The AWOL story is starting to remind me of the bête noire of the Clinton Administration, "Whitewater". Both seem to involve matters of rather trivial embarassment to the President. Neither scandal played a large role during the first campaign, although major media outlets (NY Times for "Whitewater", Boston Globe for AWOL) broke stories on each. Both issues emerged, with a vengeance, in the third year of the first term. In both cases, the initial White House response was to stonewall, and to accuse the other side of playing politics. Once the media increased their attention on the subjects, the next move was to release limited parts of the record, as the White House has done today with the release of payroll records. While that move would have probably put this baby to bed six weeks ago, any sort of limited release now only generates further suspicion, as the press grilling of Scott McLellan this morning attests.

I have been skeptical (see May 9) of the allegations that the President was "AWOL" thirty-two years ago, and nothing that has come out in the last few days has swayed my opinion. However, it is also becoming increasingly clear that there was something that the President did while in the Air National Guard that he wasn't particularly proud of, and his unwillingness to release his complete military record, as his father did before him, indicates that. He may not have violated the law, but he probably did something that he would prefer remain hidden, and his superiors, for whatever reason, chose not to press the issue. As Beltway pundit Richard Cohen himself noted, at the time Bush served, it was not unusual for a weekend warrior to blow off his service and get paid for drills he never attended, without being at risk of serving in Vietnam or receiving a dishonorable discharge; in fact, it was what happened to Cohen.

Let us remember that Bill and Hillary Clinton didn't break the law with their investment in the Whitewater development, and most of the reporting on the subject was pretty atrocious. In the end, it was just a bad investment they made with a friend who turned out to be a petty crook, and they simply didn't want their dirty laundry aired. And yet each move, each limited release of information, only intensified the public's curiosity about what's not being revealed. Now it's Bush's turn to go through the ringer, and see each piece of exonerating evidence only lead to more questions. I can only imagine what a tough life people who get into politics must have, where any evidence of moral imperfection is fodder for the public trough.