| Underlying offense | Allegations/Reason for Scandal | |
| Teapot Dome | Bribery | Corruption, cover-up |
| Alger Hiss | Perjury | Espionage, charges that FDR’s foreign policy was influenced by Soviet agents |
| Watergate | Burglary | Cover-up |
| Iran-Contra | Funding Nicaraguan Contras in violation of Boland Amendment | Sale of arms to Iran, proceeds used to free American hostages and fund Contras, cover-up |
| Monica Lewinsky | Marital infidelity | Perjury, cover-up |
| Benghazi | Death of four Americans in Benghazi consulate in terrorist attack | Failure to come to the aid of the American consulate in Benghazi for political reasons, incompetence, soft on Islamist terrorism, cover-up |
| IRS targeting conservatives | Abuse of power | Conservative and libertarian 501(c)(4)s targeted for scrutiny by IRS, cover-up |
Which of these incidents constitute scandals and which don’t? Why?
A few random remarks. I was in Europe while the whole Watergate thing was going on. Many Europeans simply couldn’t understand what all the hubbub was about.
I think the whole Benghazi affair is terribly sad. Right now it’s somewhere between scandal and not a scandal. It’s not nothing but it’s not the apocalypse, either. I think that there was a brief attempt at a cover-up but the reality is that it’s a lot harder to maintain the pretense than it used to be even with a press that’s favorably predisposed towards you and it was abandoned quickly. By that time Mitt Romney had already shot himself in the foot by inserting himself into the story.
I think the story about the IRS’s targeting of conservative and libertarian groups for heightened scrutiny is, in fact, a scandal but even more than that it highlights a serious management problem at the IRS. When low-level staffers are setting policy, that’s not just a faux pas by the staffers, as the “mistakes were made” formulation would seem to suggest. The job of such staffers is to follow policy, not set it. If they’re setting policy, that’s a prima facie case for inadequate management. The very least that should happen is that the immediate superiors of whoever was responsible should be terminated for cause. I don’t think that the scandal rises very far but it might if it’s allowed to stretch on long enough.
RE: IRS putting the screws to Obama’s opponents
Assuming that the policy decisions were indeed made at a lower level, why not assume they were doing it because they KNEW that was what the Big Boss wanted? What’s that Rostenkowski quote? “Just show ’em your business card”? This is similar to that, a form of implicit collusion: the parties all know what the one party wants, and no one has to actually say anything to initiate action. Here’s betting that people involved ultimately get promotions out of this.
Yeah, I’d thought of making that point myself. Sometimes you don’t need to give explicit directions to get what you want done. There’s a narrow line between what the Big Boss wants and what the underlings think the Big Boss wants. I guess that provides plausible deniability. That’s why the IRS should be held to a high standard of behavior.
Watergate was a burglary in service to wiretapping of political opponents. It was also about the White House maintaining the “Plumbers” unit which was put together expressly for the purpose of committing numerous crimes, such as the burglary of Daniel Ellsberg’s therapist in an effort to smear Ellsberg. There were also serious conversations among members of the Plumbers contemplating murder. And then there was the cover-up, which included the President suborning perjury from various underlings including his personal secretary.
Benghazi is about ass-covering after a deadly security failure. The ass-covering did not cause the security failure. Both issues have been adjudicated.
An apt comparison to Benghazi might be the 1983 bombing of Marines in Lebanon. Mr. Reagan’s administration placed US Marines in an untenable situation and with weapons un-loaded. 241 were killed in the suicide bombing, very likely ordered or at least tacitly okayed by Iran. Mr. Reagan made some brave noises, vowed not to be scared off, fired some shells into the hills, then withdrew.
Two years later Mr. Reagan arranged to sell weapons to Iran – the regime likely complicit in the Lebanon terrorist attack – in order to finance right-wing death squads in El Salvador.
Interestingly, Democrats did not make the case that Mr. Reagan should be impeached for Lebanon.
Part of the scandal is that the reporters discussing the tax issues do not appear to have a good grasp of tax issues. I come away with the sense that the writers of that WaPost story talked to someone who understood the tax issues, but something has been lost in the transcription. For example, nonprofit organizations are organized under state law, so what kind of application are we talking about? Also, there is a difference between nonprofit organizations in general and the narrower category of organizations to whom contributions are tax deductible.
Gawker is worse; I don’t believe there is such a thing as a 507 organization.
I agree that the IRS thing is troubling and absolutely intolerable. In the old days we’d have expected to see the resignation of the head of IRS. But in the modern era only grunts are ever punished while the high and the mighty keep their jobs.
IMO the IRS thing is much, much worse than the Benghazi ass-covering. For one thing, the failure of the major media outlets to jump all over the IRS not just for the selective harassment of conservative and libertarian groups but for the tepid nature of the ultimate acknowledgement gives an “all clear” for future uses of the IRS as a political tool.
