While we've been paying attention to the primaries and old Osama ads, something really interesting has been going on over at the White House.
On his Meet the Press appearance, Bush said he'd release all records about the AWOL issue. And now a can of worms has opened up that the White House can't close.
The problem appears to be that they can't release all records. The truth of the matter must be what we all suspect, that Bush Behaved Badly and that's there is an actual Blue Dress document showing this.
And after the MTP promise, the press has an actual "issue" to pursue. To make things worse, instead of their normal successful stonewall strategy, the WH instead has been trying to selectively release documents that appear to show some fragmentary truth. Of course, this only makes the press hungrier to get the full release of documents they've been promised.
Josh Marshall has been providing tip-top coverage of this.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/
And if you enjoy this kind of thing, the daily WH press briefings are available at C-Span. They've been very odd and confrontational affairs the past couple of days.
http://www.c-span.org/
I don't imagine this will continue at the current fever pitch, but with any luck, it should linger like a low-grade fever throughout the entire campaign. And, of course, the Democrats have to be careful not to overplay this, lest they provoke a blowback.
In a certain sense, this should be an even better issue than the Plame investigation. That has a definite resolution when the feds drag a couple of guys the public has never heard of out of the VP's office. But AWOL-gate goes to the heart of the President's character. And as long as the WH has something to hide, the issue never goes away.