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Particles Of Impeachment

by poputonian

In my earlier post, I referenced an article that appeared in the mainstream populist publication In These Times. It was authored by John Nichols and carries the title “In Praise of Impeachment.” The article compels me to change my original passive position of letting the Congressional investigations run their course, and to instead insist on impeachment. It’s a duty to do so. Nichols begins, appropriately, with Richard Nixon and Watergate:

Grassroots Democrats and a few bold members of Congress began suggesting that issues raised by the Watergate burglaries and related matters were serious enough to merit discussion of impeachment. House Speaker Carl Albert, House Minority Leader Tip O’Neill and most of their compatriots in the Democratic Party knew at the time that, despite the president’s protestations, Nixon was indeed a crook — and by extension, that he and his nefarious inner circle had committed acts that gave definition to the deliberately amorphous term “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Yet, they took impeachment off the table — and kept it off — until the evolution of the scandal and the popular outcry it inspired forced them to put the most powerful tool in the arsenal of the republic back where it belonged.

The article goes on to describe Pelosi as a bit player (at present), and that her pronouncement that “impeachment is off the table” should not be taken seriously.

Why should we dismiss the Speaker-to-be’s adamant dismissal of impeachment as mere wordplay? Not because Pelosi is secretly plotting impeachment. Rather, because any meaningful movement to impeach a president — and, in the case of the Bush-Cheney administration, a vice president — does not come from the Speaker of the House. The Speaker is, in fact, often the last to know when the constitutional moment has arrived.

Impeachment is an organic process, imagined as such by the founders. Its seed is not naturally planted in Washington, nor nurtured there. When an impeachment initiative is little more than a manifestation of inside-the-Beltway partisanship, as was the case with the Clinton impeachment of the late 90s, its proponents invite an appropriate rebuke from the citizenry. But when proposals for impeachment are grounded in popular concern for the republic in general, and the application of the rule of law in particular — as are moves to sanction Bush and Cheney for illegal war-making and wiretapping — the process will begin at the grassroots and grow until it cannot be denied in Washington.
…
So the question is not: Where does Pelosi stand at the opening of this session of Congress? Rather, it is: Where do the American people stand?

Polling tells us that Americans are a good deal more enthusiastic about holding this president to account than are the leaders of what is sometimes euphemistically referred to as an opposition party. A majority of Americans surveyed last fall in a national poll by the respected firm Ipsos Public Affairs, which measures public opinion on behalf of the Associated Press, agreed with the statement: “If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable by impeaching him.”

It was not entirely surprising that 72 percent of the Democrats were inclined toward impeachment. What was more interesting was that 56 percent of Independents were ready to hold the president to account, as were 20 percent of Republicans.

(Think what those poll numbers must be today after the Junior’s own surrogate-uncle Baker led the parade that trashed the boy-President’s self-ingratiating foreign adventure.)

But polls are easily dismissed, even by the politicians who live by them. Harder to neglect are the signals from around the country, where citizens have been asked to vote on the question of whether impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney is needed. Pelosi might want to take note of the message her own constituents sent on the same day that the Democrats’ victory reversed a dozen years of Republican control of the House.

San Franciscans were asked on Nov. 7 to vote “yes” or “no” on Proposition J, a measure calling on the city’s elected representatives to “use every available legal mechanism to effect the impeachment and removal from office of President Bush and Vice President Cheney for committing high crimes and misdemeanors in violation of the United States Constitution.” The measure won with more than 58 percent of the vote. Pelosi’s hometown wasn’t the only city to vote for impeachment on November 7. Calls for impeachment won voter approval from Cunningham Township, Illinois to Berkeley, California, adding the names of those communities to the list of two-dozen municipalities nationwide that have now officially adopted impeachment resolutions.

Another measure of popular sentiment regarding impeachment — -one that Pelosi should understand — came in the congressional elections of Nov. 7. More than three-dozen Democratic members of the House faced voters as explicit advocates for keeping the impeachment option on the table. Thirty-eight members of the House signed on over the past year to H. Res. 635, a measure sponsored by Michigan Rep. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. It proposed to investigate whether members of the Bush administration made moves to invade Iraq before receiving congressional authorization, manipulating pre-war intelligence, encouraged the use of torture in Iraq and elsewhere, and used their positions to retaliate against critics of the war.

H. Res. 635 explicitly states that the select committee would be charged with making recommendations regarding grounds for the possible impeachment of Bush and Cheney.

So how did supporters of the “dangerous” principle that impeachment should be kept “on the table” fare at the polls?

One co-ponsor of the resolution, Rep. Bernie Sanders, (I-VT), was elected to the Senate. Every other member of the House who signed on for an impeachment inquiry and faced voters on Nov. 7 was reelected, in many cases with an increased percentage of the vote.

Here’s the stake we need to drive through this administration’s immoral, paranoid heart:

It should come as no surprise that, when offered the option of impeaching, voters will opt for it. Outside of Washington, there are still a lot of Americans who recognize impeachment not as the “Constitutional crisis” that so much of the political class and the media fear, but as the cure for the crisis. This was as the founders intended when they inserted all those references to impeachment [it appears six times] into a Constitution that does not mention God, corporations, or the two-party system. They wanted Americans to know that they had a tool for challenging the tyranny of an “elected despot.” [Nichols use of the term “elected despot” was quoting a Jefferson letter to Madison.]

So, it falls to the people to restore a proper understanding of the necessity of impeachment: by voting for local resolutions, passing petitions, and protesting. That process will be helped along by the investigation of Bush administration misdeeds that will, as did the initial investigations of Watergate-related wrongs, provide a steady reconfirmation of the crisis.

Before the House Judiciary Committee weighed the articles of impeachment against Nixon, a congressional break sent federal legislators back to their home districts. Many, including Tip O’Neill, went with some trepidation. They feared that the people would tell them that Congress had gone too far in questioning the authority and actions of the president. Instead, as O’Neill told a reporter for Time magazine, they found the people were asking: “What are you waiting for?” As Time noted in that Watergate summer of 1974, members of the House learned from their constituents that “impeachment is good politics.” Indeed, it became increasingly clear to Democrats, as well as smart Republicans, that it was riskier to refuse to impeach than it was to embrace the Constitutional imperative.

So what are we waiting for? George W. Bush had better strap on his Codpiece, and Dick Cheney had better grab his cholestrol-infested ass. I think the rank and file are coming after them.NOTE: John Nichols is the author a book called The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders’ Cure for Royalism (The New Press).

Wisdom

by digby

The incomparable Meteor Blades has a post up over a Kos that will make you cry. Here is just a small piece:

Three thousand dead Americans from the Navy, the Army, the Marines, the Air Force and the National Guard will soon be in the count. Dead, in many cases, as we have seen, because of the incompetent know-it-allness of an Administration still swarming with chickenhawks. But dead, fundamentally, because of lies. Killed, like McMahon and Judge, heroically trying to save the lives of others. Or killed like my friend, Manny, just for being in the wrong place when the shrapnel came tumbling out of the night.

