EXCLUSIVE: Pardon me, quick...

In a Runes exclusive, a confidential informant has provided us with a copy of a "highly confidential" memorandum to George W. Bush from his personal attorney in the Office of White House Counsel. After reviewing the background of the presidential pardon power, the author presents two options for the administration's legal endgame:

MEMORANDUM OF LAW

January 16, 2009

TO: President George W. Bush
FROM: Wetherby P. Thwaitebottom III
RE: Presidential Pardons

In response to your inquiry during our telephone conversation of January 15th, my research indicates the following:

1. There appear to be no limits of the president's power to pardon under Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, which provides that the president "shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States." As Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist No. 74:

Humanity and good policy conspire to dictate, that the benign prerogative of pardoning should be as little as possible fettered or embarrassed. The criminal code of every country partakes so much of necessary severity, that without an easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel.

...one man appears to be a more eligible dispenser of the mercy of government, than a body of men.

2. The pardon power applies to all crimes, from actual convictions to cases where no indictment has yet been issued. It does not apply to future crimes, nor does it preclude impeachment.

3. Pardons have been routinely granted since George Washington, on his last day in office, pardoned the leaders of the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. Other examples include: Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon in 1974; George H.W. Bush's pardon of 75 people, including Reagan officials who were involved in the Iran-Contra scandal; Bill Clinton's controversial pardon of billionaire Marc Rich and others at the end of his term; and George W. Bush's award of clemency to Scooter Libby.

4. The pardon power applies only to "offenses against the United States" — that is, for crimes defined by federal, and not state, law. By implication, individual states can try and convict, under their own laws, those who are immune from prosecution for federal crimes. Under various state constitutions, governors also have the power to pardon and grant clemency.

Based on the above, I recommend that you consider the following options to insulate yourself and other administration officials from potential liability for war-crimes and other prosecutions after your term ends on January 20th:

OPTION I:

1. At 11:30 p.m. on January 19th, you should grant blanket pardons to all administration officials who may be subject to prosecution, including: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, Jay Bybee, John Yoo and anyone else who has been, or may be, implicated.

2. At 11:35 p.m. on January 19th, you should submit your resignation from the presidency, effective immediately.

3. At 11:40 p.m. on January 19th, Dick Cheney should be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States; and,

4. At 11:45 p.m. on January 19th, President Cheney should sign an order pardoning you for any and all crimes that you may have committed during your two terms of office.

While this is legally the most cautious strategy for protecting yourself and your colleagues, there are obvious political and historical risks involved that you are quite capable of assessing. Most notably, wholesale pardons of yourself and others would be widely viewed as an admission of guilt — a concession you may not want to make to your political enemies. Moreover, a self-pardon might be construed as a form of legal masturbation.

Alternately, you could pardon everyone but yourself and assume that the next Attorney General would not be brazen enough to prosecute a former president.

OPTION II:

Grant no pardons, and obtain none yourself, thereby taking the risk that you and other administration officials may be prosecuted for federal crimes allegedly committed during your two terms.

This "in-your-face" option will dare the new administration and its Department of Justice to initiate "partisan" and "divisive" prosecutions that, as President-elect Obama has already made clear, he would be very reluctant to pursue.

Based on the above analysis, I respectfully recommend that you implement Option II.

Will George W. Bush follow these recommendations? We'll find out over the next 72 hours.

NOTES: Our untold thousands of regular readers will recall that the war-crimes question has been a regular topic on Runes. See, for example, here, here, here and here. Always ahead of the curve...

PHOTO: Soulmates — George W. Bush pardons a turkey during the annual ritual, Thanksgiving 2007 (Wikimedia).

Bush's new digs

Abandoning any pretense of being a brush-clearing "rancher" in Crawford, George Bush will be moving into the posh Dallas suburb of Preston Hollow after his term ends in January. The town, possibly the wealthiest in Texas, has a racial history that's apparently of no concern to the Bush family.

A racially-restrictive covenent in Preston Hollow prohibited nonwhites from using and occupying specified properties until 2000, when it was invalidated. The covenant, adopted in 1956, provided a useful exception:

"Said property shall be used and occupied by white persons except these covenants shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of different race or nationality in the employ of a tenant."

Though freestanding "servants quarters" were generously permitted, they had to be placed "to the rear of the lot."

