It’s been a while, but I thought I should ramble on a bit about what’s been happening with the Bush administration and the wreckage they’re leaving in their wake.
I. I’m trying to think what Bush supporters would say he’s done well. It can’t be national security. The biggest single thing that’s been on that score has been the war it in Iraq, which only blind loyalists would say is a success by any measure. Oh wait, that has nothing to do with national security (there being no credible threat — WMD, for example — from Iraq); it’s all about spreading democracy. Oh, wait, we’ve created civil war. The next big initiative was Homeland Security, which brought us the pathetic Hurricane Katrina response. Then there’s missile defense, which surely won’t protect us from Al Qaeda — they don’t have missiles. Then there’s port security, about which next to nothing was being done until the Dubai Ports World cock up.
It can’t be the budget, which is a “borrow and spend” spree that beggars the imagination. Even conservatives are bailing out on this one. (See
How about Bush’s campaign promises to bring honor and integrity to the White House? Hmmm, do the names Scooter Libby, Jack Abromoff, Tom DeLay mean anything to you? And lying us into war; and flouting laws about wiretapping (and lying about it first); and threatening people at NASA about global warming; and hiding from Congress information about the true costs of the Medicare Prescription bill.
If Clinton’s dalliance with a consenting adult is impeachable, how about diddling the entire country?
Which brings me to
II. Impeachment. The administration’s lies, corruption, cronyism, and incompetence (to be fair, that’s mainly corruption and cronyism combined) offers a mother lode of impeachable offenses. I know in an earlier entry I offered the Watergate-esque idea that a coverup over the bogus Niger Yellowcake memo would bring down the house of cards. But now it’s hard to decide. I suppose ultimately it’s a question of whether there still exists a reporter-editor-publisher team like the one that brought us Watergate, and if so, what vein of this mother lode they wish to mine.