Whether shattered by an IED at some crossroads in al-Anbar province, Xed out by a sniper round to the throat deep inside Baghdad or crushed in a Humvee rollover in Mosul makes no difference. Heroic or not, no difference. They are dead for lies. Futilely dead. Dead because war criminals sent them abroad fraudulently in the name of liberation, security and prevention.

Dead because of people who waved the bloody shirt of Nine-Eleven in one hand, Old Glory in the other, and simultaneously managed to shred our Constitution and decades of international law. People whose closest brush with battle was reading the Cliff’s Notes version of Sun Tzu, which they promptly forgot. People who, if this were a just world, would soon be making journeys in shackles to The Hague.

In 1967 I lived in Bangkok Thailand, my Dad being a member of the military industrial complex that was part and parcel of the Vietnam enterprise just as Halliburton is today in Iraq. I was just a kid. We welcomed young soldiers into our home, friends of friends’ families or long distance relatives who had a few days of R&R in Bangkok. My mother would make home cooked meals and encourage them to hang out with the family for some all-American comfort. As you can imagine, most of them had much more exotic pastimes in mind, so they rarely took her up on it. I never saw any of them again, but thought of them often because they were interesting creatures to me, sitting at the dinner table sometimes talking animatedly about the war or home, but often somnambulent as if they were in another world.

Years later, my Dad and I were talking and he told me that of the half dozen who came to visit us, four of them had been killed. They were all my brother’s age — the draft dodging globetrotter who refused to go, and who my father had almost disowned over the issue one Thanksgiving. On this occasion, I asked my Dad whether he still thought it was wrong for his son not to have “fulfilled his obligation” and he simply said, “no.”

I think one of the things that truly distinguishes this god-forsaken war is the utter lack of seriousness and gravitas among those who insisted that we do it. My father fought in WWII and Korea and spent time as a civilian in Vietnam as the war was raging. He was the epitome of the WWII generation of hawks who believed that America was a righteous defender of freedom and that we were obligated to help the world fight back the totalitarians. He had basically spent his life in that pursuit and he couldn’t imagine his government being so perfidious or incompetent as to sacrifice Americans for anything that wasn’t a good cause. His gradual disillusionment during Vietnam and after was an uncomfortable thing to see; the cognitive dissonance and the emotional discord never really resolved themselves. He remained an unreconstructed rightwinger, but his worldview shrank from its earlier big-picture pride to a series of petty complaints about his fellow Americans.

The people who supported this war, on the other hand, had the benefit of hindsight that the WWII generation didn’t have when they committed the folly of Vietnam. They, at least, could be excused for thinking that the US could single handedly change the world. But it was only 30 years ago that American military might was tested in the post atomic world and every single pitfall of idealistic global adventure was experienced and later examined in great detail. These flagwaving, wingnut cheerleaders did not base their faux patriotism on any real knowledge of war or an investment of their own youths in a difficult but successful military victory. They based it on movies and television versions of WWII, in which gritty, American heroes won the war and then appeared later on awards shows and made speeches about the greatest generation while they accepted their Oscars.

Perhaps this shallowness is best illustrated by an exchange I saw on MSNBC on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor this week between two middle aged men who sound like something out of a ladies magazine circa 1962:

BARNICLE: Well, you know, Tim, it—it—it is sad to hear you say that, because—and this is not a shameless plug for your book, “Wisdom of Our Fathers,” but, reading the book, there is a lot of wisdom in it, because it is the wisdom given to us by the men and—and the women, actually, of the World War II generation.

Today is December 7. It is the 65th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. On the morning of December 8 — you have heard the stories—I have heard the stories—long lines of people standing outside recruiting offices joined together as a nation to fight a war on two fronts.

Today, 65 years later, we have this commission report. What is your sense, not only of what—what—what the concept of history is in the Congress of the United States, but the sense of bipartisanship, the spirit that provided us strength through World War II? Can it ever exist again in this type of a culture?

RUSSERT: I see so much of this through the eyes of my dad, Big Russ, Mike.

He told me about Pearl Harbor, what he watched, what he witnessed, what he felt, what he experienced that day. And he was one of those young boys in that line in that recruiting office, and then went down with his B-24 Liberator, and spent six months in a military hospital.

But he told me, first and foremost, about the sacrifice, about Rosie the Riveter, and Jimmy Doolittle, and women giving up nylons, and people giving up condiments on their dinner table, because they had to help feed and support the soldiers.

This is what Barnicle and Russert call wisdom — Thomas Kincaide kitch in which sacrifice is not having any nylons or condiments on the dinner table. I think they are fairly typical of the ruling class in this country who really believed that this could be their WWII. There would be no messy counter culture this time, no rebellion, no complaints. Their biggest disappointment isn’t that it’s become a bloody meatgrinder and a foreign policy disaster. It’s that people aren’t coming together to sing “Hut Sut Ralston On The Rillaragh” and painting lines down the back of their legs so people would think they are wearing seamed stockings. It just seems like that was such good fun. The more than 60 million dead were a small price to pay for such togetherness. And maybe, when the new war is over, everyone will get oscars instead of medals.

This is why tens of thousands of people are dying in Iraq. In that sense Vietnam, for all its mistakes, was a far more noble undertaking.

For an excellent, in depth look at this phenomenon, check out Chris Hayes’ piece in In These Times called “The Good War On Terror.”

.

Ideas Have Consequences

by poputonian

The notion of Iraq as the worst foreign policy disaster in U.S. history is rapidly gaining currency in the MSM, but it really is much worse than that. When the policy itself is fundamentally built upon a fraud, it should more appropriately be called a crime. The Bush administration even admitted (see Wolfowitz, Vanity Fair) that they sequenced through various rationales for war before selecting WMDs as what they thought would be the most palatable to the American people. By doing this, they misrepresented their real intentions and masked the policy’s real goal and purpose, which was to conquer a foreign sovereign and remake the politics of Middle East. That was the ideological IDEA behind the Iraq war, and when that idea was acted upon, the administration moved beyond the realm of policy flub, and into the realm of international tyranny. When ideas are put into action, they have consequences. A famous Republican once said so.

Yesterday, Digby linked to Krugman’s article which highlighted quotes from a few Americans who got it right about Iraq. Let’s not forget there were many in the international community who also got it right. Here was a key speech made to the UN Security Council by French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin:

Therefore, I would like solemnly to address a question to this body, and it’s the very same question being asked by people all over the world. Why should we now engage in war with Iraq? And I would also like to ask, why smash the instruments that have just proven their effectiveness? Why choose division when our unity and our resolve are leading Iraq to get rid of its weapons of mass destruction? Why should we wish to proceed by force at any price when we can succeed peacefully?
…
War is always an acknowledgment of failure. Let us not resign ourselves to the irreparable. Before making our choice, let us weigh the consequences. Let us measure the effects of our decision. And it’s clear to all in Iraq, we are resolutely moving toward completely eliminating programs of weapons of mass destruction. The method that we have chosen worked.

De Villepin then detailed the positive results coming in from the inspection reports and talked of the success of other pressures being brought to bear on Iraq. He continued:

What conclusions can we draw? That Iraq, according to the very terms used by the inspectors, represents less of a danger to the world than it did in 1991, that we can achieve our objective of effectively disarming that country. Let us keep the pressure on Baghdad.
…
The adoption of Resolution 1441, the assumption of converging positions by the vast majority of the world’s nations, diplomatic action by the Organization of African Unity, the League of Arab States, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the non-aligned movement, all of these common efforts are bearing fruit.
…
Let us be clear-sighted. We are defining a method to resolve crisis. We are choosing how to define the world we want our children to live in.
…
These crises have many roots. They are political, religious, economic. Their origins lie deep in the turmoil of history.
…
There may be some who believe that these problems can be resolved by force, thereby creating a new order. But this is not what [we] believe. On the contrary, we believe that the use of force can arouse resentment and hatred, fuel a clash of identities and of cultures, something that our generation has a prime responsibility to avoid.
…
To those who believe that war would be the quickest way of disarming Iraq, I can reply that it will drive wedges and create wounds that will be long in healing. And how many victims will it cause? How many families will grieve?
…
We do not subscribe to what may be the other objectives of a war. Is it a matter of regime change in Baghdad? No one underestimates the cruelty of this dictatorship or the need to do everything possible to promote human rights. But this is not the objective of Resolution 1441. And force is certainly not the best way of bringing about democracy. Here and elsewhere it would encourage dangerous instability.
…
Is it a matter of fighting terrorism? War would only increase it and we would then be faced with a new wave of violence.
…
Is it finally a matter of recasting the political landscape of the Middle East? In that case, we run the risk of exacerbating tensions in a region already marked by great instability. Not to mention that in Iraq itself, the large number of communities and religions already represents a danger of a potential break-up.
…
We all have the same demands. We want more security and more democracy. But there is another logic other than the logic of force. There is another path. There are other solutions. We understand the profound sense of insecurity with which the American people have been living since the tragedy of September 11, 2001. The entire world shared the sorrow of New York and of America struck in the heart. And I say this in the name of our friendship for the American people, in the name of our common values: freedom; justice; tolerance.
…
But there is nothing today to indicate a link between the Iraqi regime and al Qaeda. And will the world be a safer place after a military intervention in Iraq? I want to tell you what my country’s conviction is: It will not.

We all know that when it comes to foreign policy George Bush is dumber than a box of hammers, so where did the ideological idea come from that led to this war, and who is the architect of the public relations fraud that sold it to the American sheeple? The answer is that it came from the Republican party, and the PR architect was none other than Karl Rove. Less than one year ago, he was gloating about the the success of the grandiose scheme:

We are the party of ideas – and “ideas have consequences.”

Ideas – a party’s governing philosophy, should be at the heart of our political debates – because they are a deciding factor in elections.

… it will be true in 2006 … our ideas will prevail in the hearts and minds of Americans.

President Bush has established a remarkable record.

He is winning the war against terrorism, promoting liberty in regions of the world that have never known it, and protecting America against attacks.
…
This past year, we have seen three successful elections in Iraq. The Iraqi Security Forces are increasing in size and capability. Iraq’s economy is growing.

Wow. Before the war, smart people warned of the consequences of putting a very bad idea into action, and after it happened the ISG report details its very failure. Yet in the middle of both ends, the pompous architect of it all speaks of the crowning success of Republican IDEAS.

I want to go back on something I wrote a couple of weeks ago, which was that we should be patient with regard to impeachment proceedings, to let the process play out. But there was one more article in the current issue of In These Times (not online yet) that I want to highlight. It said that impeachment was never designed to come from the politicians, that the force of impeachment had to come from the popular will, from the people. Yeah. I’m right there with Rove in one regard: ideas do have consequences. Let’s impeach.

Secretaries of Deference

by digby

Lambert points out something important relating to my post yesterday on The Aristocrats:

When Bush got all snippy with Jim Webb, George Will distorted the quote precisely to highlight Webb’s supposed lack of deference.

All the Beltway 500 code words—Civil, Dignified, Ungracious—for trashing Democrats and preventing them from saying what needs to be said have to do with Republicans reinforcing this fundamental aristocratic value of deference.

It’s the same deal with Civil, Moderate, and Bipartisan are also code words for reinforcing deference.

That’s why it’s important to mock, belittle, insult, degrade and make Republicans laughable at all times and in all conditions. These are all tools for eliminating deference from our political discourse.

Naturally, when we do this, the Beltway 500 clutches its pearls and calls us Shrill or Rude. That’s a good sign: It means we’re displaying the lack of deference appropriate a Democracy.

I think the single most sickening example of this phenomenon was the mewling and puking on the part of the Washington establishment over the revelation of an extra-marital affair by one who never understood how to behave in the company of his betters. The way they told it, Washington DC is just like Bedford Falls,Zuzu’s petals and all, upholding the values of mom and pop and McDonalds 2-for-1 apple pies — an aristocracy of small town kids who just happen to be millionaire insiders in the capital of the most powerful nation on earth.

I’m going to publish a long excerpt of the following article, because I’m not sure there is anything in the American media that better illuminates the phony sanctimony and the sickening hypocrisy of the political ruling class. You will note that the author says quite explicitly that the nation does not share the superior values of their betters.

In Washington, That Letdown Feeling
By Sally Quinn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 2, 1998; Page E01

“This beautiful capital,” President Clinton said in his first inaugural address, “is often a place of intrigue and calculation. Powerful people maneuver for position and worry endlessly about who is in and who is out, who is up and who is down, forgetting those people whose toil and sweat sends us here and pays our way.” With that, the new president sent a clear challenge to an already suspicious Washington Establishment.

And now, five years later, here was Clinton’s trusted adviser Rahm Emanuel, finishing up a speech at a fund-raiser to fight spina bifida before a gathering that could only be described as Establishment Washington.

“There are a lot of people in America who look at what we do here in Washington with nothing but cynicism,” said Emanuel. “Heck, there are a lot of people in Washington who look at us with nothing but cynicism.” But, he went on, “there are good people here. Decent people on both sides of the political aisle and on both sides of the reporter’s notebook.”

Emanuel, unlike the president, had become part of the Washington Establishment. “This is one of those extraordinary moments,” he said at the fund-raiser, “when we come together as a community here in Washington — setting aside personal, political and professional differences.”

Actually, it wasn’t extraordinary. When Establishment Washingtonians of all persuasions gather to support their own, they are not unlike any other small community in the country.

On this evening, the roster included Cabinet members Madeleine Albright and Donna Shalala, Republicans Sen. John McCain and Rep. Bob Livingston, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, PBS’s Jim Lehrer and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, all behaving like the pals that they are. On display was a side of Washington that most people in this country never see. For all their apparent public differences, the people in the room that night were coming together with genuine affection and emotion to support their friends — the Wall Street Journal’s Al Hunt and his wife, CNN’s Judy Woodruff, whose son Jeffrey has spina bifida.

But this particular community happens to be in the nation’s capital. And the people in it are the so-called Beltway Insiders — the high-level members of Congress, policymakers, lawyers, military brass, diplomats and journalists who have a proprietary interest in Washington and identify with it.

They call the capital city their “town.”

And their town has been turned upside down.

With some exceptions, the Washington Establishment is outraged by the president’s behavior in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The polls show that a majority of Americans do not share that outrage. Around the nation, people are disgusted but want to move on; in Washington, despite Clinton’s gains with the budget and the Mideast peace talks, people want some formal acknowledgment that the president’s behavior has been unacceptable. They want this, they say, not just for the sake of the community, but for the sake of the country and the presidency as well.

In addition to the polls and surveys, this disconnect between the Washington Establishment and the rest of the country is evident on TV and radio talk shows and in interviews and conversations with more than 100 Washingtonians for this article. The din about the scandal has subsided in the news as politicians and journalists fan out across the country before tomorrow’s elections. But in Washington, interest remains high. The reasons are varied, and they intertwine.

1. THIS IS THEIR HOME. This is where they spend their lives, raise their families, participate in community activities, take pride in their surroundings. They feel Washington has been brought into disrepute by the actions of the president.

“It’s much more personal here,” says pollster Geoff Garin. “This is an affront to their world. It affects the dignity of the place where they live and work. . . . Clinton’s behavior is unacceptable. If they did this at the local Elks Club hall in some other community it would be a big cause for concern.”

“He came in here and he trashed the place,” says Washington Post columnist David Broder, “and it’s not his place.”

[…]

Bill Galston, former deputy domestic policy adviser to Clinton and now a professor at the University of Maryland, says of the scandal that “most people in Washington believe that most people in Washington are honorable and are trying to do the right thing. The basic thought is that to concede that this is normal and that everybody does it is to undermine a lifetime commitment to honorable public service.”

“Everybody doesn’t do it,” says Jerry Rafshoon, Jimmy Carter’s former communications director. “The president himself has said it was wrong.”

Pollster Garin, president of Peter Hart Research Associates, says that the disconnect is not unlike the difference between the way men and women view the scandal. Just as many men are angry that Clinton’s actions inspire the reaction “All men are like that,” Washingtonians can’t abide it that the rest of the country might think everyone here cheats and lies and abuses his subordinates the way the president has.

“This is a community in all kinds of ways,” says ABC correspondent Cokie Roberts, whose parents both served in Congress. She is concerned that people outside Washington have a distorted view of those who live here. “The notion that we are some rarefied beings who breathe toxic air is ridiculous. . . . When something happens everybody gathers around. . . . It’s a community of good people involved in a worthwhile pursuit. We think being a worthwhile public servant or journalist matters.”

“This is our town,” says Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, the first Democrat to forcefully condemn the president’s behavior. “We spend our lives involved in talking about, dealing with, working in government. It has reminded everybody what matters to them. You are embarrassed about what Bill Clinton’s behavior says about the White House, the presidency, the government in general.”

And many are offended that the principles that brought them to Washington in the first place are now seen to be unfashionable or illegitimate.

Muffie Cabot, who as Muffie Brandon served as social secretary to President and Nancy Reagan, regards the scene with despair. “This is a demoralized little village,” she says. “People have come from all over the country to serve a higher calling and look what happened. They’re so disillusioned. The emperor has no clothes. Watergate was pretty scary, but it wasn’t quite as sordid as this.”

“People felt a reverent attitude toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” says Tish Baldrige, who once worked there as Jacqueline Kennedy’s social secretary and has been a frequent visitor since. “Now it’s gone, now it’s sleaze and dirt. We all feel terribly let down. It’s very emotional. We want there to be standards. We’re used to standards. When you think back to other presidents, they all had a lot of class. That’s nonexistent now. It’s sad for people in the White House. . . . I’ve never seen such bad morale in my life. They’re not proud of their chief.”

[…]

2. THE LYING OFFENDS THEM. For both politicians and journalists, trust is the coin of the realm. Without trust, the system breaks down. [no, she wasn’t kidding. ed]

“We have our own set of village rules,” says David Gergen, editor at large at U.S. News & World Report, who worked for both the Reagan and Clinton White House. “Sex did not violate those rules. The deep and searing violation took place when he not only lied to the country, but co-opted his friends and lied to them. That is one on which people choke.

“We all live together, we have a sense of community, there’s a small-town quality here. We all understand we do certain things, we make certain compromises. But when you have gone over the line, you won’t bring others into it. That is a cardinal rule of the village. You don’t foul the nest.”

“This is a contractual city,” says Chris Matthews, who once was a top aide to the late Speaker of the House Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill. “There are no factories here. What we make are deals. It’s a city based on bonds made and kept.” The president, he went on, “has broken and shattered contracts publicly and shamefully. He violates the trust at the highest level of politics. Matthews, now a Washington columnist for the San Francisco Examiner and host of CNBC’s “Hardball,” also says, “There has to be a functional trust by reporters of the person they’re covering. Clinton lies knowing that you know he’s lying. It’s brutal and it subjugates the person who’s being lied to. I resent deeply being constantly lied to.”

[…]

Certainly Clinton is not the first president to lie. But the scope and circumstances of his lying enrage Establishment Washington.

“His behavior,” says Lieberman, “is so over the edge. What is troubling is the deceit, the failure to own up to it. Before this is over the truth must be told.”

Retiring Rep. Paul McHale was the first Democrat to call for Clinton’s resignation. “When the president spoke last January I believed him,” says McHale, of Pennsylvania. “I didn’t think he would have the audacity, the lack of integrity to mislead the American people . . . but then he pervasively lied under oath. He was blatantly, intentionally untruthful. I would not accept as president of the United States a man who has lied under oath.”

[…]

And the wife of a Democratic senator who declined to comment spoke on condition of anonymity. “We take the issue of perjury seriously here,” she said. Her husband, she said, thinks the president “lacks character and commitment. He’s very clear about it.”

During the last year, the nation’s journalistic community has suffered through a series of credibility crises: Mike Barnicle’s and Patricia Smith’s disgrace and departure from the Boston Globe, two CNN producers involved in the network’s discredited sarin report, and compulsive fabricator Stephen Glass of the New Republic.

Washington’s insider press corps has shown little pity for any of them. The feeling toward the president is similar.

“The judgment is harsher in Washington,” says The Post’s Broder. “We don’t like being lied to.”

3. ESTABLISHMENT WASHINGTON REVERES THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENCY. If Washington is a tribe, then the president is the tribal chief. He cannot be seen to dishonor the tribe.