The reason that the right-wing blogs, etc. keep pushing the Benghazi thing is not just that they smell blood even when there isn’t any. Many of them are absolutely and unshakeably convinced that the Obama Administration is soft on Islamic terrorism, a charge similar to the old “soft on communism” charge. The Benghazi thing feeds into that.
That’s one of the reasons I included Alger Hiss in my list.
Additionally, going after the Benghazi thing is a preemptive strike against Hillary Clinton. It opens questions of competence.
Just as a reminder there is no way I would ever vote for Hillary Clinton for president. I’ve explained my reasons in the past. The only standard by which she was a competent Secretary of State was mileage. By that standard Condoleezza Rice was the greatest Secretary of State in American history.
Except for Alger Hiss all of the events listed involved cover-ups. And, IMO, it’s this deliberate act, to hide knowledge from the public, which leads an event into the realm of being called a ‘scandal.’ Because, when a person or persons starts to weaver from the truth, distorting, omitting, blaming someone else, it blows circumstances out of proportion, causes damage to others, and diminishes the faith of the people, in the aforementioned cases, in the government’s veracity.
I think Benghazi will probably go nowhere, though, mainly because it involves the political party most protected by the press. What the MSM wants to emphasize gets promoted in the pubic consciousness. What it deems as unworthy or injurious to leaders espousing their own ideological beliefs , it mutes, derails or simply ignores. The Gosnell trial is a perfect example of this, along with photos of empty press seats covering this craven man (who may actually get off because of a mistrial).
Benghazi has suffered the same fate as Gosnell, in the press nimbly passing right by it, saying “Move along, nothing to see here.” Except for a hand-full of reporters like Jennifer Griffin, Catherine Herridge, Kristen Powers, Sharyl Attkisson (who it is rumored may be dropped from CBS because of her aggressive Benghazi reports), Stephen Hays, and now ABC’s Jonathan Karl, there has been nothing but either silence or condescending derision from our curious investigative mouth pieces of the so-called free press.
If you let lies or obfuscations go by, it encourages more of the same in the future. This is really less of a D or R thing for me, but rather my concern to promote more honesty in government and in the behavior of it’s representatives.
Last year, for instance, when Benghazi was put on the back burner, so to speak, I told friends it was too bad the president wasn’t an R, as there would be a more timely and thorough investigation by the media — consequently more interest in this by the public at large.
Jan:
Benghazi will go nowhere because there’s nothing there. And the idea that the media is covering it up is absurd. It dominates Fox. Even on MSNBC it’s either the lead or the second lead behind the Cleveland horror show. We’ve had two Congressional hearings and a fact-finding investigation. There’s nothing there but Republican desperation.
Dave:
Have you read Tom Ricks’s book on generals? It’s fascinating for its insight that we stopped relieving incompetent or underperforming generals after WW2. Since then even the worst general officers — such as Tommy Franks or those up the chain of command at My Lai and Abu Ghraib — go untouched while a few underlings are thrown under the bus.
I think this mentality permeates all of government and much of private industry. This IRS thing is appalling and at least one prominent head should roll. In a similar vein the mess at VA is appalling and Shinseki ought to resign in disgrace. But in this current era we just refuse to hold higher-ups responsible, whether they work at government offices or big banks. This is an area where Obama could lead but isn’t doing so.
Unlike Benghazi, the IRS thing is getting worse. It seems IRS officials knew this in 2011 — while testifying to the contrary before Congress.
“The disclosure contradicts public statements by former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, who repeatedly assured Congress that conservative groups were not targeted.”
Does anybody else thing that names sounds like a thinly veiled pseudonym for the proprietor?
I think both Benghazi and the IRS political targeting scheme are getting worse.
The fact that the IRS has been doing this since 2011 is troubling, casting doubts on whatever reassurances the IRS might offer, as they seem to have already reconfigured the facts to Congress. These contradictory public statements creates the same kind of mistrust that is also now brewing within the Benghazi stories, originally presented by the WH and the State Dept. I think if they try to drag the CIA into this as the fall guy (which some have suggested), that will not bode well for the administration.
In fact, surprisingly Doug Mataconis, over at OTB, has even written a cautious piece about Benghazi not going away. The excerpts he substantiated this prediction with, have not been from particularly conservative organizations either. Even NPR’s joined in with a good point:
Furthermore, I don’t think the Obama administration did themselves any favors by inviting only a partial press to Friday’s pre-WH daily press get together. Excluding some media, from a media briefing, flies in the face of any attempts to demonstrate honesty and transparency. That’s why more and more people are labeling this not only a cover-up but also a scandal.
Victoria Toensing’s article challenges not only the veracity but also the competence of the much touted ARB Report as being “shoddy to absolve itself of blame.”
It’s an inside view of the manner this inquiry was run, along with allegations of material that was left out of Hick’s testimony. All of it is pretty incredulous, seeming to indicate a lack of neutrality in the ARBs supposed attempts to glean the facts.
My nursing notes had more quality controls than this hearing seemed to have.