Racial covenents have been legally unenforceable since the Supreme Court's decision in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), but Preston Hollow's was still on the books just eight years ago. Preston Hollow remains exclusive, however: one local realtor boasts that the community has an "average household income of about $1.5 million a year."

Preston Hollow's elementary school was also in the news in 2006 after a federal judge found that the school district had attempted to undermine the desegregation decision in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education (1954) by using discredited "separate but equal" arguments. Not surprisingly, most non-Hispanic white residents of Preston Hollow send their children to private schools.

With little brush to clear, what will ex-president Bush do with all his spare time in Preston Hollow? One clue: the wealthy investor who lives next door has just installed a pond stocked with trout on his 14-acre estate. Much of his time, no doubt, will also be devoted to making speeches for exorbitant fees and raising a half-billion dollars for a presidential "library" at Southern Methodist University. The library's principal function will be to put a positive spin on the worst presidency in modern U.S. history. Meanwhile, good luck with that Bush legacy project, Karl Rove...

PHOTOS: Preston Hollow non-servant housing (top); Bush hosting Angela Merkel at the "Western White House" in Crawford (bottom). (Wikimedia)

[H/T to The Raw Story]

Bush's first (and last) selfless act

“For the next 75 days, all of us must ensure that the next president and his team can hit the ground running,” Mr. Bush said in an emotional speech to hundreds of employees of the executive branch on the South Lawn of the White House. He urged them to “conduct yourselves with the decency and professionalism that you have shown throughout my time in office.”

New York Times, November 6, 2008

No doubt President-elect Obama appreciates Bush's sincerity and generosity in offering full cooperation during the remaining days of his administration.

Bush's understandable concerns about his legacy could be slightly alleviated if he took one further step that would be wildly popular around the world: resign immediately. And take Dick Cheney with him. Under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, that would leave Nancy Pelosi as regent until Obama and Biden can be sworn in.

Then the adults could take over immediately and begin to grapple with the wasteland that Bush/Cheney will leave as their true legacy.

Standing small

In the most recent survey (September 16-19) on Bush's approval ratings, The American Research Group reports:

Overall, 19% of Americans say that they approve of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president, 76% disapprove, and 5% are undecided.

Among Republicans (33% of adults registered to vote in the survey), 48% approve of the way Bush is handling his job and 46% disapprove. Among Democrats (40% of adults registered to vote in the survey), 3% approve and 95% disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job. Among independents (27% of adults registered to vote in the survey), 8% approve and 87% disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job as president.

Overall, 17% of Americans say that they approve of the way George W. Bush is handling the economy, 78% disapprove, and 5% are undecided. Among registered voters, 18% approve and 78% disapprove of the way Bush is handling the economy.

[...]

Overall, 68% of Americans say they believe that the national economy is in a recession, 28% say they do not believe the economy is in a recession, and 4% are undecided.

With only 8% of independents approving, and Republicans getting the blame for the current crisis by a 2-1 ratio, this can only be bad news for John McCain and Sarah the Impalin.

[With a H/T to Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money, who notes that Bush's approval rating is "lower than Nixon's the week he resigned."]

Update: 71% and counting

Here's an update on our related blog entry for April 24th:

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Thursday indicates that 71 percent of the American public disapprove of how Bush is handling his job as president.

"No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating in any CNN or Gallup Poll; in fact, this is the first time that any president's disapproval rating has cracked the 70 percent mark," said Keating Holland, CNN's polling director.

A record high (but not the Dow)

According to the latest Gallup poll (April 18-20), George W. Bush has received the highest disapproval ratings of any president in the 70-year history of the organization. Fully 69% of those who responded disapproved of his performance, while 28% approved. Fewer than 4% expressed "no opinion," and extraordinarily low number.

Prior to the latest survey, the highest disapproval rating — 67% — belonged to Harry S. Truman in 1952. Even Richard Nixon had a 66% rating at the time of his resignation in 1974.

The latest Gallup result offers more evidence to support the growing consensus that Dubya is the worst president in U.S. history.

The Gallup result is consistent with Pollster.com's current "trend estimate" for 19 national polls that show an average approval rating of 28.3%.

Meanwhile, Pollster.com's trend estimate for the Democratic race shows Obama with a 50-40% lead as of April 21st, the day before Clinton's 10-point win in Pennsylvania.

[H/T to D at Lawyers, Guns and Money.]

Point/Counterpoint

POINT: From ABC News, April 11th:

President Bush says he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to an exclusive interview with ABC News Friday.

"Well, we started to connect the dots in order to protect the American people." Bush told ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. "And yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."

As first reported by ABC News Wednesday, the most senior Bush administration officials repeatedly discussed and approved specific details of exactly how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the CIA.

The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

These top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding, sources told ABC news.

[See also this related story from ABC on these "Principals" meetings.]

And from the Associated Press, April 11th:

[A] former intelligence official described Cheney and the top national security officials as deeply immersed in developing the CIA's interrogation program during months of discussions over which methods should be used and when.

At times, CIA officers would demonstrate some of the tactics, or at least detail how they worked, to make sure the small group of "principals" fully understood what the al-Qaida detainees would undergo. The principals eventually authorized physical abuse such as slaps and pushes, sleep deprivation, or waterboarding. This technique involves strapping a person down and pouring water over his cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning.

Finally, the Washington Post reports: "I told the country we did that," Bush said. "And I also told them it was legal. We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it." Nonetheless, "State Department officials and military lawyers were intentionally excluded from these deliberations, officials said. [Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales and his staff had no reservations about the proposed interrogation methods and did not suggest major changes, two officials involved in the deliberations said."

COUNTERPOINT: [Note especially 18 U.S.C. Section 2340A (c), with relevant part in bold.]

Title 18, United States Code, Section 2340: Definitions

As used in this chapter—

(1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;

(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from—

(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;

(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;

(C) the threat of imminent death; or

(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality...

Title 18, United States Code, Section 2340A: Torture

(a) Offense.— Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life.

(b) Jurisdiction.— There is jurisdiction over the activity prohibited in subsection (a) if—

(1) the alleged offender is a national of the United States; or

(2) the alleged offender is present in the United States, irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged offender.

(c) Conspiracy.— A person who conspires to commit an offense under this section shall be subject to the same penalties (other than the penalty of death) as the penalties prescribed for the offense, the commission of which was the object of the conspiracy.

Prosecutor alert: isn't it time to draw up the criminal complaint for United States of America v. George Walker Bush, et al.?

[My emphasis. For a recent analysis of related
legal and political questions, check this out.]

Worst ever

In an informal survey of 109 professional historians conducted over a three-week period through the History News Network, 98.2 percent assessed the presidency of Mr. Bush to be a failure while 1.8 percent classified it as a success.

Overlooking the shocking disclosure that anyone could deem this administration a "success," this survey is devastating to Bush's contention that he'll be vindicated by historians.

But Bush has already declared that he can serenely ignore such judgments. As he said to Robert Draper, his official biographer: "You can't possibly figure out the history of the Bush presidency - until I'm dead." As mentioned in an earlier post, such declarations have the practical benefit, for Bush, of deflecting all criticism: "he cannot be held accountable by anyone during his lifetime."

The survey also revealed that 61% of the respondents considered Bush to be the "worst" of the 42 presidents, and another 35% considered him to be with the bottom quarter (see chart below). Only four historians ranked this administration among the "top two-thirds," which offers little consolation to Bush.

Robert S. McElvaine, who conducted the unscientific survey, describes its limitations and potential flaws in some detail. For example, the respondents were self-selected from a larger group, though participation was open to any professional historian.

Here are a few comments from the historians, as reported by McElvaine:

“No individual president can compare to the second Bush... Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”

“With his unprovoked and disastrous war of aggression in Iraq and his monstrous deficits, Bush has set this country on a course that will take decades to correct,” said another historian. “When future historians look back to identify the moment at which the United States began to lose its position of world leadership, they will point—rightly—to the Bush presidency. Thanks to his policies, it is now easy to see America losing out to its competitors in any number of area: China is rapidly becoming the manufacturing powerhouse of the next century, India the high tech and services leader, and Europe the region with the best quality of life.”

One historian indicated that his reason for rating Bush as worst is that the current president combines traits of some of his failed predecessors: “the paranoia of Nixon, the ethics of Harding and the good sense of Herbert Hoover. . . . . God willing, this will go down as the nadir of American politics.” Another classified Bush as “an ideologue who got the nation into a totally unnecessary war, and has broken the Constitution more often than even Nixon. He is not a conservative, nor a Christian, just an immoral man . . . .” Still another remarked that Bush’s “denial of any personal responsibility can only be described as silly.”

