He Spies

I keep wondering, over and over: how much does it take for people to figure out that this is a bad president? When several former Bush officials, most notably Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill, came out publicly with information critical of their former boss, I wondered how many insider reports does it take before people start to believe what's actually going on behind those very closed Oval Office doors? It took an act of God called Katrina to finally strip away the level of incompetence in an administration where loyalty counts more than qualifications, and Bush's poll numbers dropped, but then they started to rise again.

Now comes news that is not news. Secret National Security Agency wiretaps on unnamed Americans. Exactly the sort of thing that those of us who worry about civil liberties were worried about when legislation like the Patriot Act was being proposed. Salon's David Cole does a good job of dissecting why Bush's legal arguments are preposterous, and it seems inevitable that the question will make its way to the Supreme Court, which, no matter how conservative its members may be by then, will almost certainly declare the president's actions to be illegal.

I am not one of those calling for impeachment hearings. For one thing, I don't think it does the nation any good to have to endure the awful procedure a second (actually third) time, particularly if it then threatens to become standard procedure for one party to try to impeach any president of another party. Let's try to keep the bar raised as high as possible on impeachment, shall we? (Although if the Clinton impeachment had never happened, I might in fact be calling for Bush to be impeached.) But also, impeachment does no good because look at the line of succession: if Bush goes you get Cheney; behind him, Dennis Hastert; behind him, Ted Stevens. No, the only solution is to hamstring these clowns and try to keep them from doing too much more damage over the next three years, then vote them the hell out of town and try someone who actually, you know, cares about the Constitution.

How bad is it? Lately I've been finding myself thinking with warm nostalgia about the days of the Nixon administration. That's how bad it is.