Big Tent Democrat over at Talk Left highlights an interesting poll from Gallup today: Gallup: Americans Favor Investigations Of Bush Administration.
I won't steal Big Tent Democrat's thunder in analyzing how the poll came to reveal the willingness of Americans to learn more about alleged lawlessness on the part of Bush's administration; his post should be read in its entirety. I'm more interested in one of his observations. But first the polling results from Gallup:
For each of three controversial actions or policies of the Bush administration, survey respondents were asked whether there should be a criminal investigation by the Justice Department or an investigation by an independent panel that would issue a report of findings but not seek any criminal charges, or whether neither should be done.
While no more than 41% of Americans favor a criminal investigation into any of the matters, at least 6 in 10 say there should be either a criminal investigation or an independent probe into all three. This includes 62% who favor some type of investigation into the possible use of torture when interrogating terrorism suspects, 63% who do so with respect to the possible use of telephone wiretaps without obtaining a warrant, and 71% who support investigating possible attempts to use the Justice Department for political purposes.
So far, President Obama has been reluctant to pursue such investigations, but Leahy and Conyers in particular are calling for an accounting of what happened on Bush's watch.
Big Tent Democrat is correct:
Certainly this poll is powerful ammunition for someone like Senator Leahy in his push for a "Truth" Commission. I think it is also a warning for the Obama Administration - any Bush-like moves by it, such as its embrace of the Bush expansive view of the state secrets doctrine will damage the Obama Administration. If in fact, as I suspect, the motives are political for its stance, then it need to rethink its position on these subjects.
Rethink its position on shameless abuses of power, Obama's administration must.
Ask yourselves this question:
If things like this and this continue, and you knew that history would judge both men guilty for putting our constitutional design at grave risk and, in so doing, endangering America's representative democracy, which of them would you prefer to defend? For whom could you make the stronger case of mitigating factors?
Some sage words:
'We the People' Must Save Our Constitution, by Al Gore, January 16 2006
A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government. Our Founding Fathers were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not men. Indeed, they recognized that the structure of government they had enshrined in our Constitution - our system of checks and balances - was designed with a central purpose of ensuring that it would govern through the rule of law. As John Adams said: "The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men."
An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution - an all-powerful executive too reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free. In the words of James Madison, "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
[...]
Once violated, the rule of law is in danger. Unless stopped, lawlessness grows. The greater the power of the executive grows, the more difficult it becomes for the other branches to perform their constitutional roles. As the executive acts outside its constitutionally prescribed role and is able to control access to information that would expose its actions, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other branches to police it. Once that ability is lost, democracy itself is threatened and we become a government of men and not laws.
Bush will be rightly damned by historians, and Obama with him if his administration doesn't do everything in its power to restore our constitutional balance and abide by the essential American standard of being a government of laws and not men - today and ever after.
Merely refusing to order the torture of prisoners in the United States' custody is not enough to satisfy this American citizen's demand for change.