Once again, Keith Olbermann has managed to take what all of us are feeling and put it into a righteous rant that says it all. Thank you Keith and thank goodness for you being the one person in the media with an ounce of integrity, and the guts to speak the truth!
Tonight's Special Comment:
Updated: I changed the name since the original one was really snark and not fully descriptive of the diary. More of Keith's Special comment and some commentary of my own below.
Click here to read the entire Special Comment on MSNBC's web site.
"I didn’t vote for him," an American once said, "But he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job."
That—on this eve of the 4th of July—is the essence of this democracy, in 17 words. And that is what President Bush threw away yesterday in commuting the sentence of Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
The man who said those 17 words—improbably enough—was the actor John Wayne. And Wayne, an ultra-conservative, said them, when he learned of the hair’s-breadth election of John F. Kennedy instead of his personal favorite, Richard Nixon in 1960.
"I didn’t vote for him but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job."
The sentiment was doubtlessly expressed earlier, but there is something especially appropriate about hearing it, now, in Wayne’s voice: The crisp matter-of-fact acknowledgement that we have survived, even though for nearly two centuries now, our Commander-in-Chief has also served, simultaneously, as the head of one political party and often the scourge of all others.
We as citizens must, at some point, ignore a president’s partisanship. Not that we may prosper as a nation, not that we may achieve, not that we may lead the world—but merely that we may function.
But just as essential to the seventeen words of John Wayne, is an implicit trust—a sacred trust: That the president for whom so many did not vote, can in turn suspend his political self long enough, and for matters imperative enough, to conduct himself solely for the benefit of the entire Republic.
Our generation’s willingness to state "we didn’t vote for him, but he’s our president, and we hope he does a good job," was tested in the crucible of history, and earlier than most.
And in circumstances more tragic and threatening. And we did that with which history tasked us.
We enveloped our President in 2001.And those who did not believe he should have been elected—indeed those who did not believe he had been elected—willingly lowered their voices and assented to the sacred oath of non-partisanship.
And George W. Bush took our assent, and re-configured it, and honed it, and shaped it to a razor-sharp point and stabbed this nation in the back with it.
Amen brother! Bush took what should have been the good will that everyone had after 9-11 and flushed it right down the toilet. All the world was with us and now our country is hated and reviled around the world.
Yet our Democracy has survived shrewder men than Karl Rove. And it has survived the frequent stain of politics upon the fabric of government. But this administration, with ever-increasing insistence and almost theocratic zealotry, has turned that stain into a massive oil spill.
The protection of the environment is turned over to those of one political party, who will financially benefit from the rape of the environment. The protections of the Constitution are turned over to those of one political party, who believe those protections unnecessary and extravagant and quaint.
The enforcement of the laws is turned over to those of one political party, who will swear beforehand that they will not enforce those laws. The choice between war and peace is turned over to those of one political party, who stand to gain vast wealth by ensuring that there is never peace, but only war.
And now, when just one cooked book gets corrected by an honest auditor, when just one trampling of the inherent and inviolable fairness of government is rejected by an impartial judge, when just one wild-eyed partisan is stopped by the figure of blind justice, this President decides that he, and not the law, must prevail.
Keith could have been channelling Molly Ivins. Not since her book Bushwhacked have I heard or read this sort of indictment of this administration which is sorely overdue in the discourse of politics in this country, and just what this administration has done while in office. Department of Labor, turn it over to union busting anti-labor zealots who hate working people. Department overseeing mining safety, turn it over to mining industry owners and lobbyists. Department of Education, sell if off to those that would enrich the likes of your brother Neil. EPA, let it go under the watch of a woman who's husband is a lawyer for a company that owns a superfund toxic clean up site. I am so grateful to see someone finally tell it like it when it comes to the absolute disdain for government that these people have.
I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.
I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people, a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.
I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient.
I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.
I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but to stifle dissent.
I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought.
I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents.
I accuse you of handing part of this Republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.
And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.
Again, amen brother! We here all know the list of crimes this administration has committed, but thanks to a docile press, most of this country does not. Thanks for laying it all out there plainly and simply.
It is nearly July 4th, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a King who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them—or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them—we would force our independence, and regain our sacred freedoms.
We of this time—and our leaders in Congress, of both parties—must now live up to those standards which echo through our history: Pressure, negotiate, impeach—get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our Democracy, away from its helm.
For you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task. You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed. Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed, on August 9th, 1974.
Resign.
And give us someone—anyone—about whom all of us might yet be able to quote John Wayne, and say, "I didn’t vote for him, but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job."
Now if we can get the Congress to just listen to him. I feel like we should be getting together a group of armed guards to make sure nothing happens to him at his home. Thanks Keith, and in all sincerity, you're a great American. Keep up the good work!
I know there will be and already are a ton of diaries and commentary about tonight's Special Comment, but I want to see the video shared, so I put this one up so it won't be missed. Pass it on people!