With subpoenas looking more and more likely and GWB flatly refusing to cooperate with Congressional investigations, it looks like this illegitimate administration is finally bringing matters to a head.
At historic moments like these, as the worm turns, I think it's important to take the pulse of the mainstream media and watch as they turn slowly but inexorably from their slavish hackery and -- corrupted or not, political tools or not -- begin to reflect reality as it changes.
Nobody on this site ever accused the media as being reality-based; it is its very nature to spin. So it is perhaps indicative of the lateness of the hour that the spinning media, those shameless shills for the corporatocracy, are now beginning to reflect a brewing battle we have all long awaited.
We'll start with a piece from the Nation: "The Decider is Delusional".
This article was published on the Nation's website, specifically on The Online Beat, a blog written by progressive John Nichols (the author of a book called The Genius of Impeachment: The Founder's Cure for Royalism).
I've never heard of this guy but that doesn't meant very much; I don't pay a lot of attention to The Nation, for whatever reason. Maybe I'll start.
The article leads off strong:
Is George Bush delusional?
No, that question is not an attack on his intelligence....
Rather, it is a serious question about whether the president understands what is going on around him.
I've often wondered just how comprehending Bush really is. I think the answer is, not much: or, to be more precise, he understands perfectly well his reality: the reality he's created; the reality it was famously stated that the Administration "creates" on its own.
"I'm sorry, just frankly, it bubbled to the surface the way it has, for the U.S. attorneys involved," answered Bush. "I really am. These are -- I put them in there in the first place. They're decent people. They serve at our pleasure. And yet, now, they're being held up in the scrutiny of all this. And it's just -- what I said in comments, I meant about them. I appreciated their service, and I'm sorry that the situation has gotten to where it's got. But that's Washington, D.C., for you. You know, there a lot of politics in this town."
Here's the troubling thing about Bush's response.
It appears that he might be unaware that his firing of the U.S. Attorneys – who, as he notes "serve at the pleasure of the president" – too the situation "to where it's got."
Does Bush think that these U.S. Attorneys are under attack by the Senate?
Nichols is right to ask these questions, but I suspect he already knows the answer, and is asking more out of formality than anything else: Bush lives in a Reality Bubble that none of us can penetrate (thus far, anyway).
In this Bubble, Mr. Bush himself is incapable of wrongdoing, anyone who opposes his plans and goals are only "playing politics" (at best) or"evildoers" (at worst), and -- perhaps most frightening of all -- he is determined not to change course.
This is not only a man who does not take advice well, this is a man who does not take advice -- PERIOD.
Nichols goes on to close his brief article by referring to Article I of the Constitution, and insinuates that the threat of impeachment may sober up "presidential delusion" and royalists alike.
But The Online Beat is a progressive blog. Let's take a look at some more mainstream news sources.
From my Google start page, my "News" tab shows a number of different stories, and the number of other stories related to that topic.
The leader, at the moment, is the story "Life quickly gets a lot harder for the White House" at USA Today, with 1,782 stories related.
Snipped from the USA Today article:
Less than 100 days into the new Congress, Capitol Hill's Democratic leaders have set in motion two constitutional confrontations with a White House unaccustomed to such challenges.....
The battle over the U.S. attorneys illustrates how Democratic control of congressional committees and their agenda can put the White House on the defensive. Bush's offer to have his aides, including longtime confidant Karl Rove, talk to congressional committees in private and not under oath was hooted down by Democrats. "We could meet at the local pub," scoffed House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich.
The rest of the article is, of course, worth a read, but that's all the mirth we've got time for.
On the "Related stories" page offered by Google News, other headlines range from the AP story "Showdown Looms in Attorney Firings Probe" being run by Guardian Unlimited UK, Kansas City Star, Houston Chronicle, ABC News, and others.
In Australia, the story is "Congress defies Bush on Rove".
Both the International Herald Tribune and Guardian Unlimited are running some AP commentary and analysis,"Bush Administration has a penchant for secrecy, courting criticism and controversy". From the IHT:
George W. Bush...says he's defending the executive branch from encroachment by overzealous lawmakers and needs to make sure that he and the presidents who follow him have the chance to get confidential advice from advisers.
Trusted advice. In confidence. Hmm.
I'm not the biggest fan of Rahm Emanuel, but here has a point, quoted in the earlier USA Today article:
"...they've told us that the president wasn't involved here," Emanuel said. So, he said, aides shouldn't have a problem testifying about their own actions — "unless the president was more involved than they're telling us."
In a way, it appears that he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. If the Administration has nothing to hide, why not let aides and Rove testify under oath?
Plenty of Americans aren't concerned about the Patriot Acts because "they have nothing to hide." But the Administration appears very concerned about subpoenas and Congressional testimony under oath, because...
...they have something to hide.
My logic is unassailable.
Unfortunately, the Administration's Reality Bubble is too.
From Bloomberg worldwide: House Panel Approves Subpoenas for White House Aides:
"You don't need a showdown here," Snow said. Rove and other potential witnesses don't need to be under oath because it's against the law to lie to Congress, whether under oath or not, Snow said. He said it's "probably worth giving members of Congress a little bit of time to think this through."
Do you hear the hubris in his voice? Practically dripping from each word?
Snow knows something. He knows Bush and the Administration; he knows of that which Nichols was hinting at in his op-ed.
He knows, in other words, about the Reality Bubble.
I don't expect anything to deter Mr. Bush from his course -- be it subpoenas or contempt of Congress or a Constitutional crises or even Articles of Impeachment.
If Mr. Bush was (still) an alcoholic, I think he would be the sort of alcoholic that would have to be literally carried, kicking and screaming, into the rehab facility.
What's the equivalent of the rehab facility for a U.S. President?
What about a U.S. President drunk with power, and absolutely convinced of the rightness of his course, who is also backed up by grim, toothy Cold Warriors?
Back to the Bloomberg article:
Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, the Judiciary Committee's ranking Republican, said he preferred open testimony because the public has a ``deep-seated interest and a right to know what is going on.'' He said he didn't want the dispute to end up in a court fight because it may take years to resolve.
Years? Now that must sound promising, for Bush and his buddies.
For those of you expecting Bush or anyone in his inner circle to cave now or ever, you can stop holding your breath.
I predict this thing is going all the way.
It will be stonewalled, and obstructed, and obfuscated, and spun as much as possible, at every single step of the way.
The way I see it, this is a race against the clock, and a tightrope walk on the knife-edge of public perception.
The salient questions are:
(1) If public and Congressional pressure does penetrate Bush's bubble at all -- which at this point, I strongly doubt -- will it push him in an even more self-destructive direction?
(2) How committed, really, is the Administration to the goals of PNAC/AIPAC/AEI and other groups that hold sway in the Neoconservative party, even in the face of overwhelming public disapproval?
(3) How committed are the American people? Just how much courage and strength is left in the race of free men? Faced with, say, another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, or the commencement of air strikes on Iran (which have disappeared from the media, interestingly) how likely are they to be distracted from the corruption and scandals?
I think we are looking, folks, at the biggest and most serious game of chicken the United States has ever seen.
I'm not going to blink.
Are you?