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Which was the most egregious political scandal?

Which was the worst?

  • Watergate

    Votes: 18 38.3%

  • Iran Contra "gate"

    Votes: 24 51.1%

  • Lewinski"gate"

    Votes: 1 2.1%

  • Bengazi"gate"

    Votes: 4 8.5%
  • Total voters
    47
Dittohead not!

Dittohead not!

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Watergate, Iran Contra, the Monica Lewinski affair, or the mess in Bengazi?

Why?
 
The idea to add "gate" to every scandal.
 
The Iran Contra Affair. Some of the convictions and indictments were pardoned by Reagan and the rest at the end of GW Bush Sr's time in office. No one was held accountable.
 
Benghazi isn't even a scandal. All the others involved presidents actually breaking the law. Obama did absolutely nothing wrong during the Benghazi attack or afterwards, and the Republicans are just trying to repeat the same lies over and over again to see if they stick.
 
How about the one that causes us to add an unnecessary suffix onto every scandal, which is so damn annoying.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Watergate, Iran Contra, the Monica Lewinski affair, or the mess in Bengazi?

Why?
Click to expand...

Iran Contra-gate. Selling weapons to the Ayatollahs? Who thought that was a good idea? Oh wait, this guy:

Oliver-North-iran-contra-hearings.jpg
 
The Iran-Contragate. The entire concept was so outrageous and illegal that the mind boggled. Everyone circled the wagons around Reagan (I can't remember) and Bush Sr. (I can't recall), who left a couple of their lackeys to fall on their swords for a couple of months until they could be pardoned. Oliver North, who should have been stripped of rank and dishonorably discharged, had his convictions tossed out and was basically given immunity for testifying before congress about all the crimes he participated in, even those he'd never even been charged with.

It was a national disgrace and a travesty.
 
Iran-Contra was horrible, but people still don't get that the whole process was put into motion in 1953 not with the hostages
 
Dittohead not! said:
Watergate, Iran Contra, the Monica Lewinski affair, or the mess in Bengazi?

Why?
Click to expand...

Iran Contra - hands down. Nobody had to take responsibility, thanks to Reagan and Bush. /shrug

I remember the Ollie North bumper stickers /flashback
 
Iran-Contra.

Selling weapons to our enemies to fund rebels that raped, murdered, maimed and pillaged a democratically elected government.

Good luck topping that.
 
Voters should have to put their birthdate next to their names. I suspect that those who came AFTER Watergate really do not understand how huge and devastating it actually was. Watergate dwarfs everything else on that list.
 
AreteCourage said:
That's when we help overthrow a democratically elected government in Iran and replace it with a Dictator called the Shah
Click to expand...

Oh.

By the time Ollie North and Co. got around to selling arms to Iran, the Shaw was gone, wasn't he? Wasn't Iran considered an enemy of the United States?
 
haymarket said:
Voters should have to put their birthdate next to their names. I suspect that those who came AFTER Watergate really do not understand how huge and devastating it actually was. Watergate dwarfs everything else on that list.
Click to expand...

1943. Iran contra-cocaine, we armed terrorists, Mena Arkansas, death (Seal), treason, aircraft parts to the Ayatollah, attempted overthrow of Democratically elected regime, perjury, and the list is endless. Watetgate was local crimes, Iran Contra was International crimes undermining all the principles we profess to hold sacred.
 
teapot dome didn't make the list?

out of those chosen, watergate was probably the most historically significant, with Iran contra being right up there, too.
 
Helix said:
teapot dome didn't make the list?

out of those chosen, watergate was probably the most historically significant, with Iran contra being right up there, too.
Click to expand...

Teapot Dome was before my time. I don't remember it.

What is it that makes watergate the most historically significant? As I recall, it was a coverup of a burglary, involving the president. Certainly, the POTUS being involved in such a thing is a scandal, but how was it bigger than the others?
 
Dittohead not! said:
Oh.

By the time Ollie North and Co. got around to selling arms to Iran, the Shaw was gone, wasn't he? Wasn't Iran considered an enemy of the United States?
Click to expand...

Correct, but why did the clergy get power to begin with? Because they fed off of the resentment towards the Shah and the United States. They gained popularity in Iran because they dared to go against a brutal dictator. We set up a government to be friendly towards us while at the same time suppressing the people of Iran. Iranians didn't like that at all and went to anyone who would oppose and fight....it happened to be a group that was far more hostile to us then the original democratically elected government happened to be.

It is the same thing that is happening in Egypt right now. We set up Mubarak and he was a suppressive dictator (though I don't believe he was as brutal as the Shah in Iran) and now we're faced with a government that is not very friendly towards us.

