John O'Sullivan:In several insomniac posts on Twitter in the small hours, I pointed out that the Libyagate scandal is metastasizing in ways that echo three previous scandals.
Scandals one and three are gated: Watergate and Irangate. Scandal two remains mercifully ungated, but here it is:
The second scandal is the anti-Kerry video put out by the Swift Boat veterans. As during the Swift Boat ads, the establishment media has done its best to ignore or even repress news about the developing scandal of Libyagate. The New York Times has distinguished itself by its dignified silence on both occasions. It eventually broke that silence over the Swift Boaters with a front-page story that assured readers there was nothing in it. That was difficult to believe about the allegations of Kerry’s former shipmates; it was impossible to believe about the second Swift Boat advertisement which consisted of a long extract of Kerry’s own congressional testimony about U.S. war crimes. Kerry’s attempt to present himself as a war hero was undercut completely by his own earlier appearances as an anti-war hero. The self-contradiction destroyed the desired “narrative” of his campaign, slowed him down, and ultimately weakened him terminally.
The scandal is that bullshit is not sticking.
