This is a couple days old, but the more you think about it – and the more news cycles turn since ScandalFest 2013 dropped – the more sense it makes that having all this hit at once is a good thing for the White House.

None of the controversies has been what any serious commentator would call impeachable, but each serves to damage credibility.  Imagine if they were spaced out a little more.  If the IRS scandal broke after two weeks of talking about the Benghazi hearings, and was subsequently followed by the AP/DOJ dust-up breaking a week or two after that, it would be far worse for all the President’s men.  Each scandal would be discussed in its own spotlight for a little while, but the timing would still maintain that “Groundhog Day” feeling.

In order for the current blitzkrieg to be as damaging, new information will have to come out fairly regularly over the course of several months.  That’s a lot of new stuff that would have to break, like the President said, there may not be that much “there” there.  Meanwhile, a public with a short attention span and a media looking for fresh news will find new stuff to talk about.  Democrats who are looking for fundraising and grassroots support in the mid-term elections will be slow to criticize the President.

On top of that, scandal discussion sucks up a lot of oxygen that could be used on other issues.  Higher taxes are shrinking paychecks, and Obamacare is making American health care more expensive and complex.  The policy environment is ripe for Republican criticism, but the line that connects a big government that taxes too much and overreaches on programs with a big government that swipes reporters’ phone records and harasses its opponents is not starkly obvious to casual observers.  And there’s always the chance for a Republican politician trying to overplay his or her party’s hand.

The last couple of weeks may have been tough to get through.  There’s still plenty of time for the scandals to fade into the background and there will be opportunities for the President to go back on offense.  If all this bad news was going to hit anyway, having it hit at once was the best possible outcome for the White House.

Sometimes a crummy week makes for a better year.

On some level, you have to respect Carney.  He could have woken up, faxed in a resignation Pat Riley style, rented an office near Farragut Square and started counting money.   Instead, he chose to answer questions in the face of Scandalpalooza.  And even if he had a rough day, none of the scandals are impeachable.

They are damaging, though.  In fact, the last week and a half has heaped layer after layer of bad news on the White House doorstep.  The mid-term elections are now 18 months away, and the window for putting up any meaningful legislative wins is maybe 10-12 months.  President will have a tougher time advancing his agenda while responding to all the bad news.  Ranked below are the President’s top speed bumps (that we know about so far today), with 1 being the most disruptive to the President’s agenda and 5 the least:

1. DOJ vs. AP  - People appreciate unfairness, so the IRS scandal will have legs.  But no reporter will have any trouble understanding the First Amendment threats posed by the Justice Department skimming reporters’ phone records.
2. IRS vs. Tea Party Groups – Political players wielding government power against their enemies is easy to understand, and makes for a simple story to write.
3. Benghazi – Really, what’s the worst part?  The administration’s keystone response to the embassy attack?  The lies about what caused the attack?  The fact that it looks like the President and his underlings were less than forthcoming due to the impending election?  This is pretty complex – for scandals looking to catch on, complex is bad.
4. Gosnell - During the election cycle, progressive groups tried (largely successfully) to reframe the abortion debate by talking about narrow hypotheticals.  From the White House’s perspective, the silver lining of the week’s tri-scandals is that it takes mainstream attention away from the Gosnell verdict.  It will help motivate pro-life advocates, but its broader messaging implications will be muted.
5. Obamacare - Small business owners are already feeling the pinch.  Kathleen Sebelius has been doing her “Secretary BoJangles” routine trying to fund advertising and encourage signups (like it’s some kind of high school club).

(If I missed anything, or if you disagree, leave a comment or yell at me on Twitter.)

Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.

Cool speech, wasn’t it?  Here’s a quick rundown of some of the big headlines over the last week:

1. The Administration messed up in Benghazi – and ABC news showed they directly lied to the American people about the root cause of the attack.
2. The IRS specifically and deliberately targeted the President’s political foes during the 2012 election cycle.
3. The Obama Justice Department snagged phone records – both professional and personal – for AP reporters.  They didn’t say why.

To hear the election rhetoric last November, you wouldn’t think 72% of Americans feel like abortion should be completely illegal or legal “only in some circumstances.”   Remember the Republican “War on Women“?  Recall the successful efforts to link Mitt Romney to Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin?

In reality, most Americans – regardless of where they would fall on the issue of abortion – probably think that Kermit Gosnell is a monster and a murderer.  His conviction is no reason to crow victoriously.  Gallup’s numbers suggest that there is support for the pro-life side; last November suggests that support is generally silent.

People are pro-life, but they don’t identify with the pro-life movement.  For a movement that has gained enormous traction over the past four decades, conquering this hurdle is the next obvious step.

One of the reasons Watergate remains so ubiquitous in American political is that its unique moniker has kept it alive.  When political scandals erupt, the suffix “-gate” is immediately added.  No one references the Teapot Dome scandal that way.

Linguistically, the Benghazi scandal has that potential.  Too many lavish, taxpayer-financed vacations for the President?  Travelghazi.  Donors receiving special access to the President in exchange for campaign cash?  Sounds like a “Donorghazi” program.  And you can throw in Cubaghazi for that one couple that raised a bunch of money for the President and then magically got to go to a country that normal schlubs aren’t allowed to go to.)

It won’t be testimony in a stuffy hearing room that gives the administration’s misdirection gravity beyond the  halls of Congress.

Consider the top five: Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, and Maya Angelou.  This poll is probably fun to report on, but did the respondents really give it that much thought?

