Personally, at the time, I thought he should have gone the "blue ribbon panel" route.

But you can't always end run the media.  Clinton got better and better at this throughout his administration.  But few politicians could have avoided what he faced on the gays in the military issue.

They made a huge story out of it just as they did Whitewater, Filegate, Haircutgate, and all the other bogus or wildly overhyped stories and pseudo-scandals.

President Clinton had campaigned on ending the ban on gays in the military.  The military bristled at this and started objecting to it.  This created a media buzz

This leaves an incorrect impression.  GITM wasn't a major issue in 1992 -- not during the Dem primaries, and (interestingly) not during the GE.  Poppy and Perot, to the best of my recollection, did not bring up the matter in the debates or at any time and use it to bash Bill.  For some reason, the Repubs decided not to run wild with this hot-button matter, something they normally don't hesitate to use.

When GITM became suddenly very important to the MSM and the Repubs during the transition, Bill and proponents of the reform were caught off guard and were on the defensive from the get-go.  Certainly the grass-roots backers of the change weren't adequately organized to withstand the fierce and powerful opposition.

As for your point above, though, about Obama probably not being able to fundamentally change the direction of our intel culture, that one we agree on.  At least during his first term -- apart from immediately stopping the appalling policy of "enhanced interrogation techniques", something which I believe Obama will have plenty of public and cong'l backing to eliminate.

2d term would be the time for major intel reform.  He'll need a very smart and tough new DNI and DCI to begin to change that inbred culture, though.  60 yrs now with virtually no substantial oversight -- just the one time in the mid-70s with Sen Church's committee.  That's gotta change ...

The media doesn't create the story.  They can hype the story but they don't create the story.

The classic example is Whitewater.  That was 100% media created and hyped.  $40 million dollars later they finally created a scandal.  

You're right, sometimes it's people older than "young" who do that, but they're invariably people who only discovered politics this time around and therefore make the same errors and pompous announcements about things they don't actually have familiarity with beyond today's headlines.