Its not like me

Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

It’s not like me to crow obnoxiously when I’m vindicated in some prediction or accusation — okay, who am I kidding? of course it is. But this is an instance where I — and, much more importantly, the Clinton White House — have plenty of cause to feel sweet vindication.

As I’ve shamelessly mentioned on a number of occasions I was one of the first writers to question whether any of those White House vandalism stories were really true. I even got to go on Howie Kurtz’s media show to get knocked around by Howie for saying so.

At the time, Bob Barr requested that the General Services Administration do an investigation to catalog all the damage that had been done.

Well, now the report’s in. And, surprise, surprise, no vandalism.

“The condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy,” according to the statement released by the GSA.

The inventory made no effort to get into whether a few funny signs may have been hung. But as we noted at the time, this is done by pretty much every departing White House staff. The only difference is that not every incoming group has a clever media manipulator like Karl Rove to spin the thing, and few have the benefit of such a credulous White House press corps whose knee-jerk assumptions can be so easily played upon. Lucky them!

The only question remaining is this? Why’d the majors bury this one? The Washington Post ran a tiny wire story on report on A13 and it’s not even on their website, as of this posting.

I had to find original reporting on this from the Kansas City Star! Are they the new paper of record?

Howie, it’s a big media story. Jump on it! You can skewer your own paper. It’ll be big, trust me.

Latest Editors' Blog
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: