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How Congress Can Speed the Downfall of the Bushites
By Andrew Bard Schmookler (about the author) Page 1 of 4 page(s)
For OpEdNews: Andrew Bard Schmookler - Writer
I was in my semi-late twenties when, after the landslide re-election of our crook-in-chief of those times, the Watergate process unfolded.
By then I'd been deeply concerned for several years about the ruthlessness, dishonesty, and lawlessness of the Nixon presidency. (For example, I'd taken the two thousand dollars that I'd been paid from a life insurance policy of my recently deceased father --my whole nest egg at that time-- and sent it off to a Danish bank, just in case the Nixonian suppression of dissent ratcheted up another notch or two.) And I wondered if this "third-rate burglary" might possibly prove the means by which the American Republic would save itself.
For a long while after the process began I found it difficult to maintain much optimism. The people in Congress were proceeding so slowly, so cautiously. I wanted them to charge ahead and root out the truth and confront Nixon's lawlessness. The sight of Congress investigating the Nixon presidency --so methodical, so uncertain, so finger-in-the-wind-- was not reassuring to me.
After the fall of Nixon, it was widely said that "the system worked." But to me that sounded like unfounded complacency. What would have happened to America in the absence of the Watergate break in? What would have happened if the existence of the tapes had never been disclosed?
I'm still not entirely reassured. But I do believe that the American system probably had more resiliency, more hidden resistance to its own destruction, than I --as a young man-- gave it credit for. And one other thing: the way that our politicians in Congress go about things is, in its pace and decisiveness, much more like a huge ocean-liner turning than would suit the feelings of the outraged and impassioned citizen. Their wheels grind very slowly.
I think about these things now as we behold this new Congress groping and flailing and gathering itself in fits and starts to take on this Bushite presidency-- a presidency far more ruthless, far more dishonest, far more lawless than the one that Congress brought down more than thirty years ago.
CONGRESS AS A FLOCK ON THE WING
I now feel more confident that this Bushite presidency is heading for destruction and/or repudiation and/or public disgrace than I did about Nixon's at a similar stage in the process.
That doesn't mean that I think it will happen right away. It doesn't mean that I feel confident that it will take the form of impeachment and removal from office. And it certainly doesn't mean that I'm confident that I think it will go as far as it ideally should. All it means is that I now fully expect that the ship of this Bush presidency --now foundering in the waves and taking on water-- will end up sinking to the bottom.
It means that I see a dynamic at work that will play out in that direction. If Bush were a stock, I'd short him.
I feel more confidence than I did with Nixon's fall largely because of a change in how I conceive of the workings of Congress.
If things worked the way I would like for them to work, the march toward investigation, condemnation, impeachment and conviction would be fast and straight-forward and irresistible. This presidency is, after all, an abomination: it is a criminal enterprise; it is corrupt; it has flagrantly disregarded the Constitution; it has lied its way into a war.
Meanwhile, everyone has taken an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. If these politicians operated as I'd like for them to, then out of moral outrage and sacred duty they'd proceed without hesitation to prosecute this thuggish regime to the fullest extent of their powers.
But of course, with a new notable exceptions, that is not how the Congress of the United States --or probably any body of elected office-holders-- works.
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
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