reporter: the irs, benghazi, the ap phone records, you know it s been a bad week when you get this question. how do you feel about comparisens by some of your critics of this week s scandals to those that happened under the nixon administration? reporter: in historic terms, how bad of a week was this? it was a bad week for obama. reporter: we asked historian alan nicken in hman how the pres problems compare, as bad as watergate? i did not take part in or knew about the subsequent cover-up activity. reporter: iran/contra. an old saying nothing spreads so quickly as a rumor. reporter: how about monica lewinsky? i did not have sexual relations with that woman. reporter: okay. so obviously there have been plenty of presidential scandals in the past. you already knew that. let s get past this 101 and dig a little deeper. it is rare, but president obama is not the only president to have faced tr more