I had a joke during Plamegate (the burning of CIA Operative Valerie Plame as political revenge which was a gross intelligence-co munity faux pas) that we had an opportunity to change the naming convention for DC scandals from -gate to -cake (from yellocake, the processed uranium the Hussein was allegedly obtaining in Africa for WMDS (nuclear weapons) even though he had no way to process the stuff into weapons-grade enriched uranium.
A lot more and better cake jokes could be made, I argued, so the press agencies should just agree to the new naming convention. It didn't take.
Anyway, Bush got his Iraq war and once we had captured Hussein, Bush was cracking jokes about no-one finding the alleged WMDs, and we realized he sold the US a $3 trillion war without justification.
At that point I wondered how a Republican could ever get elected to the White House again. I was still pretty naiïve.