Which scandals are important?

[Norman Bernstein]

The numbers here are probably flawed, because the people polled were asked to compare a current scandal against historical scandals. But even if you ignore the Plamegate numbers, the others are fairly revealing: Iran-Contra and Watergate were considered much more important than Whitewater and Monica-gate.


RATING THE SCANDALS....Via Atrios, Editor & Publisher takes a look at a recent CBS poll and tells us that the public thinks the Valerie Plame scandal is more important than any scandal in the past 30 years. Here are the numbers:

Plamegate: 86% important 12% not important

Clinton-Lewinsky: 62% important, 37% not important

Whitewater: 49% important, 45% not important

Iran-Contra: 81% important, 19% not important

Watergate: 78% important, 22% not important

E&P has more details on the breakdown.



[ 11-03-2005, 01:36 PM: Message edited by: Norman Bernstein ]

[uncas]

Americans have short memories...Hence the lisitng of all the scandals post 1980...
Not that they made a short term impact...
American History and I'm sure every country's history has its share of scandals...

[Norman Bernstein]

The time frame is more like 30 years: Watergate was in the early 70's. That's recent enough for baby boomers like me to remember, first hand... so those scandals have had more impact in my life than, say, the Army McCarthy hearings.

[uncas]

OKAY...I was voting in the '70's...Sorry about the time lapse...
Still....the scandals are amazing and found throughout our history...Some of the ones you mentioned are as important and noteworthy as those long forgetten...I am sure that in 20 yrs...those you mentioned will be gathering dust along with the ones I am thinking of...
This goes hand in hand with our current educational system and its failures to teach anything ( ps...I taught school for 15 yrs...so have a little history there myself ).

[Garrett Lowell]

It's so funny. The press is so enamored of themselves and so unimaginative and focused on the one investigative-=reporting event that may have been worthy of immortality (as far as names go) that everything is {insert obvious scandal name here}gate". It was no super-sleuthing uber-reporting effort that broke the Plame story. It's not even in the same category as Watergate. Silly.

[John of Phoenix]

"Plamegate: 86% important 12% not important"

That's amazing. Wonderful in fact. I didn't think the American public was even aware of this.

I mean, the new fall TV season just started and THEY'RE ACTUALLY PAYING ATTENTION TO THIS! :cool:

[uncas]

Until the ratings go down and then POOF...

[Victor]

I have to agree. Plamegate has no legs. And Iran-Contra was hardly the threat that Watergate was. It just made Reagan look like a fool. But we all still love him! And the "reforms" he ushered in! Every trucker who's out there making his 900 miles a day to take home 600 a week is thanking old Ronnie right now.

[LeeG]

When your wife says,,honey, I'm pregnant,,,

and your friend says,,,it's mine.

but she's leaving both of you

for the grocery girl

[Cuyahoga Chuck]

Garrett,
I'll bet Karl Rove thinks it's important. It's said that he has poll numbers for breakfast along with his Cheerios.
The architect of Bush's two terms is a polling maven and is right now probably trying to get some dirt on the guy who is prosecuting his buddy just to get his boss's poll numbers turned around.
I was around for Watergate and was able to watch the fallout on a daily bases. If the wrongdoings of Bush's people ever see the light of day, as happened to Nixon, there is no telling how destructive it could be to Bush. As of now the other shoe has not dropped.
Charlie

[ 11-04-2005, 09:59 AM: Message edited by: Cuyahoga Chuck ]

[huisjen]

So, what if the grocery girl is hot?

[JimD]

Canada had a rotten fish scandal that became affectionately known as Tunagate. Really. No kidding.

[Bruce Taylor]

Yeah, but then we all got used to eating rotten fish, so everything's great now!

[Peter Malcolm Jardine]

I like the scandals that have cool fast cars and nekkid wimmins in them.

