1984? Good Morning, 1972

by DemFromCT

So there's Fineman and Brokaw on Hardball: no big deal, the REAL story is the Iraq election. Okay, maybe Bush is pissed this spy story is stepping on his good and well-deserved PR, but it'll fade soon enough (transcript available Mon after 3 pm).

And then there's the WaPo today. Oopsies, guys. Guess you're wrong again.

The iraqi elections, such as they are, are somewhere in there. But the story, the narrative, is about the President's use and misuse of power.

This has gotten both sides of the aisle so concerned, Congress is actually considering conducting oversight hearings. Fancy that! A Republican Congress actually considering doing their job, even if it's not to the benefit of a Republican President.

But this is what's really going on:

In his four-year campaign against al Qaeda, President Bush has turned the U.S. national security apparatus inward to secretly collect information on American citizens on a scale unmatched since the intelligence reforms of the 1970s.

The president's emphatic defense yesterday of warrantless eavesdropping on U.S. citizens and residents marked the third time in as many months that the White House has been obliged to defend a departure from previous restraints on domestic surveillance. In each case, the Bush administration concealed the program's dimensions or existence from the public and from most members of Congress.

Remember Richard Nixon? Remember "Iraq is not Vietnam"? Remember countless defenses by the Bushbots, paid and unpaid? On this score, the recreation of the Imperial Presidency, we are seeing abuses we've not seen since Nixon's day. And as we have written before, the Nixon playbook is what drives this WH.

The story is not the election in Iraq. The story is a presidency with no controls and a Congress that doesn't do its job, except for taking payouts from K Street lobbyists. What a record to run on.

Comments

[DemFromCT]

Watching Condi on Meet the Tim... thgis is a 'rising star'? She was NSA when eveything wrong hsppened.

[DemFromCT]

Interesting editorial from the NY Times:

President Bush defended the program yesterday, saying it was saving lives, hotly insisting that he was working within the Constitution and the law, and denouncing The Times for disclosing the program's existence. We don't know if he was right on the first count; this White House has cried wolf so many times on the urgency of national security threats that it has lost all credibility. But we have learned the hard way that Mr. Bush's team cannot be trusted to find the boundaries of the law, much less respect them.

But, oh, that credibility issue looming large again.

Interesting, of course, given their role in this.

[Sara]

This is going to be fascinating. On Meet the Press they offered up approval polls -- Bush at 39% and Congress at 25%. And what's on deck is Abramoff flipping out, telling all, and a whole gaggle of congresscritters getting their careers and asses handed to them in Grand Jury Indictments -- or perhaps a well executed flip themselves.

About the only thing that could rescue them would be no holes barred hearings on spying on American Citizens by NSA. My guess is that Bush will go to the mats, order members of the executive not to testify, order that no documents be delivered to Spector and Leahy, and then we'll have to see whether they know how to fight a constitutional crisis battle.

The relevant question might be whether these Senators know what the word "Victory" actually means?

[p.lukasiak]

I don't expect much of any congressional hearings. What we are talking about here is unambiguously impeachable offenses --- given the existence of FISA warrants, and the emergency powers found under FISA, there was simply no need for this "program", and the spying is in violation of both the US Constitution and statutory law.

[DemFromCT]

Carl levin dodged that point... all in good time. get the facts first. et cetera.

But they well know what the stakes are.

[emptywheel]

Sara

Reading your post makes me wonder whether it's not a question of WHETHER we'll have a constitutional crisis, but whether we'll be able to influence WHAT KIND of constitutional crisis we get.

All of which is pretty ironic, given that one of the justifications for SCOTUS to take Bush v Gore was to avoid a constitutional crisis. We'd have been better off with THAT constitutional crisis than the one we may yet get.

[DemFromCT]

The MTP poll, btw, is ther in-house NBC/WSJ poll, covered here.

Scroll down to "...Bush bounce...", temp unavailable otherwise as typepad rebuilds its server cache.

