Any moment now, if it hasn't started already, the Republicans are going to come after us for reveling in the President's misery. We think that he's been drinking and we seem
happy about it; what sort of monsters must we be.
It's hard to keep from laughing in shock at G.W. Bush possibly having been driven by the recognition of his own thuggish incompetence back to the embrace of Jack Daniels. It's hard not to revel in the thought of him staggering through the East Wing corridors like Lady Macbeth, staring at the blood of 2000 U.S. soldiers and countless innocent Iraqi civilians on his hands, his jaw twitching as he mutters "out, out, damn spot." It's hard not to luxuriate in the tart flavor of what would be this most delicious of just desserts.
Yet part of me does hesitate. More below.
I hesitate not just because the man has his finger on the nuclear button for the next three-and-a-third years. It's not just because
"he is a human being after all" and sympathy for the sick and wounded is part of what is supposed to separate us from the lower beasts like Drudge and the Little Green Freepers. It's not just because I lack the go-for-the-jugular instinct it takes to succeed in modern politics (although perhaps I do, as perhaps you're about to tell me.)
Rather, it's in part because this may be what we of the teaching trade call a "teachable moment." The boy-god of the Republicans revealed to be just a flawed man after all - we already knew that, of course, but many GOP faithful apparently did not. But the lesson to teach them doesn't involve George W. so much as Bill Clinton. This may be the moment where we can scrape the scales from Republican eyes and help them see what was really, truly, so wrong about the witch hunt against Clinton in his second term. Maybe they can finally understand that the Democrats are not the party of indulging immorality (as they like to claim) but the party with an adult understanding of human weakness and the consequent need for personal privacy.
Here's a scenario for to consider: Let's say that Bush started drinking again just after Katrina hit. Imagine that Democratic operatives convince a White House intern to sue one of Bush's top lieutenants for sexual harassment taking place this fourth week of September. They subpoena Bush as a witness and he testifies. When he backs up his aide they try to impeach his testimony by asking him if he considered himself an alcoholic, and he says yes, and then they ask if he had begin drinking in early September, because perhaps that would cloud his judgment or his memory. It may be a stupid theory - not much chance that his drinking would have made a difference given the facts at hand - but the judge lets them ask it for now. And Bush lies. He says he's stayed dry since he was 40. And in fact, under this scenario, let's say that right after his testimony Bush does go back on the wagon.
Now the analogy isn't perfect, because Bush's professed inability to drink without falling apart poses a much greater danger to his ability to exercise his duties than did Clinton's schoolboy horniness, but the psychological motive for lying under oath would be much the same. Each man would be afraid of what the truth would mean for his job, his family, his party, his legacy. Justice would not be wounded by this little fib, each might think, and what real harm would come of it anyway.
If Bush had been drinking in this scenario, and yet later refused to admit it, Democrats might have a field day hunting him down over the next few months, using his false testimony as a club. And yet, fun as that might be - and fair tit for tat after the Starr Report - it would in some ways still be wrong. The lesson for Republicans, if Bush is proven to have relapsed, is that everyone has a secret shame. Everyone has something that they simply do not deserve to have exposed in public (unless they, like Jim Guckert, proclaim it on a public website, or unless they favor oppressing others for doing the equivalent of what they do secretly) People need the freedom to keep secrets that don't harm others. You can laugh at them based on your suspicions, but unless the stakes are huge you shouldn't use the legal system to torture them until they confess.
Republicans may soon look at the President and feel like many of us had when watching the Clinton Presidency unravel. "Why can't you leave the man alone?", we might hear them say. "It was a mistake. He was weak. Can't people make mistakes?" And, once his finger is safely off the nuclear button, they may well have a point. But we will then need to point out to them that our reaction to Clinton's fooling around with an intern in the Oval Office was much the same as their future reaction to Bush's falling off the wagon when the going got tough. We didn't want Clinton to have done that, we didn't endorse his actions: we just understood that the appropriate response was to censure (formally or informally) and then - as the saying goes - move on.
If Bush has been drinking again, we're in for an uglier period than I think most of us realize, and I don't just mean "Acting President Dick Cheney" ugly. We're in for a "the Democrats drove the poor man to this" and "the Democrats are a bunch of vicious jackals feasting on his pain" ugly. It doesn't have to make sense - their talking points rarely do - but I'm afraid it will resonate with the public. If and when it does, it will be critical to point out that when the last President's private shame was ripped from his flesh and paraded through the streets, his critics showed him no understanding and no mercy. I frankly hope that we show more humanity than they did; we could hardly show less. But I also hope that this might help Republicans of good faith come to realize why even politicians need their privacy, and that in the months to come they will only be reaping what the Roves and Drudges and Starrs of the world have sown.