“It would be difficult to identify a President who, facing major international and domestic crises, has failed in both as clearly as President Bush,” concluded one respondent. “His domestic policies,” another noted, “have had the cumulative effect of shoring up a semi-permanent aristocracy of capital that dwarfs the aristocracy of land against which the founding fathers rebelled; of encouraging a mindless retreat from science and rationalism; and of crippling the nation’s economic base.”

“George Bush has combined mediocrity with malevolent policies and has thus seriously damaged the welfare and standing of the United States,” wrote one of the historians, echoing the assessments of many of his professional colleagues. “Bush does only two things well,” said one of the most distinguished historians. “He knows how to make the very rich very much richer, and he has an amazing talent for f**king up everything else he even approaches. His administration has been the most reckless, dangerous, irresponsible, mendacious, arrogant, self-righteous, incompetent, and deeply corrupt one in all of American history."

McElvaine offers his own conclusion:

Like a majority of other historians who participated in this poll, my conclusion is that the preponderance of the evidence now indicates that, while this nation has had at least its share of failed presidencies, no previous presidency was as large a failure in so many areas as the current one.

With 98% of respondents in this survey describing his presidency as a failure, Bush will have to look elsewhere for signs that history might yet redeem him.


GRAPHIC: History News Network

[With a tip o' the hat to Digby at Hullabaloo.]

The Bush/Cheney Endgame - Part II

There's a widespread perception that, for the last seven years, the Bush/Cheney administration has been reeling from one crisis to another — improvising rather than pursuing any grand strategy. While it's hard to disagree with this conclusion, there are a couple common threads that bind the administration's domestic and foreign policies to the point of obsession. These are rarely articulated in any coherent way, but they provide common denominators.

The Bush/Cheney legal endgame on torture, including the veto of the congressional prohibition on waterboarding, fits neatly into a larger scheme for the final ten months of the regime. As Bush continues to seem unconcerned about his legacy, it seems clear that he values just two outcomes for his eight years in office:

1. No additional attacks on the homeland: Bush and Cheney will deem their regime a great success if they can declare that their national-security decisions were necessary to keep the U.S. safe since September 11th. That result, they'll claim, justifies everything they did: the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the use of torture, the illegal detentions and renditions, the degradation of civil liberties at home.


2. Increased corporate hegemony over the economy and national politics: Bush can accurately claim that he did everything possible to eliminate restraints on corporate profits and freedom of action in the post-industrial economy. For example, his administration has presided over the aggressive dismantling of the federal regulatory apparatus, with predictable effects on the mortgage industry, environment and elsewhere. To the extent that the administration had an economic strategy at all, that was it.

In a political system that struggles to look beyond the two-, four- and six-year terms of its leadership, this sort of short-term (or two-term) thinking has again yielded nothing but disaster. The difficulties are compounded when the lack of strategic vision is combined with Bush's a priori, ideological approach to problems. In the mental world of George Bush, all assumptions are immune from empirical testing and revision.

If no further terrorist attacks occur in the U.S., even on the scale of London or Madrid, it would be quite a leap to agree with the Bush/Cheney claim that their policies deserve all the credit. The harsh context for such a claim shouldn't be overlooked: 3,993 U.S. troops have lost their lives in Iraq, another 29,314 have been wounded and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed or injured in an illegal war of aggression [1].

Meanwhile, the long-term security of the U.S. has been deeply compromised as world opinion has turned dramatically against the Bush/Cheney regime. Any claims to U.S. moral authority are now laughable, as even our British allies seem to recognize. The next administration will have to act dramatically to repair the damage by distancing itself from Bush/Cheney and their policies (for which there's a modest 12-step program).

The economic cost of Bush's short-term thinking is a deepening recession that has already imposed hardships and may require years of recovery. While expanding federal power through the growing National Security State, Bush/Cheney have been aggressive proponents of the Reagan "revolution's" hostility towards domestic programs, even including disaster relief, and regulation. [2]

The administration is staggering towards the exit, deferring the resolution of these crises and doing everything imaginable to escape blame. The next occupant of the White House will be greeted by piles of steaming turds in every closet, under all the furniture, in every heating duct and in other places that we can't even imagine yet. The stench will be in the air for years, and no disinfectant is powerful enough to remove it.

NOTES

[1] Source: Iraq Coalition Casualties.

[2] On the other hand, they've been very selective in adopting the principles of Reaganism. In his famous "Star Wars" speech in 1983, Reagan declared: "The defense policy of the United States is based on a simple premise: The United States does not start fights. We will never be an aggressor." [Seven months later, he ordered the unprovoked invasion of Grenada.] And: "History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap."

