Eleanor Clift's current column in Newsweek is unremarkable, but I was struck by this line:

With an unpopular war, scandals consuming the White House and a two-party system paralyzed by partisanship, voters are looking for an outsider, somebody who’s not tainted by politics as usual.

That's the liberal line, of course: the White House is consumed by scandals. Certainly Newsweek, along with pretty much every other mainstream news outlet, has done its best to convey this impression. But what, exactly are they talking about? Are there actual scandals, or faux "scandals" that die like a mayfly when the day's news cycle is over?

The truth is that the Bush administration has been extraordinarily scandal-free. Not a single instance of corruption has been unearthed. Only one significant member of the executive branch, Scooter Libby, has been convicted of anything. Whether the jury's verdict was right or wrong, that case was an individual tragedy unrelated to any underlying wrongdoing by Libby or anyone else.

What other "scandals" are consuming the White House? Eight United States Attorneys, who are political appointees serving at the pleasure of the President, were replaced. So what? Was it a scandal when Bill Clinton replaced all 93? So far, not a single fact--I'm drawing here the subtle distinction between "fact" and "speculation" that so often escapes our liberal pundits--has emerged to render the replacement of those Justice Department employees scandalous in any respect.

Last week's "scandal" was Henry Waxman's rather bizarre hearing on the Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch cases. There was indeed a mini-scandal connected with Jessica Lynch. It was a media scandal. The Washington Post rushed into print the story of Lynch's supposed heroics, based on an anonymous report from a "U.S. official." (Note that the Post did not say the "official" was even in the military.) The Army itself never made any claims whatever about Lynch's "heroism," and reportedly tried to warn the Post off the story. But the Post's position is that any leak must be true, as long as it's anonymous.

In an op-ed in yesterday's New York Times, Michael DeLong, who at the time was the deputy commander of United States Central Command, tells what really happened:

The initial reports from the field regarding Private Lynch stated that she had gone down fighting, had emptied her weapon and that her actions were heroic. Based on these reports, politicians from her home state, West Virginia, wanted the military to award her the Medal of Honor. Their request rose up the ladder until finally it reached me.

But initial combat reports are often wrong. Time must always be taken to thoroughly investigate all claims. In the case of Private Lynch, additional time was needed, since she was suffering from combat shock and loss of memory; facts, therefore, had to be gathered from other sources. The military simply didn’t know at that point whether her actions merited a medal.

This is why, when the request landed on my desk, I told the politicians that we’d need to wait. I made it clear that no one would be awarded anything until all of the evidence was reviewed.

The politicians did not like this. They called repeatedly, through their Congressional liaison, and pressured us to recommend her for the medal, even before all the evidence had been analyzed. I would not relent and we had many heated discussions.

The politicians repeatedly said that a medal would be good for women in the military; I responded that the paramount issue was finding out what had really happened.

So, along with the Washington Post, the villains of the story are politicians from West Virginia. Let's see: every member of West Virginia's Congressional delegation but one is a Democrat, and the Democrats control West Virginia's legislature. So the targets of Waxman's investigation should have been the Washington Post and the Democratic Party, not the military, which never uttered a false word about Lynch.

The Tillman case is only slightly less silly. The commander on the ground made the foolish decision not to tell Tillman's brother Kevin, who was nearby when Pat was killed, that the cause was friendly fire. So the version originally released by those on the ground in Afghanistan was that Pat was killed in an encounter with the enemy. That was stupid. But an investigation was done, and when the matter worked its way up the chain of command, the original decision was reversed, and, only a month or so after Tillman's death, the correct story was released to the public. Far from being a case where senior generals or politicians tried to cover up the circumstances, as was falsely suggested by Kevin Tillman, the exact opposite happened: it was some combination of senior generals and politicians who learned the truth and quickly made it public.

These "scandals" obviously have no legs, but that isn't the point. Waxman has already moved on to a new one, issuing subpoenas to Condoleezza Rice and George Tenet to testify about Saddam's efforts to obtain uranium. And so it goes. Waxman hasn't even gotten to 2005 yet; he can keep this going through the rest of the Bush administration, and his committee is only one of many.

The purpose of these faux "investigations" of faux "scandals" is to further sully the image of President Bush, and to allow liberal reporters and pundits like Eleanor Clift to write that the White House is "consumed by scandals." The fact that there isn't a genuine scandal in the bunch goes unremarked.

UPDATE: A reader wrote to point out this news story, in which CENTCOM public affairs officer Capt. Frank Thorp fell in with the early story of Jessica Lynch's heroism:

Thorp said Lynch "waged quite a battle prior to her capture.

"We do have very strong indications that Jessica Lynch was not captured very easily," he said. "Reports are that she fired her (M-16 rifle) until she had no more ammunition."

So, at least to that extent, the Army contributed to the Lynch myth--although it should be noted that this story, originally in Military Times, was so obscure that it came to light recently only because it was located by Congressional investigators. Thorp says that he was not the source of the Washington Post story that appeared the same day as his comments in Military Times. Both stories, of course, accurately reflected the early reports that came in from the field on Lynch's capture.

In any event, the prime impetus driving the Lynch story was the media, in particular the Washington Post, not the Army. The Post itself acknowledged that the Army warned that the early reports were fragmentary and unverified:

Several officials cautioned that the precise sequence of events is still being determined, and that further information will emerge as Lynch is debriefed. Reports thus far are based on battlefield intelligence, they said, which comes from monitored communications and from Iraqi sources in Nasiriyah whose reliability has yet to be assessed. Pentagon officials said they had heard "rumors" of Lynch's heroics but had no confirmation.

The Post printed those rumors as though they were fact, while simultaneously acknowledging the Army's reservations, and other media outlets quickly joined in, along, as noted above, with politicians. So of all the institutions involved in the Lynch matter, the Army was, it appears, the least blameworthy.

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