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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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