I have been commenting on Washington scandals for nearly four decades—ever since the dead-drunk Wilbur Mills, the unduly lionized chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, was stopped by the police in the middle of the night accompanied by a stripper, Fanny Foxe, who immediately dove into the Tidal Basin.

As a national columnist rather than a reporter, I never uncovered epic misdeeds in high places. But once a scandal hit the headlines, I rode with the lynch mob.

I was there for the kerfuffle known as “Debate-gate,” when it was belatedly revealed that a Jimmy Carter briefing book had been stolen before his 1980 face-off with Ronald Reagan. And I still cringe with a bit of embarrassment over all the times I went on television during the Bill Clinton impeachment saga to wildly speculate about who might have been the original author of the mysterious legal “talking points” that Monica Lewinsky gave Linda Tripp.

But over the years I have picked up a dollop of journalistic perspective. Many scandals have an awkward habit of not playing out exactly how political partisans expect them to. For example, it turns out that Valerie Plame was originally “outed” as a CIA agent not by Karl Rove or Scooter Libby, but by a supposed Washington good guy, Richard Armitage, Colin Powell’s deputy.

As Barack Obama suddenly faced a three-front fight last week (Benghazi, the IRS, and the seizure of phone records from The Associated Press), I appreciated how hard it is to be a columnist in the midst of what was routinely called “the worst week of his presidency.” At moments like this, anyone slinging opinions for a living is totally dependent on the reporting of others. How do you make sense of things as a commentator when the tumbrels are rolling towards the guillotine but everything you know is second-hand?

So here, as a public service, are my Rough Rules for Responsible Scandal Mongers:

Avoid Over-Hyped Historical Analogies. Likening every scandal to Watergate or Iran-contra is akin to equating every disappointing movie with Ishtar or Heaven’s Gate. Maybe someday the nation will be confronted with another lawless paranoid president or have to deal with a Marine colonel conducting a rogue foreign policy out of the White House basement. But until then, leave the exaggerated worst-crime-in-human-history references to metaphor-challenged politicians bloviating on cable TV news.

Ask the Right Questions. The most useful Watergate catchphrase remains Howard Baker’s, “What did the president know and when did he know it?” Still, a president can also create a set of attitudes within his own administration that can lead to abuses without direct involvement or knowledge from the Oval Office.

To clarify my own thinking, I have been working on my own list of the most apt questions for the current scandal-rama:

Would, for example, Benghazi have been handled differently if the deaths in Libya had not occurred in the midst of the fall presidential campaign?

If the IRS’s zeal in singling out Tea Party groups was solely the result of disarray and incompetence, why hadn’t the president done anything to reform the agency during his first term?

And, finally, why has the Obama administration consistently departed from every norm in Washington about the way you treat the media’s role in a leak investigation?

These are not perfect questions. But they do provide a framework to assess the administration’s culpability without resorting to partisan hysteria.

Documents Trump Blind Quotes and Anonymous Sources. This is not to belittle investigative reporters who have to operate with shadowy sourcing, especially when national security is involved. But, as a columnist not privy to the actual reporting, I try to be far more cautious in drawing sweeping conclusions from news exclusives that do not contain documents or on-the-record confirmation.

Walter Shapiro just chronicled his ninth presidential campaign. He writes the “Character Sketch” political column for Yahoo News. Follow him on Twitter @WalterShapiroPD.