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Thursday, January 19, 2006

They’ll Just Change the Rules—Again

Posted by on January 19 at 10:04 AM

Andrew Sullivan linked to this by Christopher Hitchens:

“I believe the President when he says that this will be a very long war, and insofar as a mere civilian may say so, I consider myself enlisted in it. But this consideration in itself makes it imperative that we not take panic or emergency measures in the short term, and then permit them to become institutionalised. I need hardly add that wire-tapping is only one of the many areas in which this holds true.

The better the ostensible justification for an infringement upon domestic liberty, the more suspicious one ought to be of it. We are hardly likely to be told that the government would feel less encumbered if it could dispense with the Bill of Rights. But a power or a right, once relinquished to one administration for one reason, will unfailingly be exploited by successor administrations, for quite other reasons. It is therefore of the first importance that we demarcate, clearly and immediately, the areas in which our government may or may not treat us as potential enemies.”

Sullivan praises Hitchens, who is one of the plaintiffs in the ACLU’s lawsuit challenging Bush’s domestic spying (Hitchens may have been a target), for getting it. Then he ads…

Now the real question: why are there not more conservatives skeptical of a newly intrusive government power? Has it occurred to them that these powers may one day be deployed by a president they don’t trust?

There’s an easy answer to that question: It has, without a doubt, occurred to conservatives that one day someone like, say, Hillary Clinton or Russ Feingold or even—God forbid!—Howard Dean may be sitting behind that desk in the Oval Office. But why should they worry? When and if that happens, conservatives no doubt believe they can change the rules—again.

Remember the conservative outcry when some low-level schmuck in the Clinton administration improperly peeked into a few FBI files? Who can ever forget conservatives screaming that Clinton lied to the American people? Oh, it was about a blowjob, sure, but still the man had to impeached. And remember how the Republicans claimed, during Bill’s war on Kosovo, that they could slam the Commander in Chief and pick apart the mission of our troops in the field? Remember “No one elected Hillary—tell that woman to shut up and host state dinners!”

Once Bush was elected, conservatives changed all of the rules. The president, as it turns out, can lie to the American people—provided the president in question is a Republican. The First Lady can say whatever she likes—hell, Laura Bush is free to slam Hillary Clinton—an elected member of the U.S. Senate!—and no one says, “Who elected Laura?” The same conservatives who drove Vincent Foster to suicide—suicide!—scream at Dems for making poor Mrs. Alito cry. Spying on American citizens? That’s okey-dokey. Don’t like the conduct of the war? Well, you can’t critique Bush—or Rummy or Cheney or Rice—without being accused of having the blood of troops on your hands.

How many times over the last five years has Bush gotten away with shit that would have gotten Bill Clinton impeached? I’ve lost count.

Conservatives are confident that, having changed the rules once, they can change the rule again—they’re not concerned that one day a second President Clinton or President Dean will have exercise the powers they’ve allowed/encouraged Bush to grab.

I’d like to think that this belief—that conservatives can stuff the genie of an above-the-law, imperial presidency back into the constitutional bottle when a Dem is elected president—is more evidence of Republican and conservative hubris. But five years of muttering “Bill Clinton would have been impeached for this shit” to myself over and over again has left me feeling pretty pessimistic. I’m half-convinced that the Republicans will be able to change the rules again—change `em back—when a Dem takes the White House.

P.S. Andrew Sullivan’s blog is now hosted by Time.com, and it’s been redesigned. Check it out.


CommentsRSS icon

What a sad state we are in..so much greed.

BTW--Andrew S. was pretty good on the Colbert Report. I'm glad he didn't wear a plaid shirt!

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