Ken Duberstein was President Bush’s chief of staff. “Every time I went into the Oval office I put on a coat and tie,” he says. “Ronald Reagan put on a coat and tie, even on weekends. Reagan used to say this was not his office, it was the president’s office, it was the people’s office. He was only the temporary occupant.”

For Roger Wilkins, history professor at George Mason University, “the White House is the holiest of America’s secular shrines.” Wilkins sees the president’s conduct as “a betrayal of the ideals we have for the metaphysical office and the physical office” of the presidency. “For this man to say that his conduct of exploitation of this girl is private in a place we revere, a place we pay for, a place we own is not only absurd, it’s condescending and insulting.”

Former Democratic senator Sam Nunn, long a powerful player on the Washington scene, feels it is impossible to lead without trust. “People say that moral authority is not needed . . . but the trust factor is the single most important factor of leadership whether it be for a minister, a CEO, a senator or a president.”

[…]

For reasons they cannot understand, Washington insiders come across to the public as judgmental puritans, shocked and horrified by the president’s sexual misconduct. While most people have gossiped about the salacious details as the scandal unfolded, they say this was not what has outraged them. Of all those interviewed, not one mentioned sex or adultery as a matter of concern. “Sex,” says Gergen, “is acceptable as long as it’s discreet.” As Wilkins puts it, with a chuckle, “God knows, most people in Washington have led robust sexual lives.”

Similarly, independent counsel Ken Starr is not seen by many Washington insiders as an out-of-control prudish crusader. Starr is a Washington insider, too. He has lived and worked here for years. He had a reputation as a fair and honest judge. He has many friends in both parties. Their wives are friendly with one another and their children go to the same schools. He is seen as someone who is operating under a legal statute, with a mandate from the attorney general and a three-judge panel, although there are some lawyers here who have questioned some of Starr’s most aggressive tactics.

Finally, as for Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp, they are seen as essentially irrelevant in terms of the issues of concern here.

Privately, many in Establishment Washington would like to see Bill Clinton resign and spare the country, the presidency and the city any more humiliation.

But if Clinton won’t resign, what do they want instead?

Many say the impeachment inquiry should go forth in some fashion, if only to clarify and explain the offenses and to let the system work. The system is important here.

Yet a Senate vote to oust Clinton or some form of censure appears to make them nervous, mainly because they fear it would weaken the office.

“We don’t want to hang him,” says Gergen. “There’s a sense that we all want to clear this up. And there’s a maddening frustration that the political system doesn’t have a set of penalties for this kind of activity.”

“The founding fathers let us down,” adds Beschloss.

“He shouldn’t get by with it,” says Baker. “The question is, what can the Senate do short of removal?”

Certainly the Washington insiders have their own interests at heart. Whenever a new president comes to town, he will be courted assiduously by those whose livelihoods depend on access to power. But over the years of the Clinton White House, that interest in being close to the administration has diminished, particularly after the Lewinsky story broke in January. Then, after Aug. 17, many people’s self-interest was overtaken by their disgust and outrage.

Even those who have to deal with or publicly support the administration do so grudgingly. They say that regardless of whether his fortunes improve, Bill Clinton has essentially lost the Washington Establishment for good.

Dear Me! These mandarins and court scribes, these lords and ladies of the beltway, took great umbrage at Bill Clinton’s lack of deference to their completely phony bourgoise pretensions, and that simply was not done. So they crucified him.

Meanwhile, the very well bred cretinous moron who currently occupies the White House behaves like a disgusting pig in foreign capitals and is reputed to enjoy “fart” jokes in the oval office and has never been similarly derided for his uncouth ways. One can only speculate why that might be so.

And all these bluenosed hypocrites who excoriated Clinton for his lie (“I will not be lied to!”) about a personal matter and complain that the office lost its moral authority, seem not to be personally exercized about the repeated, endless lies of the Bush administration that landed us in the most unnecessary, intractable foreign policy crisis in the nation’s history. Broder and his snuff-snorting fellow courtiers aren’t nattering on about how Junior “trashed the place.” But then the only place he’s trashed is the United States of America, where the silly peasants live — and Iraq which is filled with a bunch of dirty foreigners. In the nation’s capital everyone is perfectly happy because as far as they are concerned, the “right” people are in charge. And that’s all that matters.

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My Homies

by digby

Paul Krugman’s column today lists the names and statements of people who were right about Iraq. He says, “We should honor these people for their wisdom and courage.” Indeed we should.

The recording industry is doing just that by honoring the Dixie Chicks with five grammy nominations today:

THE DIXIE CHICKS are now officially an L.A. band.

The trio started in Texas and soared to fame in Nashville but, after their well-documented odyssey through partisan politics, they were frozen out of the country music establishment, which denied them radio airplay and awards. The Grammys stepped in Thursday to embrace the genre refugees in dramatic fashion, giving them five nominations, including for album, record and song of the year for the music of “Taking the Long Way,” a CD recorded in Los Angeles with rock musicians and a rock sensibility.

[…]

The Chicks, of course, have been in the center of one of pop’s strangest soap operas. On the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, lead singer Natalie Maines was on stage in England and made an off-the-cuff remark that would rival John Lennon’s 1966 quote about the Beatles being “more popular than Jesus” as a cultural flashpoint. Maines told the crowd: “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.”

The Chicks became the target of CD burnings, radio bans and peer criticism that changed the course of their career and even led to this year’s acclaimed documentary film, “Shut Up & Sing.” Maines and her partners, sisters Emily Robison and Martie Maguire, responded this year with an album that, musically, is their least beholden to traditional country or bluegrass.

The group has a long history of Grammy attention — it has five trophies already and this is its third nomination for best album — but this year the accolades stand in stark contrast to the Country Music Assn. awards in November, which ignored the Chicks despite the album’s sales, which now stand at 1.7 million copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan.

The Dixie Chicks took the slings and arrows that were meant for all of us who were speaking out against Bush in that dark time four years ago when he was considered by many people in this country to be more of a religious figure than a politician. It was an ugly period and the Chicks were a profile in courage for refusing to back down. In fact they got their backs up when people started writing them death threats for daring to speak their minds and stood even taller. That’s patriotism.

Good for the grammys for embracing them. And as a resident of Los Angeles, I couldn’t be more proud to call them an LA band.

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Holding The Line

by digby

Firedoglake, Pandagon and many others have been writing about NARAL’s inexplicable decision to take a “neutral stance” on one of those move-the-goalpost pieces of legislation which are designed to normalize anti-choice talking points for future consideration:

“…the awkward phrasing of “20 weeks past fertilization” classifies a woman as pregnant even before implantation of the egg in the uterus. That’s the type of legalese that could redefine certain types of birth control, like Plan B, as abortifacients.”

I do not think NARAL understands its function anymore. It is not a politician from a conservative district who won with only a few percentage points and needs to pander. It is not a political party that needs to gloss over differences to come to consensus. It is an advocacy organization. Its job is to hold the line and then move the debate their way.

