In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
Some Things You Ought to Know About Who's in Charge
The name of Nixon may not resonate too strongly with many younger readers of this web page, but suffice to say, the bungled burglary at the Democratic National Headquarters in an election year led to the worst political scandal in American history:
In dealing with the Bush crowd, I was getting eerie flashbacks to the Nixon years and the furtive air that pervaded that White House. President Gerald Ford has called Watergate a "long national nightmare," and nightmare it was, with twenty of President Nixon's chief lieutenants indicted, convicted, and sentenced. Three articles of impeachment voted by the House Judiciary Committee charged President Nixon with obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress, and President Nixon was driven from office in disgrace. ...
Other Nixon-like behaviors had begun to bother me. There was the same arrogance and the same outright contempt for Congress. Like Nixon, Bush had attempted to "personalize" the office, to create an "administrative presidency" which would shift the work of government to an imperial White House. The executive branch departments and agency heads, for all practical purposes, were made subordinate to Nixon's advisors, all conveniently immune from accountability before Congress.
I'm getting eerie flashbacks too. I wonder why? Here's why:
I saw many of the same attitudes and tactics with this second Bush administration. And why was I not surprised? Consider the players. Bush's secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, served as director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, counselor to the president, and director of the Cost of Living Council during the Nixon years. Vice President Cheney had been special assistant to the Office of Economic Opportunity director, White House staff assistant, and assistant director of the Cost of Living Council under Nixon. And Bush's first secretary of the Treasury, Paul O'Neill, was his chief of the Office of Management and Budget's Human Resources Program, and an assistant director and associate director in the Office of Management and Budget. According to the New York Times, O'Neill had a lot to do with President Nixon's plan to use the OMB "as a kind of supermanager that would give the president formalized control of his administration without having to work the levers of power on a daily basis."
I had seen it all before--the secrecy and the contriving to bypass Congress, the contempt for constitutional checks and balances. Historically, it had produced dreadful results. Nixon resigned in disgrace. Johnson fabricated information and misled Congress to secure the unlimited authority of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The Reagan administration used the National Security Council to end-run Congress in foreign relations, and wound up selling weapons to a terrorist nation and funding an illegal war in Central America. -- from Senator Robert C. Byrd, Losing America
All the same people, folks. Just that much older, that much harder, that much more resolved to destroying the fire walls and important civil service laws that were put in place "to prevent the consolidation of information and the massing of too much police power by the federal government" after Watergate. The congressionally established Federal Election Commission, the Congressional Budget Office, the War Powers Resolution, and the Presidential Materials and Preservation Acts have all been successfully overwhelmed, circumvented, and sidestepped by the Bush administration. The Constitution itself is under attack.
I'm back in the saddle again
Out where a friend is a friend
Where the longhorn cattle feed
On the lowly gypsum weed
Back in the saddle again
Ridin' the range once more
Totin' my old .44
Where you sleep out every night
And the only law is right
Back in the saddle again
Whoopi-ty-aye-oh
Rockin' to and fro
Back in the saddle again
Whoopi-ty-aye-yay
I go my way
Back in the saddle again
- Michael 11:22 AM - [PermaLink] -
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more coming...
