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How to Rate Political ‘Scandals’
Cuomo vs. Madigan vs. Newsom vs. … Cruz? We’ve been treated to a few “political scandals” as of late. Of course, they happen all the time, but four recent ones stand out.
First, the resignation and bribery investigation of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, a 50-year Democratic fixture in the state’s politics, who just this week resigned from office (he had already stepped down as Speaker). Few politicians have had a stronger grip on a state’s political infrastructure than Speaker Madigan. But allegedly, Speaker Madigan turned ComEd, a large and heavily regulated state utility company, into a job and contracting service for supporters and political allies. I’m sure ratepayers there are interested.
Second, the unfolding COVID/Nursing Home crisis involving New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. We’ve long known about – and the media have largely ignored – his policy decisions early during the COVID pandemic to place COVID-positive patients back into long-term care facilities. Now, we find out that his office lied or, at least, withheld information about it to the federal government and, apparently, a federal investigation is underway.
Third, and admittedly this is now a bit dated, we have Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) visiting a ritzy Napa Valley restaurant, “The French Laundry,” with a group of lobbyists in a semi-confined space while he was ordering a lockdown and mask mandates in his state. Newsom admitted he made a mistake. But 1.5 million signatures later on petitions to recall the Governor, more related to his pandemic/lockdown management than the ill-advised restaurant visit, the damage was done.
Fourth, how many of you have not seen the stories about US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and his ill-advised family trip to sunny Cancun during the midst of his state’s extreme weather event and subsequent power and water crises? Unlike Madigan and Cuomo, who have admitted to and apologized for nothing, Cruz (and Newsom, to be fair) admitted the trip was a mistake, as if Senators have much to do with controlling state power grids and energy distribution systems, or the subsequent loss of water, food supplies, etc. Much of Texas is returning to 70-degree weather next week.
I’m tempted to add another, the sorry episode of Dr. Rachel Levine, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Health, for extracting her mother from a nursing home while she was forcing long-term care facilities to accept COVID-positive patients. That just scratches the surface of the Dr.’s abysmal record of mismanagement and incompetence, which continues as Pennsylvania trails most of the nation in administering COVID vaccines. But the real scandal may be President Biden’s nomination of Dr. Levine to be the Assistant Secretary of Health. In that role, the transgendered behavioral child psychologist will oversee all federal health policy, from COVID (and other) vaccine development and distribution to food safety. But let’s leave that aside for now.
I could also add a couple of alleged GOP “scandals” from the early outset of the pandemic, when two Senators, Richard Burr (R-NC), then chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and now former Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) (and frankly a couple of others) made some interesting stock trades just before the market fell(especially for those stocks they sold). However, both have been cleared of any wrongdoing. Some diehards still consider it a scandal, or at least poor judgment. Bad optics alone do not qualify as a scandal.
Now, which of these four scandals have you read most about? Just a guess, but the fourth one sure seems to dominate social media. Yes, it is the most current, perhaps. Most major networks like CNN and ABC are giving little coverage to the previous scandals, especially involving one of its major host’s brother, but boy, were they all over the Cruz trip. Independent/conservative journalist Andrew Muse was all over what United Airlines and CNN actually did, which looks a lot like a doxxing episode to me, and more newsworthy.
Nevertheless, these “scandals” offer an instructive way to assess degrees of outrage that should be assigned, and guide proper responses. They include:
Did your actions result in, or contribute to, someone’s death?
Did you trade and/or abuse your public office for personal or political benefit?
Are you guilty of hypocrisy?
Did you exercise poor political judgment?
Lastly, are you under official federal or state investigation for potential crimes?
These are pretty obvious. Being responsible, directly or indirectly, for the avoidable deaths of people, then trying to cover it up, strikes me as a big deal, right there at the top of my pyramid for genuine scandals. Same with trading your office illegally for personal or political benefit. Speaker Madigan allegedly carried water for ComEd in the legislature in exchange for them awarding nice jobs and contracts to his political supporters.
But hypocrisy and especially “bad optics” from a poorly thought-out decision? They may be embarrassments, and even politically damaging. But unless there are dead bodies, illegal payoffs, or criminal investigations, sorry, that’s not a scandal and not worth 3 minutes on ABC World News Tonight. Or much of time by anyone.
Oh, sure, Sen. Cruz is an easy mark. He’s notoriously unpopular in the minds of many, much of it from his 2016 presidential campaign. He came across as arrogant, smarmy, unctuous, and disingenuous, to many. I’ve met Sen. Cruz (disclosure – I voted for him in the 2016 Pennsylvania presidential GOP primary election) and think that characterization is unfair. His reelection margin in 2018 was by only a couple of percentage points, and Beto O’Rourke, his skateboard-riding opponent – mostly because he was just running against Cruz – gathered a mind-blowing $80 million in political campaign contributions and outside spending, if not more. Just as bad, he supported Trump and had the audacity to support holding off certification of Pennsylvania’s electoral college count due to a desire to investigate irregularities there.
But even people you may not like deserve a little fairness. Even from the media.”Cruzgate” is no scandal. It may be an embarrassment worthy of a few memes. Fine, and some are funny. But, really, to call it a scandal? That’s just stupid. The real scandal may be the media’s constant insults to our intelligence.
The troll showed up on this tread so I will be leaving now.
