Unfortunately, despite Richard Nixon's characterization of a young Fred Thompson during Watergate, "dumb but friendly" is no disqualification for the White House.
Exhibit A:
Richard Nixon just did not respect this guy:
Fred Thompson has made much of his role 30 years ago as a young Senate lawyer helping to lead the investigation of the Watergate scandal and President Richard Nixon.
But a much different, less valiant picture of Thompson emerges from listening to the White House audiotapes made at the time, as President Nixon plotted strategy with his aides in the Oval Office.
Thompson's job on the Watergate committee was to lead the Republican side of the investigation. He was appointed by his mentor, Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee, who is now co-chair of Thompson's 2008 presidential bid.
<snip>
When Nixon's aide H.R. Haldeman told Nixon of Thompson's appointment, Nixon was less than impressed.
"Baker has appointed Fred Thompson as minority counsel," Haldeman is heard saying on one tape.
"Oh sh--, that kid," Nixon responds.
"I guess so," Haldeman replies.
Nixon worried that Thompson's Democratic counterpart, Sam Dash, would outsmart Thompson.
"Well, Dash is too smart for that kid," Nixon says on another tape from March 16, 1973. The existence of the tapes were publicly revealed by a question from Thompson at a Watergate hearing and led to the president's resignation. They are preserved at the National Archives in College Park, Md.
"Sure. Runs circles around him," agrees an aide, John Dean.
If you sit at the river bank long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.
"He isn't very smart, is he?" Nixon asks.
"Not extremely so, but --," Buzhardt says, interrupted by the president.
"But he's friendly," Nixon says.
"But he's, he's friendly," Buzhardt echoes.
"Good."
Despite his status as a tool, Nixon and his cronies do find their uses for him:
A few days later, White House aides are heard saying Thompson will be even more helpful than his boss, Sen. Baker, and that Thompson agreed to secretly help undercut the credibility of White House whistleblower John Dean.
"They've finally got [Dean] under oath," Buzhardt says on a tape from June 11. "Uh, Thompson will work with us. So, good."
"Does he realize that Dean has some problems?" Nixon asks.
"Oh, yes sir," Buhardt responds. "Quite a few...He is willing to work with us; he is also now willing to work with us on shifting some focus to the Democrats. He's finally made up his mind; he's got to start looking at some of their stuff."
Later in the tape, Buzhardt says, "[Thompson is] willing to go, you know, pretty much the distance now. And he said he realized his responsibility was going to have to be as a Republican increasingly."
I'm shocked. SHOCKED. But what else can we possibly expect, after 6+ years of Republican misrule? Subverting a Congressional investigation into the White House? The echoes of yesteryear continue:
In his memoir of the Watergate era, Thompson admits to secretly alerting the White House to key evidence as it was discovered by congressional investigators.
Former Watergate committee investigator Scott Armstrong told ABC News that Thompson's cooperation with the White House undermined the investigation.
"It was the equivalent of two prosecutors knowing about something and one of them going behind the scenes and telling the person being accused what the witnesses were saying about him," Armstrong said.
Two months after Buzhardt's comments, Nixon resigned. Thompson would later take credit for helping to reveal the secret White House taping system that led to Nixon's downfall.
Is there any doubt about this guy? Is it ever more abundantly obvious that the Republican Party and conservatism in general completely disregard constitutional government and basic ethics? Some conservatives, like David Brooks, are frantically trying to disassociate themselves from the blunders and manifest incompetence of the Bush Administration. But substitute ANY conservative, ANY REPUBLICAN for Bush and we would get the same exact result.
It's a truism: Confront a Republican with a choice between the ethical action and the action that benefits him and his Party, the ethical choice gets cheerfully thrown under a bus.
Thompson has the morals and ethics of a caveman. In fact, cavemen would be insulted by being compared to him. Not only did he use his position as a lawyer on the Watergate Investigation Committee to attempt to subvert the investigation, but actually claimed credit in his autobiography for high-minded behavior on said committee. All this while Nixon's contempt for him was ample.
Hmmm... Dumb? Check. Situational ethics? Check. Falsifying his bio? Check.
Hey, sounds like the perfect successor to Dubya.
Man, those Repubs really don't know when to quit, do they? These jackasses make Joseph Stalin look like a responsible modest steward of government by comparison. Their desperate invocations of Reagan won't work this time. First of all, he happens to be dead. Second of all, Reagan was no different from any of them. And more and more Americans recognize that. A bit late, but who ever claimed that many Americans were fast learners? (For proof, look at the last two Presidential elections.)
America may never fully recover from six years of Republican monopoly of the Federal government. It took much less time than that for many of us to see it coming (many of us here knew it ahead of time, and in the event our premonitions were amply borne out).
We will CERTAINLY not recover if a buffoon like Thompson manages to get into the White House in 2008. Essentially, he's Bush 3.
In fact, any Democrat that does not ruthlessly tie ANY Republican nominee to Bush does not deserve election.