comparing "scandals"

Back when scandals didn't cost trillions or kill people

Yesterday, BarbinMD noted the GOP's use of the Holden nomination to try and rehash a greatest hits of Clinton Administration-era scandals:

Senate Republicans have requested information about Attorney General nominee Eric Holder’s role in the Elian Gonzalez controversy as part of a broad probe into his tenure with the Clinton administration and potential ties to presidential scandals during that era.

...the move to focus attention on the highly controversial Gonzalez case indicates the confirmation of President-elect Obama’s top law enforcement official will be anything but smooth.

Seeking information about Gonzalez suggests Republicans are seeking issues that will resonate outside the Beltway, unlike the Rich pardon. [...]

In a separate letter to current Attorney General Michael Mukasey, the senators ask for information tying Holder to 17 separate issues including the Rich pardon and the Gonzales case, but also Vice President Al Gore’s 1996 fundraising scandal and Clinton’s history of special prosecutors in the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky scandals from 1993 to 2001.

What's most interesting to me about this, aside from Senate Democrats giving Republicans all the time in the world to prepare for their smear attack, is the nature of these so-called "scandals":

Let's see. 1) A father was reunited with his son, 2) a rich undeserving guy was pardoned, 3) the vice-president may have raised an illegal $65,000 at a Buddhist Temple, 4) a failed small-time Clinton real estate investment, and 5) Monica!

Quaint, huh? What with two failed wars, a deep recession, the collapse of Wall Street, the collapse of the banks, the collapse of AIG, the SEC's blind eye to Bernard Madoff $50 billion scam, Blackwater, Katrina, and on and on and on.

So after eight years that have cost us trillions, and will cost us trillions more to emerge from this economic armageddon, and eight years that have cost millions more their jobs, and hundreds of thousands their lives in Iraq and elsewhere ... this is how
Republicans respond?

Monica! Whitewater! Elian! Rich!

If the worst we get out of the Obama Administration are trite and barely consequential "scandals" like those we "suffered" during the Clinton years, we'll all be able to rest much easier.

(Daily Kos)