We created this by propping up dictators and suppressive governments.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Teapot Dome was before my time. I don't remember it.

What is it that makes watergate the most historically significant? As I recall, it was a coverup of a burglary, involving the president. Certainly, the POTUS being involved in such a thing is a scandal, but how was it bigger than the others?
Click to expand...

it was the one scandal that actually brought down a president completely. additionally, since then, pretty much every scandal has had "gate" attached to it. it seems to have the most historical weight and reach.

the Iran Contra scandal beats Watergate by far in the scope of human tragedy, however. looking at it that way, it's possible to consider that scandal to be the most egregious.
 
AreteCourage said:
Correct, but why did the clergy get power to begin with? Because they fed off of the resentment towards the Shah and the United States. They gained popularity in Iran because they dared to go against a brutal dictator. We set up a government to be friendly towards us while at the same time suppressing the people of Iran. Iranians didn't like that at all and went to anyone who would oppose and fight....it happened to be a group that was far more hostile to us then the original democratically elected government happened to be.

It is the same thing that is happening in Egypt right now. We set up Mubarak and he was a suppressive dictator (though I don't believe he was as brutal as the Shah in Iran) and now we're faced with a government that is not very friendly towards us.

We created this by propping up dictators and suppressive governments.
Click to expand...

Propping up dictators and suppressive governments is not generally recognized as a way to bring about democracy and governments friendly to the west, that's for sure.

Back to the topic at hand: Iran contra involved selling arms to an enemy of the United States, and using the money to fund a war in Nicaragua that the Congress of the United States had refused to support. At least, that's the way I remember it.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Teapot Dome was before my time. I don't remember it.

What is it that makes watergate the most historically significant? As I recall, it was a coverup of a burglary, involving the president. Certainly, the POTUS being involved in such a thing is a scandal, but how was it bigger than the others?
Click to expand...

From my understanding, Watergate set two important precedents. First was that presidents are not above the law. Second was a championing of the press as a check on elected leaders.

In terms of historical significance, I think Watergate is the biggest. That's why every other scandal keeps getting the "gate" attached, to attempt to invoke the seriousness of the bigger issue.
 
So much to choose from so little time. I did choose one but immediiately changed my mind. I am not buying benghazi so that out. But all the other three are the product of self absorbed human beings who were only interested in thier own gain at the expense of others.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Teapot Dome was before my time. I don't remember it.

What is it that makes watergate the most historically significant? As I recall, it was a coverup of a burglary, involving the president. Certainly, the POTUS being involved in such a thing is a scandal, but how was it bigger than the others?
Click to expand...

Water gate dominated the news like nothing else I have ever seen in my lifetime for a long period of time. In and of itself that was significant.

It involved Richard Nixon - probably the most important figure of the quarter century from 1950 through 1975.

It flipped the script on the entire Kennedy government service is good and we saw government service as part of a criminal conspiracy for its own selfish purposes. And that ended an era and changed the thinking of millions of people.

It centered around the only time a sitting President of the USA had to resign or face impeachment in which his conviction by the Senate was assured.
 
OK, time for me to chime in on my own thread. There have been some excellent points brought up already.

Paschendale says:

From my understanding, Watergate set two important precedents. First was that presidents are not above the law. Second was a championing of the press as a check on elected leaders.
Click to expand...

which is a good point. Other than that, Watergate was simply a coverup of a burglary that most likely did nothing at all to influence the election anyway. The president was impeached for covering it up to protect his supporters, which was a prime example of bad judgement on the part of the POTUS.

Compare that to the Lewinski affair, Clinton was not tried for failure to keep his pants zipped, but for lying under oath. How that is less impeachable than covering up a burglary, I'm not sure. Most likely, the general political climate was different during the Clinton era than during the political turmoil of Vietnam and Civil Rights.

Neither was particularly egregious, IMO, but removing the POTUS was/would have been justified in either case.

As for Bengazi, just what laws were broken? This one appears to me to have been a massive screw up on the part of bureaucrats who were below cabinet level positions. It's not half the big deal that it's being made out to be.

That could be wrong, of course. We don't have all of the facts yet.

Now, that brings us to Iran Contra, the selling of arms to the enemy (treason), and using the profits to subvert the will of Congress. In that one, the Constitutional separation of powers was at risk. Moreover, a burglary or perjury does not even come close to treason. It's like comparing shoplifting to armed robbery, a whole other level of wrongdoing.

Iran Contra is the biggest of the four scandals, no question.

IMHO, of course.
 
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