Some day, an enterprising historian will write a treatise exploring whether the calculating and cynically unethical maneuvers of the Clinton administration were preferable to the "oops, I did it again" ethics dunderheadedness of the Bush administration. It's a fascinating question: is it better to have leaders who are so slickly efficient at being unethical that few notice or care, or is it less harmful to the values of the nation when an administration's ethical misconduct is inept, obvious, and embarrassing?

That enterprising historian will have to have a stronger resistance to nausea than I have. In the meantime, the Scoreboard must express awe at the latest Bush administration ethical fiasco, which arrived courtesy of that incompetent agency par excellence, FEMA.

Federal Emergency Management Agency, apparently puffed-up with pride that it had not completely botched its response to the Southern California wildfire crisis, suddenly announced it was holding a news conference to answer reporters' questions, and gave reporters just 15 minutes notice to attend. Most members of the media called in to listen over phone lines, but were not able to ask questions. What they thought they were hearing was FEMA's Deputy Administrator Harvey Johnson conducting a typical press briefing. "The report basically is that were doing a fine, doing a pretty good job," Johnson told the assembled. Then he opened up the briefing for questions from the press….except that with the short notice, there were no actual reporters in the room. So FEMA simply packed the audience with its own staff, which pretended to be members of the press and lobbed soft-ball questions at Johnson!

I'm not making this up, though it sounds like an episode of Saturday Night Live. But the sham was convincing enough that some cable networks actually aired part of it while it was underway. The reporters listening in also believed they were hearing an actual press conference. "I'll be glad to take some of your questions," Johnson said, playing his part well." Are you happy with FEMA's response so far?" one fake reporter asked. "I'm very happy with FEMA's response so far," Johnson replied. In the ten minutes of helpful questions, Johnson also got the chance to remind everyone that things had come a long way since the dark days of the ridiculous Michael Brown and Katrina. "In lessons learned from Katrina, it's like, is there day and is there night? But what you're seeing now is a very smoothly, very efficiently performing team," he said. And good actors, too!

It was a dream press conference. After all, FEMA didn't have to deal with the press. But as with 99% of Bush era unethical escapades, the embarrassing truth leaked out quickly.

Secretary Michael Chertoff of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, was outraged, according to his spokesperson. "This is simply inexcusable and offensive to the Secretary that such a mistake could have been made," Laura Keehner said Friday on a conference call with the media (if indeed that was Laura Keehner…). "We have made it clear stunts such as this will not be tolerated or repeated."

Then came the classic Bush administration kicker: she said that the department "is looking into" the possibility of reprimanding FEMA staff. You know…like it looked into the possibility of holding high-level Defense Department officials responsible for the Abu Ghraib disgrace. Or the way it looked into firing an Attorney General who repeatedly misrepresented facts to Congress.

I'm not holding my breath. The Scoreboard sees this latest fiasco as more evidence of a near-complete ethics vacuum in the Executive branch, and a culture of short-cuts and deception that is deep-rooted and pervasive. Combined with the already well-documented bi-partisan unethical culture in the Legislative branch, one doesn't have to be a pessimist to conclude that America is at a historic low point in its quest for honorable and ethical government.

Worst of all, this kind of cretinous trick from the Bush team almost makes me long for the cheerfully efficient corruption of the Clinton years. I'll never forgive them for that.