Ezra explains it so that even the comatose Washington establishment can understand it:

One thing groups like NARAL have a tendency to do is accept vaguely acceptable-sounding or politically popular bills in an effort to remain in the center, believing their group’s moderate credentials — see also their early endorsement of Lincoln Chafee — somehow important.The alternative strategy — practiced by the NRA, among others — would be to wage all-out war on even these minor encroachments, thus fighting to shift the center left.

This strategy of trying to join the center rather than move it is a damaging one. If NARAL were totally dogmatic and absolutist, that would make life much easier on Democrats who could occasionally show their “centrism” by voting against NARAL-opposed legislation that actually doesn’t much matter. Instead, however, to demonstrate independence on choice, Democrats end up supporting much more onerous and repulsive legislation, because just aping NARAL’s priorities line doesn’t win them any points in the media. Elected politicians, after all, often have to remain “in the center.” Independent interest groups, on the other hand, can spend their time trying to redefine what “the center” is.

That’s exactly right and NARAL’s decision illustrates something very important about a new and disturbing dynamic on capital hill.

Democratic leaders cited NARAL’s position when they decided against trying to influence the vote. Democratic leadership aides said yesterday that they are leery of Republicans charging that they are already out of touch with mainstream values, even before they assume power.

That means NARAL is now in the business of giving cover to Democratic Leaders who are trying to bullshit pro-choice liberals into thinking they aren’t selling them out. (We saw this same ploy in Connecticut earlier this year.) Apparently, it sees itself as an inside player helping the Democrats keep from having to go out on a limb on the abortion issue. They are allowing themselves to be used as a shield against their most ardent supporters.

That is, to say the least, a very unusual strategy. They have to know they have dramatically lost credibility with those of us who consider the right to choose a fundamental matter of personal liberty. And if NARAL doesn’t represent us, it represents nobody.

On a purely political level I’m sympathetic to the Democrats’ desire to finesse the issue of abortion. It would be just terrific if everyone would just leave it alone so we could deal with issues that don’t make people feel all icky. If the right would respect the status quo, that might even be possible. But anyone who thinks that they can quiet them with a few compromises like this hasn’t been paying attention. They will not rest until they have given the fetus full citizenship, repealed Roe vs Wade and outlawed abortion. It’s not like they are hiding their agenda.

This vote didn’t matter all that much except to the extent it showed how this is going to play out in the future. If the Democrats need to sacrifice something on the alter of “bipartisanshipandcentrism” it’s looking like they are prepared to negotiate away ever more pieces of the right to choose.They have decided that being pro-choice, despite being a majority position and one based on fundamental principles, is not “mainstream.” It’s now a bipartisan poker chip and NARAL is apparently willing to ante up.

If you want to see what’s really up behind the scenes, check out the 95-10 plan which came out of the Third Way and Democrats for Life camp and is being endorsed by good guys like EJ Dionne. (This evangelical outreach plays into it too.)

The problem is that tucked in the details of their compromise plan that features all kinds of neat stuff about providing contraception for poor women and better sex education, there are a bunch of pernicious anti-choice and anti-science elements like federal money for ultrasounds in clinics and (incorrect) information about fetal pain among other things. (And you certainly see nothing about expanding beyond the 14% of American counties that now provide abortion services.)

There’s no free lunch, right? Acces to birth control and sex ed comes at a price and that price is the idea that women can make this decision without first being forced to sit through a bunch of propaganda designed to make her feel ashamed and then being “offered” an ultrasound that shows the adorabletinybaby inside her tummy begging for its little life, after which they will also “offer” her some anesthetic for the poor little tyke before they go ahead and kill it. (If she’s still selfish and cruel enough to go through with it, that is.)

What we are seeing is a new pincer strategy, with a slow, relentless mainstreaming of the liberal pro-life(and cowardly politicians’) rhetoric which is intended to make abortion a source of shame and guilt so they can tut-tut about it in church — and the ongoing onslaught of the conservative anti-choice agenda which is intended to enshrine the fetus as a full human with rights that trump the irrelevant vessel it lives inside of. The woman with an unwanted pregnancy is getting squeezed by everybody now.

“NARAL” kind of sounds like “NRA” but they aren’t even in the same league:

In May 1977, the NRA began a rightward shift after controversy erupted within the organization over the possibility of banning “Saturday night specials.” In the so-called “Cincinnati Revolt”, more than 2,000 NRA members met in the Cincinnati Convention-Exposition Center until nearly 4 AM. Harlon Carter, a member of the NRA’s Executive Council who had been fired as political action director, was elected the new leader of the NRA.

Since this change, the NRA has consistently opposed any proposed legislation that purports to limit access to guns by law-abiding citizens.

In the late 70’s it was a matter faith among liberals that handguns would be outlawed and other guns would be strictly regulated. It was just a matter of time. Within 20 years the NRA had killed the issue. Gun control is no longer even on the menu outside the biggest cities and even then it’s dicey.

The NRA said that Americans had a right to bear arms. Period. They didn’t bargain or negotiate. And they were successful because when your raison d’etre is protecting a fundamental right, you have to be absolutist or you lose the moral authority of your argument.

Abortion is a messy fight, nobody disputes that. I’m all for contraception and sex education and all the other things that these abortion “reducers” are pushing. But it appears to me as if that’s mainly a political ploy to appease the pro-choice crowd into believing that if they just give up a little here and there, the basic right will be preserved. It will not happen that way. With all this talk of “reducing,” and “rare” and fetal pain and snowflake babies and all the rest, they are helping the right prepare the ground for a full outlawing of abortion if Roe is overturned. They aren’t even trying to make the fundamental argument anymore.

I’m a good Democrat and I’m also someone who likes to think strategically. As I argued above, I think it’s a huge mistake for advocacy groups that represent fundamental rights to ever negotiate (leave that to the politicians.) But I could theoretically support any strategy that would ensure a woman’s right to choose. On the substance, however, this is no more subject to compromise to me than habeas corpus or torture or slavery. It defines what it is to be an autonomous human being. If every woman in this country doesn’t own her own body then she is not free.

I’ve never trusted politicians on this issue and now it looks like we can’t trust one of the premier pro-choice advocacy groups either. They are no longer effective. But there are plenty of others that can use my money and I’ll be sending it to them rather than NARAL from now on. We need savvy people doing this right now.

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The Aristocrats

by digby

Gilliard has posted a rundown of the recent Fall of the House of Bush. You can certainly understand why the patriarch might cry in public. But what’s most fascinating is this amazing picture.

It reminded me of this article by Phil Agre from a few years back that I’ve been meaning to discuss as we watch the edifice of modern conservatism start to crumble. It’s an interesting piece, but what’s really important is something that is so obvious that we sometimes forget about it with all the Neo-con and Theo-con intellectual babble of recent years:

From the pharaohs of ancient Egypt to the self-regarding thugs of ancient Rome to the glorified warlords of medieval and absolutist Europe, in nearly every urbanized society throughout human history, there have been people who have tried to constitute themselves as an aristocracy. These people and their allies are the conservatives.

