Lying your way into war? Apparently not a scandal.

The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder wants to know what people think is “the best (or worst) Republican political scandal of the decade?” Ambinder offers four choices:

Not mentioned? The Bush administration lying its way into a war of choice, listening in on the phone conversations of Americans, torture, Abu Ghraib, putting an unqualified crony in charge of FEMA, the US Attorneys firing, outing a CIA operative to get back at her husband, etc.

I don't think Ambinder is unique in his view of what constitutes a major political scandal, not by any stretch of the imagination. But when the political/media elite come to view the possibility that Larry Craig tried to pick up a guy in an airport as more scandalous than Abu Ghraib, warrantless wiretapping of Americans, or the dishonest march to war against a country that didn't attack us, we're in pretty bad shape.