Bill Clinton was hated by the Republican right, for all sorts of reasons stemming from the unresolved culture wars of the 60s. Clinton was an anti-Vietnam War child of Woodstock and represented everything the Right deplored in America. His victory in 1992 was a humiliation and was responded to with intense hostility. The Republicans, with the unwitting complicity of the Clintons, in their tone deaf exercise of their powers, began the series of investigations which, following the Republican sweep to victory in the House in 1994, became a flood and culminated in Clinton's Impeachment. During the crescendo of investigations, with various arcane scandals breathlessly and superficially reported in the Media, a few points should have been obvious to the Republicans. Their attempt to criminalize every objectionable piece of political behavior of the Clinton administration was winning them few friends. History shows that the Republicans' lust for vengeance overwhelmed their rational assessment of the political mood of the country and led to Clinton's re-election in 2006. When Drudge revealed the blue dress (the end of a long series of more and more removed issues that the overzealous Ken Starr was investigating in his attempts to prove, once again, the old maxim that "power corrupts") the Republicans salivated with desire and proceeded to impeach Bill Clinton. This proved to be a disaster for the Republicans and fortified Clinton's powers for the rest of his Presidency. Worse, it prevented the Republicans from investigating much more serious executive branch derelictions (the sale of advanced technology to China, the influence of Chinese money on American politics, the failing policy toward North Korea, the growing influence of radical Islam, etc) and it prevented the Clinton administration from devoting the resources in time and attention that the gathering threats required. It damaged both parties and America.
Since those early halcyon days of the Internet, the power of the bases has only grown, magnified by the modern day equivalent of the corner soapbox, the Blogosphere. It is a truism that Blogosphere time moves faster than old Media time and today's scandals come and go with much greater alacrity than in the past. During the Clinton administration, leaked articles could be counted on to dominate the headlines (especially once sex was introduced into the mix, a weapon that Bill Clinton effortlessly handed to his enemies) and the "blue dress" link directly to the President, so fervently desired and searched for, was the Holy Grail for the Right. Today, scandals du jour appear and disappear with a speed that is breath taking. When a particular scandal fails to find any traction (ie, it cannot be clearly connected to the current President) it is dropped and we are off to the next scandal. This is politics as usual on amphetamines, and the addiction needs to be fed until the ultimate "high" can be found.
For the Democrats, without a majority, they thought they had a winner with Valerie Plane, a weak and arcane pseudo-scandal, for which a Special Prosecutor was selected to do what damage he could; unfortunately for the fever swamps, it fell far short of ensnaring the President. However, when the Democrats won the Congress last election, their blood lust was whetted. It is pay back time on the Left, and the Left drives the Democratic party and has for quite some time. The promised flood of investigations has started and they have a "winner." The Bush administration, through their near legendary incompetence in the management of the political-media sphere, have handed the Democrats enough rope to hang someone. It only remains to be seen who gets the hangman's noose.
I would respectfully submit to the Democrats that they are much more likely to find their own head in the noose as the head of the President.
In a brief survey of the left side of the Blogosphere, I found compelling evidence that the Left finally believes they have the scandal which will undo the Bush administration and finally achieve retribution for all of his criminal acts. The stakes are very high in the upcoming Constitutional Combat between the Legislative and Executive branches. As commented at Kos, What's Bush's game?:
Realize that the resolution of this stand-off will determine the extent to which the Congress is able to investigate everything that's still on their plate. If they lose this showdown, they lose their leverage in investigating NSA spying, the DeLay/Abramoff-financed Texas redistricting, Cheney's Energy Task Force, the political manipulation of science, the Plame outing... everything.
And that's why Bush is playing it this way. Remember, too, that his "administration" is populated by Watergate and Iran-Contra recidivists, chief among them Dick Cheney, who has wanted to relitigate the boundaries of executive power since forever. Cheney and others on the inside believe that this time, with a friendlier judiciary, these issues can be decided the "right" way, overturning the victories won against Richard Nixon's insane theories of executive power.
Their thinking is that they'll either win it in courts, or run out the clock trying.
And the day they get five Justices to say they're right, everything you thought you knew about checks and balances becomes wrong.
Whether this is politics as usual or the creeping and incipient fascism the Left tells us is right around the corner, it is clear that the Left sees the upcoming Battle as an epic one. Glenn Greenwald, in an astoundingly myopic view of the difference between prosecutorial subpoenas in a criminal case and Congressional subpoenas as part of a political dispute, does note the importance of the fight:
For that reason, it is important to them [the Bush Adminsitration] to establish principles which will prevent (or at least substantially delay) any meaningful investigations by Congress into the White House's conduct over the last six years, and creating a privileged buffer around key administration officials and White House documents serves that purpose quite well. For that exact reason, it is absolutely imperative that Congress not acquiesce here, because genuine investigations -- that which the country urgently needs -- will, at some point, require this confrontation.
Josh Marshall does his best to "clarify" the issues:
Let's be honest. Presidential advisors testify all the time. They don't have the same responsibilities vis a vis Congress as members of the executive departments. But they can and do testify. There's only one reason why you agree to 'talk' to Congress unsworn, in private and without a transcript: because you want to be able to lie or dodge questions in a way that's too embarrassing to do in public.
Perhaps Josh Marshall has forgotten the aphorism, recently proved by Patrick Fitzpatrick, that a Prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich; I would offer for an update: A committed and determined House or Senate Chairman (Conyers? Schumer?) could quite easily manufacture perjury and contempt of Congress form incompetence and the fallibility of memory.
However, beyond the slanting of the Left, which is nothing unexceptional (recall the Right doing much the same with Clinton), there is the willing participation of the Democratic leadership in the upcoming dance of the inconsequential scandal. Clearly, the Congressional Democrats are all too happy to ascribe malice where incompetence would be a most adequate explanation. Yet, if one is starting on a road that inexorably leads to impeachment (which has been devoutly wished for by the Democrats' base since Bush "stole" the 2000 election) it behooves one to find a sturdier reed upon which to construct one's edifice. There has been no crime alleged in the firing of the prosecutors and none seems likely to appear beyond an engineered perjury.
The American people punished the Republicans for spending time, energy, and copious amounts of money prosecuting Bill Clinton for what in most people's eyes, was an understandable, and hardly criminal attempt, to hide his own sexual misconduct. While many would argue the case was much more significant, and that there were other more important scandals that were never adjudicated, the fact remains that Monica-gate was about sex. It was the sex that held people's attention and sex that drove the case forward. Our Congress spending all their time on a sexual peccadillo made them seem petty and prudish and they paid for their behavior.
The Democrats are going to conduct their hearings, subpoena everyone they can link to the "scandal" in an obvious fishing exhibition, and rage against Bush's perfidy on a nightly basis. There will be no sex involved, just some relatively inane allegations of administration spokesmen misleading Congress, to which most Americans are likely to say, "good for them." The Congress is already held in lower esteem than the Bush administration and their behavior is unlikely to endear them to the average American, who has only a passing interest in politics.
As I have pointed out many times, Narcissists (and who doubts that the average Senator and House Chairman has a surfeit of Narcissism) have a great deal of trouble learning; the Democrats have not learned form their colleagues and are likely to over-reach in much the same way the Republicans did with Bill Clinton. The result is most likely to be disastrous for the Democrats, who will come off looking strident, petty, and nasty and evoke the question, "Don't these people know there's a War going on?"
It makes me wonder if the Democrats have a death wish.
Recent Comments