PHOTO: Bush/Cheney join the celebrations at the end of their terms (Wikimedia).

Some retirement options for Dubya

During a teleconference on Thursday with U.S. personnel stationed in Afghanistan, George Bush reportedly said:

"I must say, I'm a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks."

Forty years later, the man clearly regrets his decision to remain home when he could've easily arranged a tour or two in Vietnam after he finished college. Apparently he hasn't been able to persuade his two daughters into signing up for gigs in Iraq or Afghanistan, but it's not too late for him to vicariously witness the excitement and romance of combat.

Consider, for example:

The nature and sheer extent of American casualties [in Iraq] — officially in the tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands have sought medical help — has caught the U.S. government off guard.

From wounded soldiers who faced dilapidated conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center to troops whose mental problems have been overlooked, Iraq veterans have paid the price.

"The government was not ready for the casualties to come home," says Brad Trower, 29, a Marine Corps veteran from High Ridge who was injured twice in his tour in Iraq.

When Trower returned to St. Louis in 2005, suffering from traumatic brain injury after two vehicles he was riding in were blown up within a month of his arrival, he got "zero response" initially from local Veterans Affairs officials, though he is now doing well.

Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, says the nation has failed to heed the lessons of Vietnam, a war whose veterans constitute half of the 400,000 people sleeping on America's streets tonight.

Though the number of veterans today is smaller, the percentage of veterans who become homeless, commit suicide or face other social problems, partly because of a lack of treatment, is similar to that of the Vietnam era, Filner says.

"We know how to deal with it," he says, "but we apparently don't want to deal with it."

[...]

Of the 1.7 million service members with recent combat experience, some 800,000 are now veterans entitled to VA health care and benefits. Of those, 300,000 have had treatment; 40 percent were diagnosed with a mental health problem, more than half with PTSD, according to Veterans Affairs figures released as a result of a lawsuit by Veterans for Common Sense, a nonpartisan veterans advocacy group. Paul Sullivan, the group's executive director, says the patient figure could eventually reach 700,000.

[...]

Thirty-one percent of the veterans have filed disability claims, waiting on the average more than six months for them to be processed. Delays are pronounced for those who returned to small towns or rural areas in the Midwest or South far from VA facilities, as happens with many reserve troops.

There are an estimated 10,000 veterans who have suffered traumatic brain injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan from roadside bombs and other causes, and many of them will require intensive lifelong medical and personal care. Another 800 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan lost limbs due to amputations since 2001.

This tragic situation [1] offers many volunteer opportunities for Bush, even if he's not eager to relocate to Iraq or Afghanistan. After all, he won't be "employed here" after next January 20th. So let me offer a few modest suggestions for how he might spend his spare time after clearing brush on the Crawford ranch:

• He can volunteer for the Walter Reed Army Medical Center's Auxiliary, which offers "the opportunity for fun and friendship, for networking and sharing, as well as a chance to support our hospital and its patients."
• If he has a little spare change after paying his dues at his golf club in Waco, he can contribute to Walter Reed Hospital's Army Emergency Relief Fund , which provides for veterans' "emergency financial needs such as food, rent, utilities, emergency transportation and vehicle repair, funeral expenses, medical/dental expenses, or personal needs when pay is delayed or stolen." And he doesn't even have to wait until he qualifies for unemployment.
  
• Dubya might also join Stephen Colbert in cutting some generous checks for the Fisher House veterans' program, which provides "'a home away from home' that enables family members to be close to a loved one at the most stressful time -- during hospitalization for an illness, disease or injury."

Bush may be denied the "fantastic experience" and "romance" of Iraq and Afghanistan due to his age, but they can vicariously take part in those wars through the accounts of returning veterans by volunteering at Walter Reed, the Waco VA Medical Center or any other VA hospital across the land.

And keep those checks coming, too, George. A recent Harvard study predicts that "taxpayers' cost for the care of injured veterans will run up to $700 billion."

NOTES

[1] The Veterans for Common Sense website is brimming with valuable but underreported information about the plight of veterans. For example, the site cuts through the Pentagon's statistical games: "There are nearly 61,000 non-fatal casualties from Iraq, plus 8,000 non-fatal casualties from Afghanistan. A grand total of 69,000 battlefield casualties from the two wars." Meanwhile, the 3,988 U.S. troops have lost their lives in Iraq, 487 in Afghanistan.

