After eight years of Bush, people were prepared to believe just about anything would be an historic watershed of honesty and good governance. For the last of the Bush years, every day seemed to bring an unprecedented new scandal that overshadowed all previously unprecedented Bush scandals by such magnitude as to render them meaningless. Finally, we had the Attorney General of the United States testify that he could remember nothing to do with why he fired numerous US Attorneys on the eve of an election. And then Cheney shot somebody and his victim apologized. And so many other things. It was easy to believe that Obama wasn't controlled by the exact same people.