[Philosophicus]

Perhaps only a sideshow, but still--- what will this do, if anything to the Alito nomination?
If I were a Senator, Democrat or Repub, the first question out of my mouth now would be--"Judge Alito, what is your opinion of the President authorizing warrantless wiretaps, and searches, in contravention of law, with out access to judicial review?"
If he says he agress with the President, then I think that would count if nothing else would as a extraordinary circumstance to hang a filibuster on.
If he says the President broke the law, then its one more millstone around Bushs neck.
Personally, I don't believe that Alito or any other judge with a working brain could stand around and see any court FISA or what ever mooted in this fashion.

[Mimikatz]

It is no accident that we are seeing Nixon Redux here. I don't think that it is all because of the people involved--Cheney, Rumsfeld et al. The nature of the enterprise itself compels this outcome--deciding you know what is best for America but that America won't buy it if you lay it all out, or else it will take too long to do so, and so you execute it all in secret, manipulate Congress and the people with disinformation, and are forced to constantly cover up what you have done. And fighting insurgencies seems to commonly lead to torture and excess brutality--ask the French about Algeria, for example.

On the Norquist/Abramoff/Rove side, again it is the inner fear (or knowledge) that if you lay your agenda out in a more or less honest way, a majority will reject it. So you have to do it by stealth, rig the playing field, garner gobs and gobs of money to change people's minds, or at least cloud them enough so they do not see what you are really doing. And of course the money gathering and money laundering and money spending is in large part illegal, or at the fringes of what the law will allow. So again the enterprise compels a cover-up.

It is all unstable and it is all falling apart at one time. I do think that the intersecting Abramoff and DeLay scandals are going to ensnare a lot of powerful Congresscritters before it is over. At the same time, the spying debacle, on top of the torture fiasco, and the War mess, is creating a picture of an Imperial presidency out of control.

It is all spiraling out of control for them at the time so many of the leaders of the enterprise are under personal jeopardy for their own involvement. That's why they won't be able to keep it from unravelling.

If everything went well in Iraq, he might be able to get out of it. But that really doesn't seem likely, and as long as Iraq remains such a drain on life and treasure, there is a real temptation on both sides of the aisle to set oneself apart from the rotting presidency on the war/torture/spying/dictatorship angle as well as domestic issues like retirement and health care.

But I don't see hearings until 2007. Then we will need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to sort this all out. What a mess. Those (like the Press) who connived with the malefactors really, really need to be held to account as well.

[DemFromCT]

Those (like the Press) who connived with the malefactors really, really need to be held to account as well.

Chris Matthews (his own story.. see transcript when available) went to a Christmas party at the WH and Bush spoke to him. Said he looked really preppie. Matthews was so thrilled he can't stop talking up Bush and how much he likes him, the iraqi elections as a huge turning point that changes everything, etc. and only a minor peep about the spying thing.

I hate what these people do. They really are dangerous in their zeal for acceptance and access.

[Kagro X]

What? A constitutional crisis? Where? Says who?

Myself, I think it should mean for the Alito nomination what I said it should have meant for all previous (and all subsequent) nomination. No hearings and no votes until we determine the legitimacy of the Bush junta's occupation of Washington, DC.

For convenience's sake, we can begin by having Bush's Secret Service detail place him under house arrest. You can't beat their prime location for such things, and it's the Secret Service, after all, that's charged with investigation of "computer-based attacks on our nation’s financial, banking, and telecommunications infrastructure."

[Mickey]

Naturally the common people don’t want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to do the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

Herman Goering at his Nuremberg Trial

[Mimikatz]

It may work in all countries at first, but in a democracy it may become difficult to continue fooling all of the people. That seems to be happening here. But there have to be a critical mass of people willing to say it isn't working, and everytime I think someone like Matthews gets it, as he seemed to for awhile on Libby, the Bush people stroke him a little, play to his vanity, and he becomes a pussycat again.

That is really what the Dems and any R's willing to speak out need--the press not to treat them liek George Romney. Support them a little. Act like they are telling the truth.