[2] To help him prepare for his new career as a volunteer, Dubya might take a look at Elizabeth Reuben's article on the current situation in Afghanistan in the New York Times Magazine (February 24th).

With a tip o' the hat to Fred Kaplan at Slate and Digby at Hullabaloo. A commenter on Hullabaloo came up with this highly-relevant quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby:

"They were careless people... they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness... and let other people clean up the mess they had made..."

PHOTO: George Bush playing soldier at the DMZ in Korea (note the covers still on the binoculars).

UPDATE - 3/16/08:

When I mentioned these volunteer options for Dubya on Hullabaloo, a commenter pointed out: "My God, haven't they suffered enough?" The point is well taken, but somehow I don't think anyone needs to lose any sleep over his showing up at a clinic for TBI victims. Bush has already declared his retirement goals: clearing brush, riding his mountain bike and making incoherent speeches for big money.

The new dynastic politics

Following allegations of fraud during the last two national elections, deeper questions have been raised about whether the U.S. can still pretend to be a functioning "democracy." Some conservatives have long insisted that the U.S. is a "republic, not a democracy." Now there are reasons to question whether the U.S. can even claim to be a "republic."

If Hillary Clinton is elected president next year and serves two full terms, someone named Clinton or Bush will have held national office (as POTUS or VPOTUS) for 37 consecutive years. Conveniently enough, Chelsea Clinton will turn 35 and become eligible in 2015, two years before her mother would leave office.

This isn't unprecedented in U.S. history. Twice before, two members of the same family have assumed the presidency: John Adams (father) and John Quincy Adams (son), Teddy Roosevelt and (fifth cousin) Franklin Roosevelt.

Politics in the U.S. has been dominated by a de facto landed and propertied aristocracy that has been in place since its founding, though membership in that group has tended to be fluid and not necessarily fixed by ancestry. But the two competing dynasties of the last fifteen years are caught in an electoral dynamic that's unique in U.S. history.

After eight years of contrived "scandals" involving Bill Clinton, Dubya became the nostalgic choice of a significant percentage of voters who yearned for qualities that his father, at least in their fantasies, represented: the integrity, stability and moral righteousness of the Reagan/Bush years. Dubya's appeal was undoubtedly enhanced by his fraudulent claim that he was a "compassionate conservative," implying that he would supply a needed corrective to the harsh economic and social policies of the 80's.

After the devastating rejection of the elder Bush in the 1992 election, it's hard to imagine that anyone would be "nostalgic" enough to vote for a proven mediocrity from the same family—the first president in U.S. history who has ever been convicted of a crime. Dubya's appeal based on his ancestry was more subliminal than overt, but it may have had an effect by keeping him close enough in the vote count that he could steal the election in Florida.

After six and a half disastrous years, are we now witnessing the opposite dynamic—a kind of "Clinton nostalgia" that could help to propel Hillary into the White House? After all, she seems to offer the best of the Clinton legacy without the personal, ah, foibles that Bill brought to the office.

To many voters, at least by contrast with the Bush debacle, the Clinton era was a time of peace, prosperity, optimism and stability. The U.S. had emerged from the Cold War triumphant, at least in the popular imagination, and unchallenged. For all his obvious personal failings, Clinton was perceived as brilliant, competent and in control of his administration. As an added bonus, he speaks in complete and coherent sentences, a quality that radically distinguishes him from both his predecessor and successor. Hillary may be a less compelling speaker and presence, but she shares most of Bill's strengths and few of his vulnerabilities. A few political weaknesses are unique to her, primarily the high negatives that come from years of vicious personal attacks by the "vast right-wing conspiracy" that she has accurately described.

So are voters, after a catastrophic attempt to return to the perceived golden years of the Reagan/Bush administration, yearning to somehow replicate the 90's? Clearly we could, and did, do a lot worse.

The Bush brand has become so devalued, of course, that no one with that name is ever likely to get elected again. If daughter Jenna Bush thinks she can promote a political career by simply rebranding herself with her new husband's last name, I suspect she's sadly mistaken. And she, like her sister, also shares her father's reputation as a party animal.

If Seymour Hirsh is correct about the Bush/Cheney plan to launch a limited war against Iran, Republicans could be faced with an electoral fiasco in 2008 that could rival 1964. The end of the Bush dynasty could be the beginning of another.

