I thought for sure someone would have diaried this obnoxious little oped piece by Joe Nocera in yesterday's NYT. I guess I'll take it on. The title of his piece was The Ugliness Started With Bork. You can read the whole piece of drivel here, if you are inclined to:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
You needn't bother, though. I'll summarize the fluff piece below and point out the obvious errors.
Joe is a nice enough guy...I've seen him on one or two cable shows that puts him in a position of expounding upon something other than Wall Street, and he seems like he's not one of those who have an ideological axe to grind...but maybe I haven't seen enough of him. This column, however, made me do a double take.
Joe's premise is that todays gridlock, obstructionism, hyper-partisanship and rancor on the part of the GOP can be traced directly back to the contentious Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice nominee Robert Bork. All but 2 Dems voted against his confirmation, damned them all...and they conducted a high tech lynching of the man before the term had even been coined. Although the Atlanta Journal-Constitutiojn did ad the verb "to Bork" into the vernacular at the time.
According to Joe, the bearded One's only real foible was the fact that he was unfashionably conservative and retrospect when it came to jurisprudence. You know...as inj wanting to overturn Roe-v-Wade, and having been on record opposing the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Oh...and being the last weasel willing to do Richard Nixon's bidding when it came to the Saturday Night Massacre. (Google it, kiddies)
In Nocera's world...those are just minor matters, and the Senate should always simply rubber stamp whatever asshat and even bigger asshat of a president nominates. So much for original intent...Advice and consent simply means acquiesce.
Robert Bork was and is a piece of shit. His mere nomination to the position of Supreme Court Justice was an affront by Ronald Reagan. It was his way of sticking his dick out of his pants and asking the Democratic Party to kneel down in front of him. To their credit, they did not.
Joe doesn't remember it that way.
He looks back upon that clash between the Branches of govt as some sort of low water mark that has spawned all of the squalor, the pettiness, the obstructionism and loathing between the aisles that has transpired since. Maybe Jow is simply much younger than his bald head suggests, or perhaps he was doing too much coke back in the day to remember anything before Bork...or maybe he was just a money grubbing 1% wannabe that never had time to pay attention to anything else that didn't set him firmly upon the path to prosperity.
His premise is correct, but the timing is off by about 24 years. The Democratic Party is responsible for the rancor in Washington, DC, but it has nothing to do with the fat, flabby, horribly bearded judicial neanderthal that Ronald Reagan nominated to the highest Court in the land. It started with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
LBJ presciently commented that the passage of that law would cost the Dems the South for at least a generation. As it turns out...I'm guessing 4 generations. It pushed the Southern Whites out of the party and left them rootless temporarily, until George Wallace came along and Richard Nixon had an epiphany concerning the "Southern Strategy."
Channel that hatred and bigotry...and you have a ticket to the White House. That was the Southern Strategy. And it still works. Nixon started the politics we still are living beneath, and his successors have only stoked the fires. And it is a fire that shows no signs of ever waning. It is, quite the contrary, the GOP gift that keeps on giving. There is no bottom to the dark pit that Richard Nixon's advisors first began digging.
Today's rancor doesn't have a flying fuck to do with Robert Bork, Mr. Nocera. It began in 1964...came to a head in 1968...and reached fever pitch in 1974 when Dick Nixon was forced to resign his presidency. There has hardly been a president since who hasn't faced some sort of organized assault by the opposition party in an effort to undermine their presidency. It has been total tit for tat for 37 fucking years now...and while it must be great fun and games for the asshats in Congress....I have to say, as an American who has fallen through one of the many cracks and fissures that have opened over those decades...it is anything but amusing anymore.
Joe Nocera needs to stick to the business section, and stop wasting space on the NYT oped page.