A Scandal-Free White House: Is Obama Very Ethical, or Very Lucky?

The president's once sky-riding approval ratings are below 50 percent in most polls; his skittish political party publicly frets about losing control of Congress in the mid-term elections; and major-media Web Sites ballyhoo melodramatic headlines like: "The Presidency in the Balance."

Judging from White House history dating back to the 1970s, these dire symptoms developing so early in a president's first term point to an obvious diagnosis – the crippling virus of scandal.

Barack Obama has many political problems, but he is not brooding during secret cigarette breaks about special prosecutors, congressional investigators or relentless investigative reporters. In contrast to Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and maybe even George H.W. Bush, Obama so far has presided over an administration almost entirely free from major public scandal.

Needless to say, the Democratic Party should be so lucky. Whether it is Charlie Rangel being forced to step aside (temporarily for those who believe in leprechauns and other magical creatures) as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Eric Massa's sudden resignation from the House or New York Gov. David Paterson becoming a dead-man-walking definition of beleaguered, the Democrats are having a spot of trouble this week qualifying as squeaky clean. (Before Republicans start feeling too pious, does the name Mark Sanford ring any bells?) But against this bipartisan backdrop of gubernatorial and congressional embarrassments, the Obama record does seem unusual.

Sure, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle flamed out more than a year ago during the vetting process to become Obama's secretary of health and human services because of tax problems, his work for a Washington lobbying firm and his high-paid speeches to health-care groups. And conservative opposition produced the ouster a few fourth-tier Obama officials like Van Jones (the green jobs coordinator at the Council on Environment Quality) from administration posts that only Glenn Beck knew existed. But these minor personnel problems would not even qualify Obama for the waiting list at Washington's school for scandal.

It is always dangerous in journalism to write about things that have not happened . . . . yet. And it is far too early to definitely attribute the Obama administration's good fortune to its superior virtue or its efforts to disqualify from government almost everyone who has filled out a lobbyist registration form. But without getting too Sherlock Holmes-y and invoking non-barking dogs, the absence of the word subpoena from the White House lexicon should be noteworthy.

The reasons for a scandal-free White House may be as random as Obama's luck (just ask presidential candidate Hillary Clinton) or may reflect the partisan self-discipline of congressional Democrats (something that has not easily been applied to health-care reform). Obama also may be benefiting from the newspaper cutbacks that have created a dwindling band of Washington investigative reporters. It is even plausible that conservatives have less need to find real-life ethical lapses by Obama officials because they are so enraptured with weird obsessions like the legitimacy of the president's Hawaiian birth certificate.

But other presidents – Democrats especially – have found the first year in office to be a brutal introduction to the take-no-prisoners culture of Washington. Many of the over-hyped scandals that brought down prior top administration officials seem, in hindsight, to be the equivalent of overdue library fines or not paying Social Security taxes for a nanny. By way of comparison with Obama, here is a White House low-lights reel from other recent presidents' first year in office:

Bert Lance – Carter's close friend and budget director – did not survive long enough in Washington to see the autumn leaves because of his permissive lending practices while running a small-town Georgia bank. Reagan's national security adviser Richard Allen was forced out after less than a year, in part because he accepted three watches from a Japanese couple, and $1,000 in cash from a Japanese publication was found in his White House safe. Clinton, in his first months in the White House, was buffeted by the suicide of deputy White House counsel Vince Foster, an out-of-control Whitewater investigation and brouhahas that were given Watergate-like suffixes like "Travel-gate." Fairly or unfairly, the Clinton administration sometimes seemed like a make-work program for Washington white-collar defense lawyers.

(The Bush family, pere and fils, should not entirely be forgotten here. Although his first year in office was comparatively tranquil, George H.W. Bush did have to deal with lingering questions about his role in the Iran-contra scandal as Reagan's vice president. And the 1990 summer scandal – once a bored reporters' Washington ritual – revolved around presidential son Neil Bush's involvement in a failed Colorado savings-and-loan. As for that other Bush son, George W., the first of year of his presidency will always be treated as a special case because of the short interlude between the disputed 2000 election and the September 11 attacks).
While no White House wants to be subjected to the daunting refrain of "what did the president know and when did he know it," the Obama administration should recognize the full implications of its near scandal-free record. (Breaking a campaign promise to televise the health-care negotiations on C-Span does not count). If the president is treading water in the polls (thank you, American economy) at a time when scandal-hungry investigative reporters are staking out governor's mansions and not the White House, imagine how dicey things could get for Obama if the winds ever shift.