Frank Rich: One Step Closer to the Big Enchilada

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/30/05 at 8:39am

The man contextualizes politics and culture magnificently. Snippets from the lede and closing:

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TO believe that the Bush-Cheney scandals will be behind us anytime soon you'd have to believe that the Nixon-Agnew scandals peaked when G. Gordon Liddy and his bumbling band were nailed for the Watergate break-in. But Watergate played out for nearly two years after the gang that burglarized Democratic headquarters was indicted by a federal grand jury; it even dragged on for more than a year after Nixon took "responsibility" for the scandal, sacrificed his two top aides and weathered the indictments of two first-term cabinet members. In those ensuing months, America would come to see that the original petty crime was merely the leading edge of thematically related but wildly disparate abuses of power that Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, would name "the White House horrors."...

For now, it's conventional wisdom in Washington that the Bush White House's infractions are nowhere near those of the Nixon administration, as David Gergen put it on MSNBC on Friday morning. But Watergate's dirty tricks were mainly prompted by the ruthless desire to crush the political competition at any cost. That's a powerful element in the Bush scandals, too, but this administration has upped the ante by playing dirty tricks with war. Back on July 6, 2003, when the American casualty toll in Iraq stood at 169 and Mr. Wilson had just published his fateful Op-Ed, Robert Novak, yet to write his column outing Mr. Wilson's wife, declared that "weapons of mass destruction or uranium from Niger" were "little elitist issues that don't bother most of the people." That's what Nixon administration defenders first said about the "third-rate burglary" at Watergate, too.
One Step Closer to the Big Enchilada

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/30/05 at 5:10pm

Another great contextualizer: Steve Clemons who has the website "The Washington Note":

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What is tragic is that during the Clinton administration, the American public was appropriately miffed, in this writer's view, with revelations of fundraising coffees inside the White House, with Lincoln Bedroom stays for top donors, and with the well-reported and now-cliched revelations about President Clinton's illicit affair with Monica Lewinsky.

But compare all of that, at its worst, with Tom DeLay's brand of pay-for-access-and-favors mega-fundraising from America's wealthiest firms and individuals. Compare that to a hyping of intelligence estimates about Iraq's danger to the world and to us that proved to be wrong and which have led to not only the death and injury of tens of thousands of people on both sides of this conflict. Compare that to the savage wounding of American mystique in the world, to showing America's military and financial limits to enemies and friends. Today, American power and leverage is falling precipitously in the eyes of those who want America to be a strong, albeit benign, nation.

Scooter Libby had a tilting hand in the affairs that have trashed this nation's status in the world. But he did not do it alone.

We should all fell sick about this. Out stomachs should churn with revulsion and anguish about what he has done -- and we should be careful with too much joy over this victory for accountability.

Libby did not do his work alone. There are many other culprits who helped him, but it would be quite wrong to think that Patrick Fitzgerald alone can bring all to justice. It's too big a problem when the President and Vice President cultivated a "culture" where Libby's type of alleged skull-duggery was encouraged.

What the Fitzgerald Investigation is Really About: Truth & Accountability

Updated On: 10/30/05 at 05:10 PM

[BlueWizard]

Posted: 10/30/05 at 7:39pm

Sorry to veer off-topic, but what's with the New York Times' new TimesSelect? Couldn't the website's rampant advertising pay for the cost of publishing the opinion editorials online?