The real Teflon President

First we had the Afghan kill squads, then the burning of the Korans, then the soldier who went berserk and killed 16 Afghanis.

Now we have the Secret Service partying with prostitutes in Cartagena and GSA employees vacationing at the taxpayers'  expense. This morning there was news of another scandal involving troops who posed grinning with dead Afghan suicide bombers and their body parts.

Yet none of these scandals have redounded to President Obama.

Don't get me wrong: I do not hold him personally responsible for any of these things. It would be ridiculous to hold a President personally responsible for the behavior of millions of federal employees.

And it would be more surprising to find out that the high testosterone guys who work for the Secret Service never use prostitutes when abroad. Or that folks who work for the GSA don't party on the taxpayers' dime. Or that soldiers who've seen their squadmates blown up by Afghan IED's would not want to desecrate the corpses of the bombmakers.

Or that any of these things haven't been going on for a long time.

Yet I can't help but believe that if it had been Bush who'd been in charge while these were uncovered, the media would have found a way to tar him with them, much as they did with Abu Ghraib. They would be saying that the low moral values of his administration set the tone for this misbehavior by his subordinates, or some such nonsense.

The media used to refer to Ronald Reagan as "The Teflon President," because none of the scandals surrounding his administration seemed to stick to him. Compared to Obama, he was the Velcro President.