Andrew Sullivan weighs into the debate about whether Obama has been a successful president and concludes unsurprisingly1 that he has been: “Obama is easily the winner and currently stupidly under-rated,” he says. But at the end of his post he tosses out this aside:
But notice what hasn’t happened. Where are all the scandals promised by Michelle Malkin? Where are his Katrinas and Monicas?
This struck me because I happened to be thinking the same thing a couple of days ago. Democrats in Congress have had a few wee bouts of bad behavior lately, but nothing out of the ordinary. All in all, despite the noise machine’s woeful attempts to talk up his alleged Chicago thuggishness, Obama’s presidency has so far been almost completely free of scandal. No sex scandals, no money scandals, no conflict-of-interest scandals, no nothing. This is why his less judicious enemies are still pathetically beating the Bill Ayers drum: because they haven’t been able to come up with anything better.
The usual time for a party/presidency to become scandal-ridden is year 6, which for Obama will be 2014 if he gets reelected. So far, though, he’s run such a clean shop that I wonder if he’ll avoid the six-year itch completely?
1Unsurprisingly for anyone who reads Sullivan’s blog, anyway.