Obama: Miraculously 'scandal-free'?

A mountain of polls suggest that President Obama faces a tough re-election fight. But if he loses, says Jonathan Alter at Bloomberg, it will be due to the weak economy, not scandal. Indeed, Alter says, one of the most remarkable but overlooked assets Obama brought to the White House is his honesty. Is Obama the most "scandal-free" president the country has had in decades?

No. Team Obama has been plagued by scandal: "Honest, schmonest," says Tom Blumer at News Busters. For one thing, Obama "contrived" the story about his mother's deathbed fight with her insurers — a tall tale the president fed the public innumerable times during the fight over health care reform. And it's hard to see how anyone can call Obama scandal-free after the Solyndra boondoggle and the federal Fast and Furious operation that put guns in the hands of Mexican drug lords. If anything, Obama is giving Americans "scandal fatigue."

"Jonathan Alter's blinders: 'White House free of scandal'; Obama asset is that 'he's honest'

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Next to Bush, Obama is squeaky clean: The Right is desperate to smear this administration, as we've seen by its "ludicrous charges that Obama was born in Kenya," says Myrddin at America Blog. But Obama really has avoided getting tangled up in a "single serious scandal." One reason is that his "administration has cut people loose at the slightest hint of scandal (remember Shirley Sherrod)." Another is that George W. Bush "set the bar to corruption and scandal so high" that there was no way Obama could match him.

"Three years without a serious scandal makes Obama administration a historical oddity"

It all depends on how you define scandal: Obama is scandal-free if you define scandal as sexual impropriety or overt corruption, says Emptywheel. But ask liberals, and they'll say Obama lied about supporting a public health insurance option, "smothered what was left of rule of law" by protecting Bush's torture system, and concocted "new ways to bail out the banksters from the consequences of their crimes." This scandalous record may actually be one of the biggest strikes against Obama in 2012.

"The scandal is that Jonathan Alter doesn't see the scandal"