There are plenty of things that Obama has done wrong in the past three years. But so far there hasn't been a single serious scandal (as far as the establishment media are concerned). Part of the reason for that is that the GOP spent the first 18 months of the administration chasing ludicrous charges that Obama was born in Kenya. Another is that the administration has cut people loose at the slightest hint of scandal (remember Shirley Sherod).
Jonathan Alter has a must-read piece on this rather curious phenomenon:
Barack Obama was not in office for more than a couple of minutes, it seemed, before conservatives began trying to cover him in muck. Yet for almost three years, the administration has been scandal-less, not scandalous. In a capital culture that over generations has become practiced at the art of flinging mud pies, Republicans and a few reporters have been tossing charges against a Teflon wall.One explanation Alter does not consider but probably should is that Bush set the bar to corruption and scandal so high that none of his successors are likely to match it for some time. The real scandal of the Obama administration is that he has not moved fast enough to dismantle the GOP system of torture, imprisonment without trial and summary executions. In some cases not moving at all. But don't expect any of that to be considered a 'scandal' when the GOP is complaining he hasn't tortured enough people.
