The Bushed Legacy

I was getting a haircut and talking to C, the redoubtable scissors expert, about something which had been on my mind recently; to wit, that Nixon's great mistake, that which got him thrown out of office, was his timidity in breaking the law. Watergate was a minor episode in American politics, a "third rate burglary," which failed even in its immediate object. It became dangerous only because of the elaborate efforts at cover-up by a paranoid president, who enlisted the CIA's help in thwarting the FBI investigation, laundered money through Mexico to buy silence of the burglars, etc. Nixon came undone when it was finally revealed that his direct involvement in the cover-up conspiracy began a few days after the break-in occurred, thanks to the "Butterfield" tapes routinely maintained in the Oval Office.

To be sure, the Nixon Administration was guilty of other misprisions of office. The clandestine bombing of Cambodia (detailed masterfully in "Sideshow"), harassing tax audits of political enemies, illegal wiretaps, and the "enemies list." Modern Republican administrations (beginning with Nixon) always engage in systematic violations of federal statutes and of the Constitution. Reagan and Bush I had Iran-Contra, a scandal every bit as outrageous as anything Bush Junior ever came up with. I suppose it's because, down deep, Republicans, with their paternalistic attitude about governance, simply don't believe that the laws really apply to them. Laws simply help them do their job of governing the rest of us. They're not meant to stand in their way, because their intentions are good and they're only doing what they have to do.

George W. Bush found the corrective to Nixon's timidity by violating so many laws, and committing so many unconstitutional acts, that the press, Congress, bloggers, everybody, simply gave up trying to follow them. There can never be any focus on one scandal because the pattern of lawlessness is so diffuse and pervasive that the picture hazes over and you're left feeling powerless. My guess is that Dick Cheney is the true author of this innovative approach. Wear the opposition down with a thousand jabs to the solar plexus. While they're trying to digest the latest Senate report concluding that the country was deliberately misled concerning the true level of threat posed by Iraq (as the Senate Intelligency report released Wednesday stated unequivocally), they'll miss the redacted report from the FBI indicating that Scooter Libby practically admitted that he leaked Valerie Plame's name at the suggestion of the Vice President himself. While they're engrossed in all that, keep pushing that telecom amnesty bill to cover up all the illegal wiretapping in violation of FISA, which the House seems poised to enact, and then they won't notice that prisoners in Guantanamo, who have been denied habeas corpus, are having their cases dismissed because they've been tortured in violation of U.S. war crimes statutes. Oh, and we can keep a lid on politicizing the Justice Department by simply giving the finger to Rep. John Conyers through an outrageous extension of the doctrine of executive privilege, and the neat irony there is that's the very privilege which was so spectacularly curtailed in United States vs. Nixon by a vote of 8-0.

It just makes you dizzy. The very real danger the United States faces results from its very tolerance of all this illegality. A constitutional form of government can slip by degrees into autocracy. If you need a historical precedent, study the history of Germany between 1930 and 1933.

I note with unease that John McCain has completely reversed himself on the subject of whether the President is "above the law." It's remarkable the issue can even be posited this way, as if it's an open question. In December, responding to questions from Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe, McCain was unequivocal in his answer: of course not. The President is subject to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and cannot wiretap or intercept the mail of American citizens without a warrant from the FISA court. Now, however, as his spokesman Douglas Holtz-Eakin says, McCain supports the telecom amnesty bill because of the President's inherent "Article II" powers in a time of war to order wiretaps against American citizens with or without court authorization.

This is the "unitary executive" stuff we've heard so much about from Bush operatives like Cheney, David Addington and -- always, inevitably, like a bad dream you can't wake up from -- John Yoo. Samuel Alito was chosen as a Supreme Court judge because of his amenability to this unconstitutional concept, one which rides roughshod over the old regime which served us so well until 2001 - the balance of powers.

The "maverick," who votes with Bush 95% of the time and is now buying into his most dangerous and loony ideas, simply must be defeated. Respect for the law has to be restored, beginning in the Oval Office.