Am I overly optimistic today?
Probably, but our faithless and cowed mainstream media smells money in the water and the frenzy is beginning. Even the obsessively non-confrontational CNN is suggesting that by selecting Samuel Alito for the SCOTUS, "the president felt he had to pick a nominee likely to divide America" in the lede (quoting Sen. Charles Schumer, Dem., NY). And yet, read and listen to enough commentary by former and current politicans, pundits, and academics and you will hear them speak about what's in the best interest of the country, what's in your best interest.
I've had enough of political 'superiors' telling me what's in my best interest. I believe the president and most of his advisors, and the vice-president, his staff, and industry collaborators have committed crimes. And I think it is in the "best interests" of our country to clean out the lot of them. All at once.
But I'm pretty clearly an idealist. Perhaps, in practice ousting an entire administration would overturn the apple cart. So this raises a serious question:
Who will lead this country until 2008?
I'm serious. I'd have no problem flushing the lot of them: Bush, Cheney, Card, Rice, Hadley, Rove, Rumsfeld, Bolton, Wolfowitz, Goss, and Chertoff (and whoever I'm forgetting). And I'll personally put up the cab fare for Delay, Frist, Sensenbrenner, Blunt, Pat Roberts, McCain, and Arlen Spectre.
And Santorum. If anyone can find him, that is.
But hyperbole aside, the GOP is very likely going to try and salvage this presidency by bringing in "new blood." Libby's indictment is going to increasingly put pressure on Cheney, and without any viability as a future candidate and his declining health, like all dictators Cheney could well take our billions and call it day.
And if a year from now, the American people decide "hmm, I guess playing hide-the-cigar with an intern really wasn't all that bad," and a push for impeachment begins, who will lead our country?
If Bush and Cheney are complicit in the same crime, yet in 2006 the house of representatives remains a republican majority...Dennis Hastert would be president? Wow. And no.
Most of us here have seen the evidence. We know Cheney is corrupt, Rice and Hadley were the architects of lies in the 2003 SOTU, Bolton aided and abetted substantiating the forger Niger documents, and Rove is...well, Rove.
But can it be done? Comparing the acts of this adminstration to Nixon and Watergate is a big mistake. Richard Nixon was a duly elected president who, with a handful of advisors and staff, committed a crime while in office. But there remain serious questions about the legitimacy of both the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. And after nearly 5 years in office, George W. Bush has seeded a broad cross-section of our government with loyalists and ideological extremists.
So on the off chance I am not overly optimistic, today all of our tugging at the threads of George W. Bush's presidency may finally have freed the central knot. And if what appears is not merely criminal misconduct, but a quietly orchestrated political coup, how will we deal with that? How should we?
Do we have the courage to clean house, are we strong enough to withstand the chaos, and will we be honest enough to accept the truth?
Or do the pundits have it right?