Arkady
President
When future historians look back, they'll notice that Republicans of our era have pioneered a new form of politics. I'll call it "scandaleering." In spirit, it's similar to the full-court press in basketball, or a blitz-happy defense in football. The idea is to keep the pressure on and hope it leads to a lucky break.
Think of Whitewater for a classic early example. As a reminder, there'd been speculation that Bill Clinton improperly used his power as governor in some unspecified way in relation to a small land deal in which he lost money. Pretty early on, it was determined by a special prosecutor that Clinton had done nothing wrong, but that wasn't the end of the story. Republicans pressed to replace the prosecutor with an unhinged partisan movement conservative named Kenneth Starr, as independent counsel. Starr's mandate was to keep the investigation going as long as possible, broadening it over and over again. The Republicans knew Clinton had done nothing wrong with regard to Whitewater, but it didn't matter -- they also knew that as long as they could use an investigation to keep compelling testimony and document disclosure, they might eventually stumble across damning evidence elsewhere. That particular strategy fizzled. Despite spending millions of dollars broadening the dragnet to include everything from his wife's legal career to his administration's handling of the White House's Travel Office, years of effort turned up nothing. Eventually they had to settle for basing the planned impeachment on Clinton's lying about a blowjob. With such a paper-thin pretext, the effort to remove him from office failed, despite Republican majorities in both houses of Congress.
Even though the strategy didn't pay off in that case, scandaleering was a fundamentally strong idea: as long as you can at least pretend you think your opponent broke the law, and you use that to keep an investigation churning, you're maximizing your chance of getting a lucky break. Nobody is perfect, so if you can put yourself in a position where millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours are being spent second-guessing your opponent's every move, sooner or later you'll at least find enough to fill out an attack ad. Plus, you can stick the taxpayer with the bill for the opposition research, so long as you pretend it was an investigation into a crime, rather than a partisan drag-net. Whitewater showed just how little connection there had to be between the matter nominally under investigation (a 1980s land deal in Arkansas) and the matter actually being probed for weakness (a 1990s marital infidelity in Washington).
Scandaleering was tried again with regard to Benghazi. Within a short period after the event, it was clear to the Republicans that there simply was no scandal. But that didn't matter. It was a pretext for ongoing investigations into the person they expected to be their next opponent in the presidential race, and as such it was important to keep it churning. They knew from the Whitewater days that they could follow filaments connecting one pseudo-scandal to another, until maybe they found some real misconduct. So, they pretended to be all worked up about some absolute trivia (inconsequential message confusion immediately after the attack about whether an incendiary video had played some role). Sure, they knew that only a complete imbecile would think that mattered, but the point was just to come up with the minimal pretext needed to force the production of documents and testimony. Essentially, all they needed from Benghazi was a title to stamp on the latest chapters of the perpetual investigation, and it really didn't matter what the title was. Just as an 80s land deal led them to a 90s affair, in this case the countless redundant investigations nominally about Benghazi eventually led them to an investigation into how Hillary Clinton handled her email while Secretary of State.
Like Whitewater before it, this particular round of scandaleering also turned out to be something of a bust. Even with a Republican running the FBI, they couldn't find anything that would remotely justify indictment. Just as they settled for the consolation prize of a failed impeachment in the 90s, they had to settle for some attack-ad video clips regarding the email. Their man in the FBI went beyond his job mandate of investigating whether there'd been a crime, and dutifully bashed Clinton for non-criminal behavior, and that gave them the sound bites they were after. It was surely disappointing that there'd be no criminal charges, but when Donald Trump is your nominee you're in no position to have a substantive campaign, so any fodder for personal smears is better than nothing.
I expect that despite both those examples of scandaleering falling well short of Republican hopes, we'll keep seeing more of that strategy from them. To go back to the sports analogy, even if blitzing on every down doesn't yield sacks, it at least forces the opponent to play your game, rather than having to adapt to his. The offensive line will keep jumping off-sides, and the QB will be forced to scramble rather than sitting back and dissecting the defense. Similarly, a full-court press is a great equalizer, as Malcolm Gladwell famously noted. If the Republicans allow campaigns to be about substantive issues, they lose, the same way a weaker basketball team will lose when each team executes a standard game-plan. But if the Republicans can create chaos, pulling everyone down with them into the politics of personal destruction, they've at least got a shot.
