Lined up like at a public restroom during a chili cook-off

That’s the best way I could describe my reaction to Republicans waiting to take pot-shots at Obama for what they perceive as his involvement in the cover-up of unfolding scandals that surfaced in recent weeks within his administration.

And with the more zealous among them even going so far as to call the Benghazi incident the most outrageous scandal in American history, which when coupled with the IRS targeting the Tea Party and the Justice Department’s leak-hunting seizure of Associated Press phone records, as sufficient basis for bringing the impeachment mechanism out of the torture chamber where it’s kept when not in use.

Now, ordinarily, I dismiss outlandish claims by politicians on both sides of the aisle out-of-hand as so much ranting and raving, not worth taking seriously, or getting my bowels in an uproar over.

But there was no way, however, that I could let them get away with their going to the extreme of trying to pin a cover-up charge on the President’s part following the attack on the Benghazi consulate with the wholesale cover-up and “stonewalling” by the White House in the Watergate scandal, the big kahuna of all scandals in the nation’s history.

For in terms of its national importance, and the resultant fallout-what with President Nixon forced to resign rather than being impeached-drawing any comparison between them would be as fatuous as comparing the hissing sounds of an angry domesticated cat with the life-threatening roars of a charging lion. In short, there is no common thread.

And while the current scandals may capture the public’s interest for some time to come, the United States Senate Watergate Committee hearings remained in the spotlight from its opening on May 17, 1973 and closing on June 27, 1974, with the Committee issuing its seven-volume, 1,250 page report.

For those viewing the TV broadcasts of the hearings from gavel-to-gavel (some 319 hours overall, and with 85 percent of U.S. households watching some portion of them, as well as on scores of National Public Radio stations), were held spellbound by such famous moments as John Dean’s “cancer on the Presidency” testimony, and Alexander Butterfield’s revelation of the secret White House Nixon tapes.

All the soap operas and Hollywood screen writers couldn’t match its intriguing plot and sheer drama. Only Shakespeare’s Hamlet probably does.

Quote of the week: “If history is a guide, a victory for Obama means he faces the prospect of a second term dogged by scandal and inertia.”  Ron Fournier