Santayana said...

I know the Bushes hates the Clintons. But couldn't they have learned from Bill and Hillary's mistakes?

Much of Clinton's troubles were caused by how his administration handled scandals. Their philosophy was to stonewall and not help out the other side by releasing files or information. But unless your administration is leak-free and there's little political pressure for you to cooperate, the result of this tactic is to extend the life of the political problem at hand.

Journalists can't write the same story twice. If nothing changed, then it's not news. So if you air all your secrets at once, the media whacks you around a bit, does a few reports on how the public and politicians are reacting, and that's it. There's nothing else to report.

But with the Clinton administration, every day there would be a leak or they would grudgingly hand over a document due to political pressure, so every day there was another twist to the story and the issue stayed in the news. It didn't helped that this tactic made them look guilty even if they weren't guilty of what Republicans were accusing them at the moment (e.g. Whitewater).

Now the Bush administration is making the same mistake. Bush's military record has become a big story because his administration is acting like they have something to hide. Bush says on Meet the Press that he'll release all of his military records...and then only releases some of them. Which doesn't resolve the issue. So the next day, his press secretary sweats as he evades the questions of the once lifeless press corp. And on it goes.

I, personally, am enjoying every minute of it. Because this issue is almost entirely of Bush's creation. Do most people care whether he skipped out of doing drills for a few days? Or, the worst case, he skipped his physical because he was snorting cocaine? So what if he was? It was over 30 years ago, and people change. But how he handles it today--that speaks of his character. And it's why this story may stick around for a few days to come.