For the last two years, since the 2006 midterm election, the Democratic leadership in Congress has done next to nothing to rein in the extraordinary abuses of power and rampant criminality of the Bush (Mis)Administration and its corporate co-conspirators. Instead of aggressively investigating and impeaching, they ever so cautiously frittered around the periphery, placated, vacillated and capitulated.
The minimal efforts at real oversight, the necessary first step toward imposing any real accountability, were half-hearted at best and almost completely ineffectual.
In all fairness, note I said "almost" completely ineffectual. There have been some, albeit minimal efforts and some modest, occasional results. For example, please consider this and that.
But clearly for the most part about the best that could be said about the Democratic leadership is that they did keep their powder dry.
So, can we now, finally, have some real accountability?
More below.
It used to be that the Republicans believed elections have real consequences, to include the ability to shove accountability down Democratic throats.
For example, beginning with a vengeance in 1994, the Clinton Presidency devolved into the era of "accountability politics", in which harsh klieg-light scrutiny was imposed by means of investigations by multiple independent counsels and dozens of Republican dominated congressional committees. The culmination of this sorry era was the Republicans' irresponsible attempt to forcibly remove Bill Clinton from office and the 2000 campaign of a wounded Al Gore against a woeful George "uniter, not divider/restore honor to Washington" Bush that ended very badly.
Of course, notwithstanding the alleged election of Bush, the Republicans' approach to "accountability politics" was transparently abusive and substantively unjustified, and the substantial majority of the American public recoiled in utter disgust.
And, not insignificantly, the Republicans' approach also created a poisoned, toxic atmosphere in which the process of constructive, forward-looking governance essentially ground to a halt.
In response, for the last eight years, the Democrats have been stuck in an essentially passive, non-confrontational, by-all-means-never-upset-the-apple-cart approach that has allowed the Bushies to run amuck.
On January 15, 2005, basking in the glow of his re-election and alleged "mandate" to keep right on doing more of the same, Bush declared his complete freedom from meaningful oversight and substantive accountability:
"We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections ..."
Without in any way minimizing the heavy impact of a multitude of egregious policy failures, I suggest that the mindset captured by this willfully arrogant statement by Mr. Bush was repugnant to the American public and significantly contributed to the Republicans' political defeats in November 2006 and again last week.
At the same time, particularly for last two years, it has been quite obvious that the Democratic leadership has dropped the accountability ball.
The ostensible strategic reason for this was to focus on actual governance, moving forward substantively, and avoiding any potential for a negative backlash by the voting public.
In essence, it was a purely political strategy to maximize the opportunity to achieve greater power in the short term, at the ballot box in the just completed 2008 election cycle.
Okay, fine. What's done is done. And I understand that in politics, power is king and that for the last two years, the Democratic leadership had only limited power. Nevertheless, I strongly disagreed with their strategy, as did large numbers of fellow travelers here and elsewhere, occupying the democratic wing of the Democratic Party.
But now we are at a new and improved place. Change has arrived! And the Democrats have achieved much greater political power.
So, it is now time for a new and improved and much more muscular strategy in response to the extraordinary abuses of power and rampant criminality of the Bush (Mis)Administration and its corporate co-conspirators.
President Barack Obama, the new Attorney General, and the newly bolstered Democratic Majority in the United States Congress must now move forward to seriously and decisively to clean up the widespread Republican enabled corporate looting of the Treasury, the war crimes against humanity, the election fraud, the politicization of the administration of justice, and much, much more; and they must seek to impose maximum criminal sanctions against the perpetrators.
The alternative is that the Democrats will, once again, solely in the interest of political expediency, do very little and really just move on.
I want to be clear. It is very obvious that our nation is now confronting enormously huge problems and we all must be realistic, pragmatic liberals, recognizing the fierce urgency of solving problems that impact on lives of hundreds of millions of our citizens, the potential for world peace, the potential for survival of our planet, and more, much more. And as such, we all must recognize the Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress will obviously have a full plate of issues and will be attempting to move forward in a bi-partisan, post-partisan way to hopefully acheive crucially important legislative objectives.
My point is, however, that the rule of law is likewise of absolutely fundamental importance and we must all recognize that as well.
A nation of laws cannot simply withstand allowing its highest elected officials and its largest corporations to operate with impunity in an accountability-free orgy of untrammeled abuses of power, egregious breaches of fiduciary duty, and overt criminality.
The Obama Administration and the Congressional Democrats must step up to the requirements of justice. They must find a political path to do the right thing, while also pursuing the vital legislative objectives. They must do both.
We need a real "accountability moment".
Desperately.