Think of Whitewater for a classic early example. As a reminder, there'd been speculation that Bill Clinton improperly used his power as governor in some unspecified way in relation to a small land deal in which he lost money. Pretty early on, it was determined by a special prosecutor that Clinton had done nothing wrong, but that wasn't the end of the story. Republicans pressed to replace the prosecutor with an unhinged partisan movement conservative named Kenneth Starr, as independent counsel. Starr's mandate was to keep the investigation going as long as possible, broadening it over and over again. The Republicans knew Clinton had done nothing wrong with regard to Whitewater, but it didn't matter -- they also knew that as long as they could use an investigation to keep compelling testimony and document disclosure, they might eventually stumble across damning evidence elsewhere. That particular strategy fizzled. Despite spending millions of dollars broadening the dragnet to include everything from his wife's legal career to his administration's handling of the White House's Travel Office, years of effort turned up nothing. Eventually they had to settle for basing the planned impeachment on Clinton's lying about a blowjob. With such a paper-thin pretext, the effort to remove him from office failed, despite Republican majorities in both houses of Congress.
Even though the strategy didn't pay off in that case, scandaleering was a fundamentally strong idea: as long as you can at least pretend you think your opponent broke the law, and you use that to keep an investigation churning, you're maximizing your chance of getting a lucky break. Nobody is perfect, so if you can put yourself in a position where millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours are being spent second-guessing your opponent's every move, sooner or later you'll at least find enough to fill out an attack ad. Plus, you can stick the taxpayer with the bill for the opposition research, so long as you pretend it was an investigation into a crime, rather than a partisan drag-net. Whitewater showed just how little connection there had to be between the matter nominally under investigation (a 1980s land deal in Arkansas) and the matter actually being probed for weakness (a 1990s marital infidelity in Washington).
Scandaleering was tried again with regard to Benghazi. Within a short period after the event, it was clear to the Republicans that there simply was no scandal. But that didn't matter. It was a pretext for ongoing investigations into the person they expected to be their next opponent in the presidential race, and as such it was important to keep it churning. They knew from the Whitewater days that they could follow filaments connecting one pseudo-scandal to another, until maybe they found some real misconduct. So, they pretended to be all worked up about some absolute trivia (inconsequential message confusion immediately after the attack about whether an incendiary video had played some role). Sure, they knew that only a complete imbecile would think that mattered, but the point was just to come up with the minimal pretext needed to force the production of documents and testimony. Essentially, all they needed from Benghazi was a title to stamp on the latest chapters of the perpetual investigation, and it really didn't matter what the title was. Just as an 80s land deal led them to a 90s affair, in this case the countless redundant investigations nominally about Benghazi eventually led them to an investigation into how Hillary Clinton handled her email while Secretary of State.
Like Whitewater before it, this particular round of scandaleering also turned out to be something of a bust. Even with a Republican running the FBI, they couldn't find anything that would remotely justify indictment. Just as they settled for the consolation prize of a failed impeachment in the 90s, they had to settle for some attack-ad video clips regarding the email. Their man in the FBI went beyond his job mandate of investigating whether there'd been a crime, and dutifully bashed Clinton for non-criminal behavior, and that gave them the sound bites they were after. It was surely disappointing that there'd be no criminal charges, but when Donald Trump is your nominee you're in no position to have a substantive campaign, so any fodder for personal smears is better than nothing.
I expect that despite both those examples of scandaleering falling well short of Republican hopes, we'll keep seeing more of that strategy from them. To go back to the sports analogy, even if blitzing on every down doesn't yield sacks, it at least forces the opponent to play your game, rather than having to adapt to his. The offensive line will keep jumping off-sides, and the QB will be forced to scramble rather than sitting back and dissecting the defense. Similarly, a full-court press is a great equalizer, as Malcolm Gladwell famously noted. If the Republicans allow campaigns to be about substantive issues, they lose, the same way a weaker basketball team will lose when each team executes a standard game-plan. But if the Republicans can create chaos, pulling everyone down with them into the politics of personal destruction, they've at least got a shot.
