the war's strongest GOP proponents throwing up their hands in disgust at the administration's failure to plan for the post-Saddam occupation. Indeed, by late summer, a few Republicans who could politically afford to--such as retiring Rep. Doug Bereuter (R-Neb.)--were openly questioning the wisdom of the whole venture, as were a majority of the American people. With John Kerry still leading most campaign polls, conservative despair began to take on a more hysterical tone, and epic scope. "The era of small government is over," warned David Brooks in The New York Times , shortly before the Republican national convention. "We'll let slip a thinly disguised secret," wrote Andrew Ferguson in The Weekly Standard . "Republicans are supporting a candidate that relatively few of them find personally or politically appealing." Even Pat Buchanan, in his vampy style, warned of a coming "civil war" within the party.” Benjamin Wallace Wells - Washington Monthly Party Down Dirty tactics, smear campaigns and Karl RoveGeorge W. Bush has a nickname for his political advisor Karl Rove; he calls him “Turd Blossom.” The rest of the world knows Rove as “Bush’s Brain.” I’m not really sure which is more offensive. His long career began with a college attempt to sabotage the Democratic candidate for Illinois by stealing his letterhead. He followed this up by teaching a course to college Republicans on Nixon-style dirty tricks. In 1989 during a gubernatorial race in Texas, he made a press conference to disclose a "bug" he had found planted in his office, which the FBI later concluded had been planted by Rove himself. Then in the 2000 election, he began a smear campaign against Sen. John McCain, conducting push polls*, giving the impression that McCain had fathered an interracial, illegitimate child, when in fact, he and his wife had adopted a Bangladeshi girl. *(cold calls that are not actually to get data, but to insinuate negative ideas about rival candidates under the guise of being a legitimate poll. This concept was invented by Lee Atwater, Campaign Advisor to George Bush Sr.) "The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the whisper campaign against Ann Richards that questioned her sexuality, the attacks on John McCain's mental health in South Carolina, and the questioning of his environmental record in the New York primary were all products of the fastidious work of Karl Rove. And it does not take an FBI agent to make the connections.
That's right, 'ol "Turd Blossom" is as nasty as his nickname. Just a few samples of smear campaigns! "Push Polling" against John McCain in 2000 |