The tactics of conservatism vary widely by place and time. But the most central feature of conservatism is deference: a psychologically internalized attitude on the part of the common people that the aristocracy are better people than they are. Modern-day liberals often theorize that conservatives use “social issues” as a way to mask economic objectives, but this is almost backward: the true goal of conservatism is to establish an aristocracy, which is a social and psychological condition of inequality. Economic inequality and regressive taxation, while certainly welcomed by the aristocracy, are best understood as a means to their actual goal, which is simply to be aristocrats. More generally, it is crucial to conservatism that the people must literally love the order that dominates them. Of course this notion sounds bizarre to modern ears, but it is perfectly overt in the writings of leading conservative theorists such as Burke. Democracy, for them, is not about the mechanisms of voting and office-holding. In fact conservatives hold a wide variety of opinions about such secondary formal matters. For conservatives, rather, democracy is a psychological condition. People who believe that the aristocracy rightfully dominates society because of its intrinsic superiority are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.

There’s been a lot of rightwing populist talk in recent years and plenty of econobabble about “the ownership society” and the rest. Modern conservatism’s most successful strategy was to merge public relations and politics into a seamless operation in which it could use modern marketing methods to convince people to vote against their own interests. (Perhaps we are seeing the first signs of how that can blow back on them. We’ll see.)

But looking at that amazing picture of the Bush clan in the White house — the former president, the current president, the Governor of one of the largest states — all together in the White House says everything you need to know about what true conservatism is really all about.

We allowed them to impeach the duly elected president who beat the father, for trivial reasons. We allowed the father’s appointees to settle a dubious election result in the son’s favor. We have watched them as they created a presidency insulated from popular or congressional oversight in which they have gone so far as to set forth the idea that the president has no obligation to follow the law. They lowered taxes on the very rich to a level not seen in many decades and created an income disparity between the very, very rich and everyone else that is unprecedented in the modern era. They eliminated the single best means of ensuring that an aristocracy will not truly form — the estate inheritance tax. The ten year campaign to repeal it was bankrolled by 18 of the richest families in America.

Who says Bush isn’t a real conservative? Why he’s the most purely conservative president in American history.

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Poodle Talk

by digby

Tom Schaller over at TAPPED notes something I’ve been observing for a while as well: the precipitous loss of Tony Blair’s rhetorical skills:

MARKETERS-IN-CHIEF. Regarding the Blair-Bush press conference this morning, is it just me or is Tony Blair becoming less eloquent and coherent the more he stands side-by-side with Bush?

I thought it was just me. It’s rubbing off, and not just in Bush’s presence. Here’s an excerpt from his Labour Party speech in September:

And of course, the new anxiety is the global struggle against terrorism without mercy or limit.

This is a struggle that will last a generation and more. But this I believe passionately: we will not win until we shake ourselves free of the wretched capitulation to the propaganda of the enemy, that somehow we are the ones responsible.

This terrorism isn’t our fault. We didn’t cause it.

It’s not the consequence of foreign policy.

It’s an attack on our way of life.

It’s global.

It has an ideology.

It killed nearly 3,000 people including over 60 British on the streets of New York before war in Afghanistan or Iraq was even thought of.

It has been decades growing.

Its victims are in Egypt, Algeria, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Turkey.

Over 30 nations in the world.

It preys on every conflict.

It exploits every grievance.

And its victims are mainly Muslim.

This is not our war against Islam.

[…]

If we retreat now, hand Iraq over to Al Qaida and sectarian death squads and Afghanistan back to Al Qaida and the Taleban, we won’t be safer; we will be committing a craven act of surrender that will put our future security in the deepest peril.

Of course it’s tough.

Not a day goes by or an hour in the day when I don’t reflect on our troops with admiration and thanks – the finest, the best, the bravest, any nation could hope for.

They are not fighting in vain. But for this nation’s future.

I’m sure it sounds better in a british accent but it’s still Bush boilerplate. I’m surprised he didn’t say that that until 9/11, England had always thought the oceans would protect her.

I have concluded that while we have all been trying for years to figure out just what in the hell Blair thought he was doing, the simplest answer is probably the right one. He’s just as dumb as Bush on this matter. He believes this crap. Now that all the early rationales that made his rhetoric sensible lie moldering in the historical compost heap, he’s left with nothing but the puerile ad copy that Junior’s team concocted to make these people believe they had been anointed by God to fight a grand struggle between good and evil. Sad.

Update: “I know it’s tough”

In case anyone missed Bush’s little tantrum this morning, here it is:

Q Mr. President, the Iraq Study Group described the situation in Iraq as grave and deteriorating. You said that the increase in attacks is unsettling. That won’t convince many people that you’re [not] still in denial about how bad things are in Iraq, and question your sincerity about changing course.

PRESIDENT BUSH: It’s bad in Iraq. Does that help? (Laughter.)

Q Why did it take others to say it before you’ve been willing to acknowledge for the world —

PRESIDENT BUSH: In all due respect, I’ve been saying it a lot. I understand how tough it is. And I’ve been telling the American people how tough it is. And they know how tough it is. And the fundamental question is, do we have a plan to achieve our objective. Are we willing to change as the enemy has changed? And what the Baker-Hamilton study has done is it shows good ideas as to how to go forward. What our Pentagon is doing is figuring out ways to go forward, all aiming to achieve our objective.

Make no mistake about it, I understand how tough it is, sir. I talk to families who die. I understand there’s sectarian violence. I also understand that we’re hunting down al Qaeda on a regular basis and we’re bringing them to justice. I understand how hard our troops are working. I know how brave the men and women who wear the uniform are, and therefore, they’ll have the full support of this government. I understand what long deployments mean to wives and husbands, and mothers and fathers, particularly as we come into a holiday season. I understand. And I have made it abundantly clear how tough it is.

I also believe we’re going to succeed. I believe we’ll prevail. Not only do I know how important it is to prevail, I believe we will prevail. I understand how hard it is to prevail. But I also want the American people to understand that if we were to fail — and one way to assure failure is just to quit, is not to adjust, and say it’s just not worth it — if we were to fail, that failed policy will come to hurt generations of Americans in the future.

And as I said in my opening statement, I believe we’re in an ideological struggle between forces that are reasonable and want to live in peace, and radicals and extremists. And when you throw into the mix radical Shia and radical Sunni trying to gain power and topple moderate governments, with energy which they could use to blackmail Great Britain or America, or anybody else who doesn’t kowtow to them, and a nuclear weapon in the hands of a government that is — would be using that nuclear weapon to blackmail to achieve political objectives — historians will look back and say, how come Bush and Blair couldn’t see the threat? That’s what they’ll be asking. And I want to tell you, I see the threat and I believe it is up to our governments to help lead the forces of moderation to prevail. It’s in our interests.

