Paul O’Neill, Arlen Specter, and more.

Paul O’Neill’s revenge on the Bush administration turns out to be the Comet Kohoutek of political scandals–over almost before it began and deeply underwhelming. The fired former Treasury secretary had a great 48 hours of publicity. Then, poof: The fizzle was so complete that by the end of the week, even the most partisan of columnists, Slate’s Michael Kinsley, would conclude: “The only solid punch he lands on President Bush is unintentional: What kind of idiot would hire this idiot as secretary of the Treasury?”

But hopes were high out in Bush-bashing land on January 9, the Friday before O’Neill’s interview with Leslie Stahl aired on “60 Minutes.” CBS’s publicity machine had released juicy excerpts from O’Neill’s as-told-to memoir, “The Price of Loyalty,” by Ron Suskind. Drudge was in full-promotional mode (“Bush savaged by former Treasury chief”). There was O’Neill’s very mean-sounding (though incomprehensible) criticism of the president and his cabinet: a “blind man in a roomful of deaf people.” O’Neill was said to have proof of a secret Bush plan to invade Iraq in the early days of his administration. CBS was touting the “19,000 documents” O’Neill had provided to Suskind. One of those documents, held up on the “60 Minutes” camera, had the word “secret” on it. Oops.

When Treasury announced it was investigating, O’Neill hastily backpedaled on Tuesday morning’s “Today” show. He said the Iraq documents were ordinary government studies; “absolutely nothing” was wrong with them. He approved of the leak investigation but didn’t think he had done anything wrong. What he gave Suskind, he claimed, had been vetted by the general counsel of Treasury, who put everything releasable from his tenure, some 19,000 documents, on “a couple of CDs which I’ve frankly never opened.” Nonetheless, “I gave them to Ron believing, as I do, if you’re going to trust someone you need to trust them completely. So I gave Ron the CDs.”

That’s a remarkable confession from a former cabinet officer. Would he have so lackadaisically released thousands of documents from his tenure as CEO of Alcoa? “Ideally, this book will cause people to stop and think about the current state of our political process and raise our expectations for what is possible,” said O’Neill. Can’t quarrel with that. As Kinsley was right to point out: The president certainly should have had higher expectations for his cabinet.

A Specter Haunts Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter, senior senator from the state, must be having a senior moment. He can’t seem to remember what he said last month. After U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein in December, Specter was gung-ho to throw the dictator in jail–but not to execute him. As Alison Hawkes of the Doylestown Intelligencer noted last week, Specter said this repeatedly:

That was then. Specter “is now, and always has been, for the death penalty for Saddam,” the AP quoted him as saying on Jan. 7. And the Specter campaign told Fox News the following day that he’s “never voiced an opinion that Saddam Hussein should not face the death penalty.”

Naturally Rep. Pat Toomey, the self-term-limited conservative congressman who’s taking on Specter in the Republican primary, was all over the flip-flop, calling it “disturbing.” We’d call it par for the course. It’s hardly his first such flip-flop. In July 2001, Specter said on “Face the Nation,” “I certainly would never agree to cloning. I certainly would never agree to destroying a stem cell if there was any chance at all, any chance at all, that the embryo would turn into a human being.” But at a press conference in April 2002 he said that he “disagrees with President Bush’s statement in opposition to reproductive cloning.” And now he’s a leading sponsor of legislation that would authorize cloning. Probably just the sort of thing someone with two faces finds appealing.

Molly’s Sorry

Two weeks ago we reported on Molly Ivins’s latest run-in with the plagiarism police. In her syndicated column last week, she fessed up: “Crow Eaten Here: I learn via THE WEEKLY STANDARD that I owe credit for a line I’ve used about Arnold Schwarzenegger–“looks like a condom stuffed with walnuts”–to an Australian journalist named Clive James. I first heard the line from a civil libertarian in Vermont and had no idea it had come from James, or I would have given him credit. My apologies.”

Well, okay by us. But how come only journalists deserve credit? If THE SCRAPBOOK were a “civil libertarian in Vermont,” it would be very peeved that Molly thinks it’s okay to rip us off without credit.

Miller Time

We’re looking forward to comedian Dennis Miller’s new cable talk show, which debuts on CNBC on January 26. Miller has been an increasingly out-of-the-closet right-winger since 9/11. And there’s obviously no going back for him now. We refer to his January 15 interview with the New York Times’s Bernard Weinraub.

First, he’s unapologetic about his “slide to the right,” telling Weinraub, “‘Well, can you blame me? One of the biggest malfeasances of the left right now is the mislabeling of Hitler. Quit saying this guy is Hitler,’ he said, referring to Mr. Bush. ‘Hitler is Hitler. [The comparisons are] grotesque to me.'”

Then he confesses: “I think abortion’s wrong, but it’s none of my business to tell somebody what’s wrong. So I’m pro-choice.” Nice try at keeping the closet door ajar, Dennis. But this definition of pro-choice will never pass muster with NARAL.

Finally, he writes himself out of polite Boomer society by taking an iconoclastic shot at comedian Lenny Bruce: “Lenny was a heroin addict, and I could care less about heroin addicts. Once I hear a guy is a heroin addict, and they tell me he’s a genius, I think, really? I’m not trying to be judgmental. But anybody whose last vision is of a tile pattern on a bathroom floor, I don’t know what kind of genius they are.”

California Republicans tried to talk Miller into running for the Senate against Barbara Boxer. He was smart to resist their pitch. He’ll do a lot more good on the outside.