Both President Barack Obama and the administration he leads are ethical paragons. Don’t believe me? Ask former White House advisor David Axelrod.

Speaking to an audience at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics during an event promoting the release of his memoirs, Axelrod said that he was perhaps proudest of the fact that the Obama White House has managed to avoid “a major scandal” over the last six years (hat tip to BuzzFeed for this clip):

“I think that in the administration itself and the White House, I don’t think that’s true,” when asked by an attendee about the administration’s failure to live up to the president’s stated goal of restoring ethical governance to Washington. “I mean there are exceptions, there have been a few exceptions but the rule has basically been that there has been a ban on the revolving door and these two-year strictures against such revolving door.”

“And I’m proud of the fact that basically you have had an administration in this place for six years in which there hasn’t been a major scandal,” he added. “And I think that says a lot about the ethical strictures of this administration.”

I suppose that’s true, so long as you don’t count the Obama White House’s politically-motivated decision in 2012 to assert categorically that the multi-stage Benghazi attack that claimed the life of four Americans including a U.S. ambassador was inspired by a YouTube video. That controversial claim is still the subject of investigations even today.

And who would call the Obama Justice Department’s decision to monitor the communications of AP journalists, or the naming of Fox News reporter James Rosen as a “co-conspirator” in a crime in order to track his movements, a scandal?

Oh, and it would be poor form to label the Internal Revenue Service’s admitted targeting of politically active conservative groups with burdensome scrutiny scandalous.

You wouldn’t dare note that the systematic denial of service to American veterans, and the covering up of those infractions, constitutes a full-blown scandal even though it did result in the forced resignation of a Cabinet secretary.

Presumably, few would consider the Department of Energy’s determination to provide millions of dollars in federal loans to dubious technologies produced by well-connected clean energy firms that went bankrupt and defaulted on their obligations to be a “major scandal.” Many in the media seem not to recall names like Solyndra, Sapphire Energy, or Abound Solar, so Axelrod must be on to something.

It would, perhaps, be bad form to note that two administrators with the General Services Administration were fired before that agency’s head also resigned after it was discovered that the better part of $1 million had been spent on a lavish four-day event in Las Vegas for the institution’s 300 employees.

And the many who died as a result of the Department of Justice’s botched “gun-walking” program, including American law enforcement personnel, surely do not regard the Fast and Furious program to have been a “major scandal.”

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?