Scandal fatigue revisited: The Bush version

The Carpetbagger Report, one of my favourite blogs, has a good post today on so-called "scandal fatigue" (a concept which emerged during the Clinton years), and it takes a look at what we'll here call One Week in the Life of the Presidency of George W. Bush.

Call it "scandal fatigue," sure, but the key word here is "scandal". Reagan was once known as The Teflon President, but Bush is so slippery that he makes the Gipper look more like The Velcro President. The problem is, there's too much "fatigue" out there -- not least on the part of the media -- to do much about it. No, I'm not saying that I want to see investigation after endless investigation, and I'm certainly not saying (unlike some liberals out there) that Bush should be impeached, but I do think that it is in the best interests of the American people to have the confidence that their government, and its highest office, is clean. The re-emergence of Watergate as a popular topic of conversation this past week only serves to remind us of what can happen when it isn't clean and when Americans lose that confidence, when their trust is shattered. (And we Canadians know all about this, given the corruption that plagues Ottawa at the moment).

So much scandal, so much fatigue. The irony is, they seem to be cancelling each other out.