If Hanks knocks on your door at 11:00 p.m. dressed in drag and imploring you to help him move Peter Scoleri’s lifeless corpse,  that trust would likely wear off pretty quick.

Calling these people trustworthy is a version of the word association game.  It’s a knee-jerk reaction, and not necessarily rational.  It’s fleeting, but it helps contextualize what we read or ear about them – even the bad stuff – so long as we are distant from it.

On the other hand, 45% seems low for a sitting President, and it seems like a number that could get beaten down – maybe with a steady drumbeat of stories about Benghazi.  Not a deluge of Republican arm-waving and histrionics, but a steady drip of stories about inconsistencies in testimony or incompetencies in strategy will keep the idea alive that the President is not 100% forthcoming.  The reverberations could extend into his legislative agenda and clip his wings as he tries to foist Speaker Pelosi back onto the country.

Benghazi probably won’t drive him from office, but as long as the story has legs it will whittle away the President’s shrinking cache of trust.

Remembering the Golden Rule

Here’s a fun fact: the first store opened by the J.C. Penney company was called The Golden Rule.  The idea was to run a business where customers were treated fair and square.  This could have been a running theme over the past year, as the new “JCP” sought to push low price points.  The disastrous mis-marketing of the last year instead tried to divorce JCP from any connection of the pre-2012.

That was a mistake.  This ad, on the other hand, mixes old images of J.C. Penney stores with modern Instagram-ish clips of young customers.  The final image of the commercial includes the company’s full name, J.C. Penney, rather than the JCP square logo that had punctuated previous ads.

The design is still minimalist, but there is no doubt that the commercial embraces J.C. Penney’s past.

Owning the Mistake

Frank apology ads are usually the domain of politicians.  This ad makes as frank an admission as a company can in a television spot.  Most of J.C. Penney’s failure came from trying to dictate to consumers how to shop; this level of honesty sends a message that the company understands why customers left and won’t insult their intelligence by  pretending like the last year and a half didn’t happen.

Will It Last?

It’s easier to make a good commercial than to save a business that has alienated many customers.  The last 18 months showed that customers do not hold blind allegiances to their department stores, and that their shopping habits are not set in stone.

Those customers might come back to J.C. Penney, but there real challenges remain for a department store still stuck between the discount prices of Target and Wal-Mart and the loftier tags of Nordstrom’s and Macy’s.  Johnson may have been a bad CEO for the company, but there were plenty of others who didn’t know how to turn the rudder, either.

At least they should have an idea about what doesn’t work.

In the current cultural environment, Collins’s admission is big but not Earth-shattering.  There haven’t been any active openly gay athletes before – and there might not be now, since Collins is a free agent – but most people probably assumed the operative word there was “openly.”  (To hear the enlightened, cosmopolitan Bostonians tell it, the Yankees have fielded a team of 25 fornicating homosexuals each year since 1946.  So brave.)

Now begins the overreaction.

From the right, Peter Roff imagines a double standard, opining that Tim Tebow was punished because of his overt Christian faith, while Collins’s sexual preference is lauded by the media.

Said Roff: “When he arrived at the Meadowlands he was treated more like a circus freak than the guy who helped Denver make the playoffs the previous year and might just be the thing to get the Jets offense in line.”

It’s true, and it’s because Tebow is a circus freak.  Denver’s push to the second round of the 2011 playoffs had as much to do with luck as anything else.  At this point in his career, Tebow can’t throw the ball with enough strength and accuracy to be a viable NFL quarterback, which is why he spent all his time on the bench last year.

(Heck, Ray Lewis talks about God all the time, and the media overlooks a lot of negatives about him.  Two in particular come to mind.)

On the other side – and even worse – is MoveOn.org, which is apparently still around.  The erstwhile leading organization of the American left is demanding a suspension of ESPN’s Chris Broussard over his reaction to Collins’s announcement.  (Well, at least they are demanding it as much as one can demand anything with an online petition.)

MoveOn either didn’t listen to or didn’t care what Broussard actually said.  The short version: Broussard doesn’t condone sex outside of traditional marriage, doesn’t live his life that way, but doesn’t judge others who do.  It’s a calm, reasoned explanation that could be a good start to civil discourse.

Or, it could be a flash point for some bottom feeding organization to glom onto a much-discussed topic, bump up their search results, raise some money, and be marginally relevant.

But the image of Mel Kiper peeking from the bottom?  That’s unnecessary… and maybe a little creepy.

Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was behind this tasteless tactic, sending out an email and tweet asking people to sign a supposed “thank you note” to the first responders. That would be nice except for the fact that in order to “sign” the note, you have to give the Democratic party your email account and ZIP code.

“We’ll collect every note we get and deliver them to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Boston Mayor Tom Men­ino so they can pass along your 
 sentiments,” 
 Wasserman 
 Schultz writes.

A note to the brave police and firefighters?  How sweet.  All you have to do to “sign” it is yield enough information that the DNC can figure out who your Member of Congress is and a way to contact you.  More important, they can tag you as someone who cares about first responders.  Then, if they were so inclined during the next budget crisis and certainly during  the next campaign, the Democrats can reach out to you and tell you how voting for their person means safety, while voting for the Republican means a living in a post-apocalyptic war zone where warlords fight each other over guns and gasoline while neo-feudal serfs cower in terror.

That is, if the Democrats were interested in using first responders as political chess pieces, which they would never do.