[Delayed crosspost from The Next Hurrah, 2005-10-23]
The goose is cooked, the ox is gored, the chickens are coming home to
roost. The kiddies are giddy with visions of sugarplums, marching
frogs, TV specials, seasonal trappings and wrappings piled so deep you
can't find the dog in the living room.
Fitzmas is coming -- all holidays rolled into one! The extravagance of
Mardi Gras plus Thanksgiving plus Boxing Day plus Purim plus Halloween
... the weightier meditations and rededications of 4th of July, Yom
Kippur, New Year's Eve, Good Friday, Memorial Day and Pesach (not to
mention St. Swithin's and Groundhog's Days, with their traditional
over-reading of omens).
Most of us celebrate the shallow Fitzmas, a fireworks-and-mincemeat
festival of over-indulgence. Sweet revenge, fat targets, overcooked
intelligence. Eat, drink and be merry, tomorrow we diet.
But I beg your indulgence for a note of perspective, a look at the
deeper meanings of Fitzmas.
Sure, the Big Day looms big ... until you look at the monumental developments that surround it. Fitzmas is not the beginning
nor the end, just one spike in a sawtooth chain of events that lashed
back and wrapped around the ankles of reckless vandals who came to DC
to tear the town a new one. (They'll wish they'd stuck with ordinary
hatchets.)
For starters, balance your expectations. Anticipation can bring disappointment, especially if you write too much detail into your Fitzmas Wish List.
- You don't know who Fitzgerald will indict. I don't know. He may not know ... yet. A target-rich environment means immense discretion, not just in intensity (what to charge, to what degree, for what penalty) but tactical and even stylistic. Who will he turn against whom, and in what sequence? Public ambush, or slow, crushing constriction? Let them plead out and leave in disgrace, or lay out the whole record in formal court?
- First-round indictments will not be the last. Fitzmas is the first scouring breach of a system of levees that protected a regime sunk below ethical sea level. The first break leads to more breaks in quick succession, followed by slow, desperate struggles for survival ... and for status among the ruins.
- Things take time. The first trophy kills strike fear into the unindicted, who become more malleable. Rats eagerly spill their guts, taking the story in unexpected directions. Whole new scandals may surface. Defensive facades will crumble as reliable retainers desert their posts, and a new generation of prosecutors, journalists and politicians gets the hang of the enterprise.
- Remember, too, the Joys of Fitzmas could be followed by the agonies of a Saturday Night Massacre or a Parade of Presidential Pardons.
Again, balance. Let's not obsess on the Plame outing. They nailed Al Capone for tax evasion, but there are bigger crimes afoot. Burning a CIA NOC is only the tip of just one iceberg in a sea of troubles. America has been done real and enduring harm, on monumental scale, and the Plame Affair is a flyspeck in a shitstorm.
Sure, we want Rove's head on a pike ... but Cheney is the key to this Jenga pile.
- Cheney betrayed the national security of the United States. His PNAC cabal and White House Iraq Group led and/or lied us into a war that let Osama off the hook, motivated generations of potential terrorists, schooled them on our vulnerabilities, depleted our war-fighting capacity, discredited the career/volunteer force structure, and destabilized the international oil patch. The underlying scandal is Wargate, and the big war(s) may not have started yet.
- Cheney betrayed the public trust. He ran the Energy Policy Task Force (whose records have never seen daylight) and ran interference for Enron energy banditos. California cities went black as energy insiders joked about ####ing Grandma Millie up the ###. Hands off!, Cheney barked, the market is always right! ... price controls always make things worse! ... but when FERC at last gestured weakly in the direction of price regulation, the Crisis evaporated as though somebody had thrown a switch. Western rate-payers are left holding the multi-billion-dollar bag. America missed a valuable object lesson as Cheney was never held accountable for his unequivocal economic quackery.
- Cheney called the shots on US fiscal policy, declaring "tax cuts stimulate growth" and "deficits don't matter". We went into foreign debt instead of paying taxes, got addicted to living beyond our means, and we're 8 or 10 million jobs below normal trendline growth (and uncompetitive in global markets). Our $10 trillion real net fiscal reverse -- from Clinton surplus to Bush deficit -- is comparable to outright destruction of the entire US housing stock. The piper is out there and he will be paid.
- Cheney broke the Executive Branch. He was The Outfit's personnel chief, not just their policy boss. An ordinary machine would at least have installed competent cronies in key spots. Five years on, every agency is a disaster in the making. Litmus tests of personal loyalty and ideological purity left the recruiting pool depleted and subcabinet ranks decimated. If a crisis wells up in world financial markets, they'll look to the US Treasury Department -- and there's nobody home. In this environment, investigative reporting is barely sporting -- it's like shooting fish at the bottom of a barrel.
With less success, this same Outfit hacked away at the foundations of the American social contract -- making a concerted attack on Social Security, toying with a flank attack on universal public education, and planting a time bomb under Medicare.
Once again, balance. Cheney didn't create these reversals in American fortune single-handedly. It took teamwork to repudiate the global consensus on evreything from the Geneva Conventions to the Kyoto Accord ... to let nuclear mischief go unchecked in Korea, Pakistan and former Soviet Republics ... to construct a patronage army whose ranks extent from K Street to fundamentalist churches to the commercial news media.
Behind the bright lights of our Fitzmas procession, you can see the outlines of an Administration that stuck to campaigning and never took up the business of governing. There are debacles stacked up behind debacles, and scandals behind scandals, and some of the bills don't come due for years.
Can Bush get off the hook by scapegoating Cheney -- piling the Administration's cumulative errors on his back, ceremonially running him out of town, and declaring the remaining staff immaculate? Hardly.
That might have worked a couple years ago. Bush himself could have cracked the Plame case by calling people on the carpet and insisting on answers. Instead, he stonewalled. No matter how far the prosecutions proceed, or in what direction, Bush now owns all the crimes committed in his name.
And again, balance. Bush didn't take us down this road to ruin without help. In a responsible Republican Party, or against a capable opposition, or under the watchful eye of a capable press or an engaged public, Bush could not have sought reelection, much less won a second term. He might not have finished his first term (and probably would never have taken office). The signs were there, but we were too self-absorbed to bother reading them.
No matter what the Fitzmas legends say, it won't happen overnight ... but we are going to see a government dissolve. Unlike Watergate, there's no reservoir of civic goodwill, no cadre of responsible statesmen, not even passably intact muddle-through bureaucracies. America lost interest in the essentials of democracy, and refused to shoulder its ordinary burdens. (We all had more important things to do, didn't we?) Bush is a symptom, and the thrill ride ahead of us is the one we bargained for.
For George W. Bush, damage control will play out over a couple of years.
He'll leave behnd an America with fewer friends and more enemies, fewer assets and more debts, less productivity and more agile competitors, less confidence and more con artists ready to sell us another round of cheap-and-easy solutions.
For America, damage control will play out over decades, or generations.
Merry Fitzmas to all, and a Happy New Era!