Any decent scandal in Canada gets totally destroyed in the wake of the Royal Commission that's called to investigate it. By the time the commission's finished, your interest in the scandal has been sanitized by intense, high temperature, ultrasonic, homogenized, pasteurized, sterilized,.... BOREDOM. :D

[Cuyahoga Chuck]

And to elaborate further for all you tikes who weren't around for Watergate;
The scandal broke well before the election but for some reason never got legs and Nixon won.
But that gave the gnomes in the press a lot of time to fish around and suddenly the dam broke.
So don't make any judgements based on current perceptions. Things can always get worse in the political arena.
Who knows? Maybe George Tenet will get a galloping case of consiense and spill the beans about the phoney intelligence.
Charlie

[ 11-04-2005, 10:00 AM: Message edited by: Cuyahoga Chuck ]

[LeeG]

I have hopes for Jeff Gannon

[Rick Tyler]

Originally posted by Norman Bernstein:
The numbers here are probably flawed, (...): Iran-Contra and Watergate were considered much more important than Whitewater and Monica-gate.Sample bias or survey instrument bias. Where can I learn more about the methodology these "pollsters" used?

[cedar savage]

Did any of these scandals change your life in any way or have any real impact on your finances, security, make you change your plans, etc.?

Obviously, if some of you didn't spend so much time focusing on scandals in government, you could actually have a life, perhaps accomplish something significant.

[ 11-04-2005, 07:12 AM: Message edited by: cedar savage ]

[uncas]

Rick...do you think the reason might possibly be that a very large group of individuals who were asked regarding these scandals were not even born..at the time...?
I am sure if this was 1801, the Alien and Sedition Act was one of the better/most important scandals of the day...Another election lost in part because of it. It was a nasty election anyway...right in line with presidential elections of the late 20th century...

[ 11-04-2005, 06:59 AM: Message edited by: uncas ]

[uncas]

Scandals with an impact:
Election of 1800...
Election of 1824
The Dryfus case
Edward the VII ( I think )
Arnold at West Point
The murder of the princes in the Tower of London
Watergate
Pearl Harbor...what did the president know and did not tell us.
Who ran the White House during Wilson's second term.

[ 11-04-2005, 07:22 AM: Message edited by: uncas ]

[Garrett Lowell]

Originally posted by LeeG:
I have hopes for Jeff GannonWell, it doesn't make you a bad person. I figured you would be more of a JCSOH type than a Gannon type. :D

[Norman Bernstein]

Did any of these scandals change your life in any way or have any real impact on your finances, security, make you change your plans, etc.?
Directly? No... on the other hand, if we all just utterly ignored them, we'd be living in a fascist dictatorship. The only thing that prevents that is an informed and opinionated citizenry.


Obviously, if some of you didn't spend so much time focusing on scandals in government, you could actually have a life, perhaps accomplish something significant.
Well, I can't speak for YOU... my life is pretty worthwhile and significant... and actually caring about what goes on in government hasn't diminished my life one bit... in fact, one could argue it has enhanced it.

[cedar savage]

I'm certainly not asking you to "utterly" ignore the 'scandals', but perhaps, requesting that a bit of perspective might be in order.

IIRC, every one of the scandals mentioned in the original post was thoroughly investigated, and all the millions of comments from the peanut gallery helped the investigators not one single iota.

[Norman Bernstein]

IIRC, every one of the scandals mentioned in the original post was thoroughly investigated, and all the millions of comments from the peanut gallery helped the investigators not one single iota.
cedar, the 'comments from the peanut gallery' is the reason WHY there were investigations... ordinary citizens, like you and me, who demanded the investigations, and in doing so, forced thier senators and representatives to respond.

Do you really think that Ken Starr would have spent $70M and 3 years to prove that Clinton got a blow job from Monica if it wasn't for conservative republicans eager to pin something on him... even if it was just a blow job?

This is just 'vox populi' in action.

[cedar savage]

Is it necessary, once the populi have vox and the investigations are under way, to continue and continue and continue?

