Yesterday, I quoted a well-known cable news figure as having said, "The list of things we could attach the word "-gate" to in the Bush administration is now 50 items long." I respectfully disagree - off the top of my head, I came up with 56 separate scandals.
This list is impartial, thrown together off the top of my head, which really says something about the Bush administration. It is no particular order - that would have taken too long, since my WiFi runs out at 10, and been beside the point anyway, which is to show the cumulative total of Bush's incompetence. Additionally, these are only scandals, not positions. This list takes on the Bush administration for his arrogance, incompetence, corruption, dishonesty, and disloyalty to the Constitution, not for their wrong positions or doofus moments. Thus, you'll see no GI bill, tax cuts for the rich, or SCHIP, and no pretzel choking, German backrubs, or Bushisms. Furthermore, this is just the administration, not the larger Republican Party. We're not talking about Bob Ney, or Duke Cunningham, or Don Young, or Tom DeLay (although his list would be just as long), or the Swift Boat vets, or the NRSC attacks on Max Cleland, or, or, or, or. So here's my list, and please add to it in the comments!
A H/T to randomnonviolence for also suggesting "Hugh's List of Bush Scandals," a list 368 items along, although one that contains not just shenanigans but issues, thus far broader than my own definition of scandal.
0.
- Couldn't name Musharraf during the 2000 campaign
- The submarine/fishing boat crash (talk about the wayback machine!)
- Abandoning the ABM Treaty
- Cheney: "Reagan proved deficits don't matter"
- David Safavian's arrest
- Resisting setting up a 9/11 Commission or Iraq Study Group
- At first refusing to testify before the 9/11 Commission, then setting strict conditions on how to testify.
- Arrogantly refuses to admit mistakes
- Didn't know gas was nearing $4 a gallon
- Paul O'Neill's accusation that Bush is disinterested in meetings
- Harry Reid's accusation that Bush treats Congressional leaders like children in meetings
- The smearing of Richard Clarke
- DuIlio and Kuo on the abuse of the faith-based initiatives
- Rumsfeld's ignoring and sidelining the Generals
- The nuclear warhead that flew across the country
- Conditions at Walter Reed
- White House connections to NH Phone jamming
- Signing Statements challenging 1100 laws
- Initially said American Indian affairs were a state issue
- Cheney's keeping his energy meetings a secret
- Iran NIE
- Abu Ghraib
- Guantanamo Bay
- Habeas corpus
- Warrantless wiretapping, illegal under FISA
- Antics at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
- Suggested blacks should want Social Security privatization because they die earlier
U.S. Attorney Scandal
- The actual firings
- Gonzalez's testimony
- The following subpoena
Valerie Plame Leak
- The leak itself
- Not firing the leaker as promised
- Scooter Libby Commutation
- Scott McClellan: I was lied to
Hurricane Katrina
- Poor preparation (tried to cut ACOE funding when more was needed to improve the levees)
- FEMA's response
- Bush's Inattention - "Heckuva job, Brownie!"
- Rebuilding New Orleans and Mississippi (the formaldehyde and more)
Dubai ports debacle
- The sale itself
- Breaking CFIUS law
Environmental censorship
- Cheney censoring the CDC
- Censoring the EPA
- Censoring NASA
Iraq
- As Richard Clarke and David Corn have both told us, the Bushies were looking for any excuse to invade Iraq, facts aside.
- The Cheney mindset: "We will be greeted as liberators."
- No plan for the postwar
- Niger yellow cake
- Cheney telling Bush they don't need Congressional authorization to launch a war
- Going it alone, without the UN
- Not letting the weapons inspectors finish their jobs
- No body armor for the troops
- Jessica Lynch
- Putting all the sacrifice on our troops and their communities, not on the country at large - "go shopping!" and giving up golf my eye.
Politically expedient flip-flops
- Opposing nation building, then plunging into Haiti and Iraq
- Opposing the creation of the DHS, then supporting it
- Supporting a cap on carbon emissions during the campaign, opposing it once in office
That's what I came up with. So I put it to you: what did I forget?
Have fun.