And one of the things that has changed for American foreign policy is a threat overseas can now come home to hurt us, and September the 11th should be a wake-up call for the American people to understand what happens if there is violence and safe havens in a part of the world. And what happens is people can die here at home.

So, no, I appreciate your question. As you can tell, I feel strongly about making sure you understand that I understand it’s tough. But I want you to know, sir, that I believe we’ll prevail. I know we have to adjust to prevail, but I wouldn’t have our troops in harm’s way if I didn’t believe that, one, it was important, and, two, we’ll succeed. Thank you.

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Exfoliating The Bushes

by digby

I was reading Christy Hardin Smith’s piece this morning about my congressman Henry Waxman and how the republicans changed the rules back in the 90’s to give the the chairman of the house Government reform Committee unilateral subpoena power. As ye sow, so shall ye reap, my friends.

In her post she points out something that I think everyone should memorize and be prepared to quote every time these Republicans start to whine a cry about the Democratic witchhunt:

The House took 140 hours of sworn testimony to get to the bottom of whether Clinton had misused the White House Christmas-card list for political purposes, but only 12 hours on prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.

It would probably be very helpful to have at the ready a handy list comparing all the subpoenas and investigations during the Clinton administration as compared to Bush. The Republicans are going to portray the Democratic congress as an out of control lynch mob. It’s important that we remind everyone of what a bunch of slackers they have been under a Republican president and what a non-stop slavering freakshow they ran the last time government was divided.

But when I read that thing about the Christmas card list it also reminded me of something else I recently became aware of. If you’ll recall, during the Clinton administration there was a big scandal over the selling of the Lincoln Bedroom. Everyone agreed that campaign donors had been invited to spend the night in the White House since the time it was built, but what bothered everyone was how mercenary the whole thing seemed, how the hippie hicks from Arkansas were disrespectful toward the nation’s great heritage.

Here’s a pretty decent example of the tone of the complaints:

LEE CULLUM, Dallas Morning News: Yes, it is crass. It’s vulgar. It’s terrible taste. The Dallas Morning News had two editorials this week, not one but two, calling for a special prosecutor in this matter. You know, the White House has simply gone too far. I’m not naive…this has been a systematic selling of the White House in bits and pieces. It’s gone too far, and it’s way out of hand. It is crass.

When Bush ran on “restoring honor and integrity” to the White House, he wasn’t just saying he would avoid interns; the tabloid political press and the GOP congressional committees had been portraying Clinton as a cheap used car salesman, selling out the People’s House, for years. They even accused him of stealing the hand-towels on AirForce One.

So imagine my surprise when I see this on CNN the other day:

When the Secret Service phoned Lesa Glucroft, they were calling about hand lotion. Officials wanted to know if the Calabasas businesswoman was interested in sticking the U.S. presidential seal on her lotions and powders and selling them as “America’s Legacy” at the White House gift shop. At first she thought it was a hoax. “I certainly didn’t think it was a serious call,” said Glucroft, a registered Democrat. But the inquiry, from a licensing agent for the U.S. Secret Service Uniformed Division Benefit Fund, was genuine. And now a line of toiletries bearing the presidential insignia is about to hit the gift shop’s shelves. The antibacterial hand wash, glycerin soap, after-shave and other products come in bottles embossed with the distinctive presidential seal: a vigilant eagle holding an olive branch and arrows in its talons and encircled by stars and the words “The President of the United States.”

You know, I don’t deny the Secret Service a right to have a Benefit Fund. More power to them, they do a fine job. They’ve run a little gift shop in the basement of the White House for years where they sell little tchotckes and they have a little fundraising program to sell ChristmasOrnaments door to door. (Who knew?)

But where did they get the right to exclusively license the sacred People’s House for toiletry items — which they are selling to the public all over the internet? I can’t help but wonder what other intimate products are adorned with the presidential seal these days.

It seems to me that the bluenose society mavens might find all this “crass,” “vulgar” and “in terrible taste,” if not entirely inappropriate. I guess not. In fact, I’m girding myself for the soon-to-begin paeans to the “graciousness” and “class” that the Bush’s brought to the social scene in Washington. They might have been the most destructive presidency in history but at least they weren’t a bunch of no-class hick liberal elites who didn’t know their place.

Update: Dave Niewert says:

I don’t know about you, but the symbology of the Bush White House marketing official presidential hand cleaner strikes me as a flagrant bit of unintentional self-revelation.

Click here for the punchline.

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Wise Men Were Wiser Then

The following is an excerpt from Rick Perlstein‘s upcoming book Nixonland: The Politics and Culture of the American Berserk, 1965-1972

The President began to look almost demented. At a March 25th speech to AFL-CIO Building Trades Department, as North Vietnamese troops made their deepest penetration into the South so far, he cried:

“Now, the America we are building”–he paused, and hit the words deliberately for emphasis–“would–be–a–threatened–nation if we let freedom and liberty die in Vietnam…

“I sometimes wonder why we Americans enjoy punishing ourselves so much with our own criticism.

“This is a pretty good land. I am not saying you never had it so good. But that is a fact, isn’t it?”

He pulled himself close to the podium, and stared into the audience, his eyes as wide as saucers.

That night, the bipartisan mandarinate known formally as the Senior Advisory Group began preparing at the Pentagon for a meeting with the President. Among them were advisors who’d steered the course of the Cold War before the Cold War had even been named. The last time the “Wise Men” had met, on November 2, they told the President to stay the course. Now, the head of counterinsurgency briefed them that because Americans had killed 80,000 enemy soldiers, Tet was a famous U.S. victory. UN Ambassador and former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg questioned his figures. Wasn’t the usual ratio that you could count on four times as many soldiers getting wounded than had died in a battle?

The briefer acknowledged that was so.

Then, Goldberg replied, that meant some 320,000 Communists had been removed from the field of battle. But the general had also told them that the Communists had only 240,000 soldiers. So we’d wounded 133 percent of the enemy.

Another briefer was more forthright. He said progress on the ground in Vietnam would take five to seven years. Clark Clifford asked him if the war could ever be won: “Not under present circumstances.” Clifford asked him what he would do if he were president: “Stop the bombing and negotiate.”

Which was exactly what President Johnson had been going around telling audiences he’d never do.

They met with Johnson the next morning. “Mr. President, there has been a very significant shift in most of our positions since we last met,” McGeorge Bundy began. He raised the name of Truman’s legendary secretary of state, a man to make any Democratic president quiver: “Dean Acheson summed up the majority feeling when he said that we can no longer do the job we set out to do in the time we have left, and we must begin to take steps to disengage.”

Lyndon left, then raged to wise man George Ball: “Your whole group must have been brainwashed!” It was a kind of last gasp. He was finally beginning to get the picture: he had to prepare the American people for the reality of eventual disengagement from Vietnam.

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