[Ian McColgin]

As Thomas Sowell wrote: "But it was quite an anticlimax when the man who is accused . . . is not even whared with the crime for which a special prosecutor was appointed with extraordinary powers and an extraordinary budget."

Oops. My bad. He was not writing this about Clinton.

[uncas]

Norman...interesting question re: have any of these scandals changed your life etc...
Perhaps...If Adams had won in 1800, we would not have bought from France a good piece of ground.
If Adams in 1824 did not have the scandal surrounding his election, Jackson may have not won in '28...And the Cherokees would have loi8ked that.
If Wilson's wife not in essence run the US during her husband's term would we have that amendemt change dictating or outlining the chain of command if the President was incpacitated...
Perhaps these scandals did not effect us directly...money in the bank etc. but they did change history.

[Norman Bernstein]

Is it necessary, once the populi have vox and the investigations are under way, to continue and continue and continue? With regard to the investigation about whether intelligence was manipulated or distorted to make a case for war, we haven't HAD that investigation yet (see the previous posts). That is the reason for the stunt (yes, it WAS a stunt, and an effective one) the Dems pulled in the Senate last week.

[George.]

I'll tell you how scandals affect people's lives directly.

Scandals, by definition, are outreageous or illegal stunts by governments that get "caught" - if they remained secret, there would be no scandal. Mostly, they are about small stuff.

The resulting public outcry not only undoes the scheme and punishes the schemers. More importantly, it scares other would-be schemers into not getting too bold, and keeps the ones who got caught from feeling smug and moving on to bigger schemes.

Now, if there were no outcry, there would be no scandal - just successful, growing schemes, slowly perverting government and eroding our constitutions and freedoms, until one day...

You get the picture. Hitler never had any scandals. The Nazis never had to worry about a public outcry.

[uncas]

Watertgate..Iran Contra, White Water...had no effect on me except to support my philosophy that politicians are basically a bunch of crooks and to make me wonder why I should vote..
Regarding the last...decided that I had to vote so that I can rant about the illegalities perpetuated/created by those in office.
Now there is a good reason...at least as good as any other.
Did it change my life ( for the good ) NO! Did it change my life for the worse...No!!!!
Status Quo.

[ 11-04-2005, 02:36 PM: Message edited by: uncas ]

[George.]

Originally posted by uncas:
... politicians are basically a bunch of crooks and to make me wonder why I should vote..
That's why you should vote. Because they are crooks. And by voting, you can attempt to choose the least crooked, and to punish them when they get out of hand with their crookedness. smile.gif

[uncas]

Ah...selective clipping George...Put the entire post up there...I agree...Taken out of context, it appears I don't.
:eek: jamj

[Rick Tyler]

Originally posted by uncas:
(...)individuals who were asked regarding these scandals were not even born..at the time...?
I am sure if this was 1801, the Alien and Sedition Act was one of the better/most important scandals of the day...I think it is possibly a sign that the respondents were too young to remember what happened earlier, but equally likely that they were educated with a banana and an innertube. I'm glad that kids in public school (at least here in Washington) are just chock full of diversity and self-respect, even if they are not ever actually exposed to anything unpleasant like historical facts.

(Full disclosure that detracts from my previous rant: my older son is in an AP US History class where he just wrote an essay in which he used John Locke, Karl Marx, Thomas Jefferson, and Paul the Apostle in explaining the philosophical underpinnings of the US Constitution. Schools are not free of teaching -- it only seems that way when you are talking to some adults. And students.)

[uncas]

Rick...not many people take AP courses overall. ( At least this used to be the case having taught AP biology many years ago ) Which leads to the problems of what is being taught in the general courses.
I never taught in the public school system in the US...hence, I have only seen the variious books used and for the most part have not been impressed...I am also aware of the mountains of tests which students are forced to take and teachers have to compensate for in their classrooms. Some of these books are pitiful...If nothing else, extremely simplisitic ( more pics than print ) and often scued in one direction.
No wonder our ranking in the world in education is lower than it should be.