in that post i noted that the traditional way for politicians to handle a scandal is through resignations. it doesn't always work, but resigning officials is the time-honored method used by politicians to get past the problem. as i wrote in october:
in prior administrations resignations seemed to happen a lot more often. resignations were not seen as an admission of liability, but rather as a form of damage control. by removing the offending official (or even just an official who can be pinned with the blame), prior administrations have tried to say "problem solved, let's move on." the traditional scandal-management strategy was to get past the scandal. the bush strategy is to pretend the scandal never existed in the first place.my october post was about whether dennis hastert or donald rumsfeld would resign before the november election. (hastert for the foley scandal and rumsfeld for the conduct of the iraq war). rumsfeld did resign the next month, but only after the election. so i don't think his resignation was like a traditional damage-control resignation. or maybe it was, but just came too late. the electoral damage had already been done. hastert, of course, didn't resign at all. he just lost his speakership in the election.
at the end of my october post i wondered whether bush's non-resignation strategy had run it's course, whether a president with such low approval ratings could afford to eschew resignations. my post may have been a little premature. the foley scandal didn't get hastert to resign. but is walter reed the big shift? are these resignations happening because of the particulars of this scandal (e.g. it cuts to the heart of the administration's "support the troops" line), or will the president start acting more like his predecessors in the face of future scandals?