Yeah, they sort of showed their malevolence and incompetence all at once. Twice.
Always a good move. Please leave the door open.
That’s because you’re not a true Democrat. You can’t make me believe it.
I think science (SCIENCE!) has shown that it takes multiple generations of inbreeding to get to serious problems. (e.g., the Royal Family…)
But, why start? Especially with someone like HER!
Come on man, Hunter is into many more lines than Trump- ohh wait you meant headlines not lines of coke….
That doesn’t mean that the 1/6 Trump riot wasn’t the largest scandal in my life.
A bigger scandal is people who call something an insurrection that was not an insurrection and so far have paid no price for for trying to incite repression and a military occupation based on that namecalling. But maybe this scandal will be made right in the end and the perps will be brought to justice for it.
Another example of dangerous mislabeling: The head of the John Birch Society called Eisenhower a communist agent, and his organization was properly read out of the conservative movement for it. The same should happen to people who call Trump a Russian agent and to those who call the January 6 social-justice protest an insurrection.
That’s pretty interesting.
I think it’s a pretty fascinating topic. Emergency management in this country seems pretty bad far tooo often..
It was a riot, not an insurrection.
In my opinion, the largest political scandal of our lifetime was the deep state and the Steel dossier etc. I realize you don’t have any problem with that.
The other thing about 1/6 is, Pelosi and McConnell are definitely running a cover-up on who said what about security preparation before hand. They had intelligence from all kinds of agencies that they should be upping it and the guy they fired isn’t laying down about it.
So trying to get back to the main topic of media coverage or non-coverage of “scandals,” since they haven’t come up for discussion recently, does that mean we have we resolved to everyone’s satisfaction the following?
And new, but seeming to get no interest from our supposed “news” organizations, California Governor Newsom may be extorting “donations” in exchange for no-bid contracts.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/companies-that-donated-to-gov-gavin-newsom-to-help-with-coronavirus-were-rewarded-with-no-bid-state-contracts
There was no insurrection. Quit propaganda, you aren’t good at it.
And once again our counselor fails, particularly because the process is the punishment.
You have lived a pretty long time, are you sure there wasn’t another, even larger, scandal?
I don’t disagree with that, but the jury is still out, maybe, with the Durham investigation still on going. The scandals I used are all within the past year and provide good examples of what I was trying to point out – how to gauge scandals. I clearly think, and the evidence is there, that the Russian collusion/pee tape hoax, with its currently abuse of our national law enforcement and intelligence agencies, is a colossal crime – biggest political scandal in modern times, for sure.
No, the largest scandal in your life was the attempted coup by the Dept. of “Justice” and FBI in cahoots with the Obama leftovers in the CIA and DNI.
Kevin Clinesmith
Biggest Scam in American History
Whistleblower
Trump’s Counsel Shreds Democrat’s Case In Less Than 2 Hours
Operation Crossfire Hurricane
Wow! You have labeled the 1/6 breaching of the Capitol, the attempt to stop the counting of the Electoral College votes, the deaths of five people plus two officers who committed suicide, and the threats to murder Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi a “social justice protest”?
Was 9/11 a matter of errant flying?
Was the Civil War “a family dispute”?
I think that a 9/11 Commission would clear that up.
I am glad that while Biden asked for the resignation of all U.S. Attorneys (which is the usual course of events with a new administrative of a different party), he made an exception for Durham.
You mean like the Warren Commission cleared up the JFK assassination with Snarlin’ Arlen’s magic bullet theory?
I wasn’t going to say anything, but I think the reality is there is only a 50-50 chance that it’s going to be honest. I’m pretty sure this type of thing is notorious in history, unfortunately.
9/11 was not a matter of errant flying. The pilots flew where they intended to fly.
The Civil War was a family dispute, metaphorically speaking. But it was also a great and bloody Civil War.
The 9/16 social-justice protest was not an insurrection. It did turn bad, as social-justice protests often do, but it wasn’t dangerous to the extent that a lot of your antifa protests this past year turned bad. It was not an attempt to stop the counting of the electoral votes, permanently, but a misguided attempt to get them right. There was careless and dangerous talk about violence to Pence, etc., but unlike your antifa protests, it was only talk. But it wasn’t an insurrection, except perhaps to the extent that the Legal Insurrection blog calls itself an insurrection. Which is not a scandal.
He only “made an exception” because Bill Barr named Durham a special prosecutor before Barr left DOJ. Based on what was said about Trump wanting to fire Robert Mueller, we all know such an action would be equivalent to, I don’t know, maybe invading the Capitol?
I should repeat, what IS dangerous is the hysteria over the 1/6 social justice protest. What IS dangerous is turning our nation’s capital into an occupied military zone. The people who promoted that degree of hysteria should be treated the same as those who called Eisenhower a “conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist conspiracy.” And I’m glad to see that local Republican organizations across the country have had the good sense treat those people the same way Buckley treated the JBS, by their censure of representatives and senators who contributed to the hysteria by voting for impeachment.
I don’t expect a commission to do anything other than provide cover for the Democrat majority that hires them. If there are open trials of the lawbreakers, with witnesses and cross-examination, that would do a lot more than a commission meeting behind closed doors.
Senator Ron Johnson just said they are already suppressing information in the inquiry into 1/6.