On Alito, I think the Supremes taking the DeLay redistricting from Texas is significant. Alito is on record as saying that Baker v. Carr (one person, one vote) was wrong. He should be grilled on this, without asking him to prejudge the Texas case. As in, "Do you still hold those views?"

[marky]

No truth and reconciliation---just glass prison cells for the whole lot of them: condi, w., Cheney, Yoo, Addington.
For a cabal so tightly focused on secrecy, no other punishment would be fitting.

[ng]

I don't expect much of any congressional hearings. What we are talking about here is unambiguously impeachable offenses --- given the existence of FISA warrants, and the emergency powers found under FISA, there was simply no need for this "program", and the spying is in violation of both the US Constitution and statutory law.

This brings up the secondary issue of competence. If this internal spying is illegal, and was unnecessary because there was an easy proper process in place at the time to do it which was just skipped, well you have both a lawbreaker in the president and an incompetent lawbreaker. Both are impeachable offenses, and I am serious when I say that BOTH issues need open discussing. This guy is truly from the gang that cannot shoot straight. You also just have to be wondering what dumb/dangerous bit of administrative misadventure will be disclosed next??

[jonnybutter]

I agree with EW that it's really a question of what kind of constitutional crisis we'll have. By rights, Bush should be impeached and removed next session. But we know those things probably won't happen. It's so complicated. Cheney is almost a kind of reverse-Quayle impeachment insurance so long as he's there. If - with the help of sentimental fools like Tweety and others like him - they can just run out the clock, this regime could limp on for years.

Even Godwin's Law has spun itself to mean 'inflamitory nazi comparisons', when of course it means something much more precise (and funny). Fascism is a state of mind, not a set of uniforms or accents or even huge atrocities, necessarily. American Fascism looks like this Administration, but is, natch, a progressive disease. And it never was just Jesus Angleton and Ledeen who actually admired Franco, Mussolini - all the Paleos basically like those guys, and would openly admit it to you. It's not PC to admit to admiring Hitler in 'mixed company', but you know they do so, in some ways. Lots of guys who are War Channel addicts etc. sort of admire Mr Hilter's 'acheivement' in some ways. The allure of death - catch it! You can really think of America's ending up fighting fascism in the 40s as a strikingly liberal thing, rather than it having been a foregone conclusion that we would automatically fight on the 'right' side. We pretty much had to side against Germany.

All I guess I'm trying to say is that fascism in America is no big deal in the sense that it's not particularly rare, and it makes no sense to wait for a thunderbold: to be either too coy or too shocked, because those are both sides of the same coin, viz 'it can't happen here'. American fascism is Establishment, not crazy thugs (as in literal thugs) rampaging through the streets. I laughed reading that Kristoff had compared O'Reilly to Father Coughlin, because I was thinking the same thing; but the point here is that he's NOT Coughlin - he's O'Reilly. Evidently, despair, too, springs eternal in our species, so we may as well just see that for what it is. It is 'same shit different day' (yes, that famous Goering quote could've been written by Rove), but it's not the EXACT same shit. It's a state of mind.

This will come down to politics, of course, and the question in my mind is whether/when it's preferable for the GOP to save itself in the next three years with the ascension of a McCain, vs just having the current gang more/less in 'recievership' (powerless) for the duration. I don't want McCain to be president this term or any term. But I kind of want Bush, et. al. out sooner rather than later. Yes it's quaint, but: country before party. I'm not absolutely positive yet which eventuality would ultimately turn out to be better for the country, but it is a serious question now.

[prostratedragon]

Myself, I think it should mean for the Alito nomination what I said it should have meant for all previous (and all subsequent) nomination. No hearings and no votes until we determine the legitimacy of the Bush junta's occupation of Washington, DC.

Kagro says it. All else is a waste of time. 'Course at this point the relevant agenda is more like violation of the oath to protect the Constitution, to obey the laws, and to enjoin subordinates likewise. You get all three just from this one snoop case---a trifecta! Would the 2000 and 2004 election shenanigans count before the Senate as showing a pattern of behavior?