So I'm reading my LA Times today, and not just one but two articles make reference to repealing the shackles on the government imposed after Nixon's abuse of power. As President, Nixon made several broad claims. One, the office of the Presidency is unfettered in its constraints. If the President does it, it's not illegal. This explains Watergate. Two, the government, and in particular the executive branch, not the public, should have access to information. This explains the assault on the press, which Nixon originated.
The first article I read is this one, from neocon Max Boot, attacking the right of the New York Times and the free press to publish information that the executive branch doesn't want in the public domain:
Aside from the possible harm that these leaks could do to the war on terror, what galls me is the utter lack of context in breathless news accounts. The Washington Post ran a 1,910-word article Sunday titled "Pushing the Limits of Wartime Powers" that had only one brief mention, near the end, of the 9/11 attacks. There was no acknowledgment that this catastrophe revealed major vulnerabilities in our defenses created by post-Watergate reforms that eviscerated domestic intelligence gathering.
The post-Watergate reforms were put in place to stop rogue actors like Richard Nixon from spying on his political opponents, and to protect the press in doing its duty to keep watch on the powerful. The Pentagon Papers spring to mind. Max Boot thinks that the public doesn't have a right to know about what its government is doing. Nixon was always right, in other words.
And then there's this one, from Dick Cheney.
"Watergate and a lot of the things around Watergate and Vietnam, both during the 1970s, served, I think, to erode the authority I think the president needs to be effective, especially in the national security area," Cheney told reporters traveling with him on Air Force Two. "Especially in the day and age we live in ... the president of the United States needs to have his constitutional powers unimpaired, if you will, in terms of the conduct of national security policy."
This is the flip side of Boot; Cheney is talking to the political reforms that would prevent a Nixon from grabbing absolute power. In other words, it wasn't that Nixon spied on his political opponents that was a problem, the problem for Cheney is that public wouldn't allow Nixon to have the explicit legal authority to do so.
The corrective both Boot and Cheney suggest is to keep the public in the dark through restrictions on the press, prevent Congressional oversight through a dramatically expanded notion of Presidential authority, and set the office of the Presidency above the law. It's a police state, American-style.
What is striking to me is that it is the right-wing that is bringing up the Watergate comparisons. Some Democrats are talking to it, it is not yet a party-wide but pearl-clutching freepers in the press, such as the Washington Post's Richard Morin, won't go there.
Naperville, Ill.: Why haven't you polled on public support for the impeachment of George W. Bush?
Richard Morin: This question makes me mad...
________
Seattle, Wash.: How come ABC News/Post poll has not yet polled on impeachment?
Richard Morin: Getting madder...
________
Haymarket, Va.: With all the recent scandals and illegal/unconstitutional actions of the President, why hasn't ABC News/Washington Post polled whether the President should be impeached?
Richard Morin: Madder still...
_________
Dublin, Ireland: In a statement on Sunday, John Dean, former White House counsel during Watergate, stated that President Bush is "the first President to admit to an impeachable offense." Will The Washington Post be polling about impeachment of the President in the near future, now that this topic has taken on national significance?
Richard Morin: An impeachment demand from Ireland? Oh my gawd. Now I'm furious.
Let me explain.
For the past eight months or so, the major media pollsters have been the target of a campaign organized by a Democratic Web site demanding that we ask a question about impeaching Bush in our polls.
The Web site lists the e-mail addresses of every media pollster, reporters as well as others. The Post's ombudsman is even on their hit list.
The Web site helpfully provides draft language that can be cut-and-pasted into a blanket e-mail.
The net result is that every few months, when this Web site fires up the faithful with another call for e-mails, my mailbox is filled with dozens and dozens of messages that all read exactly the same (often from the same people, again and again). Most recently, a psychology professor from Arizona State University sent me the copy-and-paste e-mail, not a word or comma was changed. I only hope his scholarship is more original.
We first laughed about it. Now, four waves into this campaign,we are annoyed. Really, really annoyed.
Some free advice: You do your cause no service by organizing or participating in such a campaign. It is viewed by me and others with the same scorn reserved for junk mail. Perhaps a bit more.
That said. we do not ask about impeachment because it is not a serious option or a topic of considered discussion--witness the fact that no member of congressional Democratic leadership or any of the serious Democratic presidential candidates in '08 are calling for Bush's impeachment. When it is or they are, we will ask about it in our polls.
Enough, already.
Impeachment is not just a legal process, it is the culmination of a constitutional crisis and a political debate. Whether it's Cheney saying that the President is king, or Boxer asking about impeachment, it's clear the country and the parties are willing to have a debate that journalists will not be a party to. It is time to begin speaking in constitutional terms, as Cheney is, and discuss broad issues of power and executive authority. It is time to get Congressmen on the record and ask them if Nixon should have been impeached, if Clinton should have been impeached, or if Bush should be repudiated for his extra-legal activities.
When two articles in a major regional paper each show right-wing leaders openly saying that Nixon was right and the country was wrong to repudiate him, it's time to start asking big questions about how our leader selection process operates. Because it isn't just us seeking impeachment, it's the other side seeking to unimpeach Nixon, and show that what they did and how they operated, secretively and with the attitude that la loi c'est moi, was the American way.