NOTES:

George Bush has as strong a claim to membership in the hereditary U.S. elite as any president. The Bush family has been described as "the most successful political dynasty in American history" [a claim which, if true, suggests that dynasties haven't served us very well]. In fact, Dubya is a distant relative of Queen Elizabeth II. By contrast, Bill Clinton's background seems downright lumpen. Hillary's father worked as a coal miner in Pennsylvania before he moved to Illinois and began a successful career in the textile supply industry. The Clintons' claims to membership in the national aristocracy are founded on their educations (Yale and Wellesley) and political success rather than an accident of birth.

Now isn't the time to attempt an analysis of whether the U.S. can best be described as a democracy, republic, oligarchy, plutocracy or kleptocracy.

PHOTO: Samuel Prescott Bush, patriarch of the family and great-grandfather of George W. Bush. (Wikimedia)

Historians as the "Deciders"

In a recent poll, only 5% expressed any confidence in the ability of George Bush to manage the war in Iraq. In the face of that reality, it's remarkable that this inept administration is still able to bully Congress and the MSM into parroting its positions on Iraq at every turn. As Frank Rich points out in the column mentioned in an earlier posting:

The Democratic presidential candidates in the Senate need all the unity and focus they can muster to move this story forward, and that starts with the two marquee draws, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It's essential to turn up the heat full time in Washington for any and every legislative roadblock to administration policy that they and their peers can induce principled or frightened Republicans to endorse.

[...]

Mr. Bush, confident that he got away with repackaging the same bankrupt policies with a nonsensical new slogan ("Return on Success") Thursday night, is counting on the public's continued apathy as he kicks the can down the road and bides his time until Jan. 20, 2009; he, after all, has nothing more to lose. The job for real leaders is to wake up America to the urgent reality. We can't afford to punt until Inauguration Day in a war that each day drains America of resources and will. Our national security can't be held hostage indefinitely to a president's narcissistic need to compound his errors rather than admit them.

Rich makes some points that require a response...

First, Democrats can proceed with Rich's advice with or without the support of "principled or frightened Republicans," who may never be numerous enough to form the supermajority needed to get anything done in today's Senate.

Second, it seems unlikely that Bush will ever acknowledge any significant errors, even to himself in private. As he told Robert Draper, his official biographer, in an interview for Dead Certain: "You can't possibly figure out the history of the Bush presidency - until I'm dead."

Bush's statement is very revealing on several counts. Most importantly, it allows Bush to evade passing judgment on his own conduct because, a priori, he lacks the historical perspective to do so. (Since there's little evidence that he possesses a conscience, this isn't much of a cognitive leap for him. ) Bush also declares that he will continue to ignore the judgments of everyone else, since they're similarly lacking in any long-term perspective.

In effect, Bush claims that he cannot be held accountable by anyone during his lifetime.

If no one can judge his administration until he's dead, Bush simply doesn't have to concern himself about anything he does or what people say about him. He can imagine that he'll be vindicated no matter what the reality-based community concludes during his lifetime. As Sidney Blumenthal (another indispensable columnist) writes in The Guardian:

History has become a magical incantation for him, a kind of prayerful refuge where he is safe from having to think in the present. For Bush, history is supernatural, a deus ex machina, nothing less than a kind of divine intervention enabling him to enter presidential Valhalla. Through his fantasy about history as afterlife - the stairway to paradise - he rationalizes his current course.
[...]
The more profound and compounded his blunders, and the more he redoubles his certainty in ultimate victory, the greater his indifference to failure. He has entered a
phase of decadent perversity, where he accelerates his errors to vindicate his folly. As the sands of time run down he has decided that no matter what he does history will finally judge him as heroic.
[...]
The greater the chaos, the more he reinforces and rigidifies his views. The more havoc he wreaks, the more he insists he is succeeding. His intensified struggle for self-control is matched by his increased denial of responsibility.

This is a fair description of delusional thinking, as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: "A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everybody else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary."

Dubya's re-education program

"Whatever your position is on that debate [about Vietnam], one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps,' and 'killing fields.'"
—George W. Bush attacking congressional "Defeatocrats" in a speech to the VFW in Kansas City

Where to begin in responding to Dubya's latest display of stupefying ignorance? Whenever he launches into one of his "historical perspectives" on any subject, we can only cringe at what's to follow.

For one thing, Cambodia under Prince Sihanouk was neutral and relatively quiet until 1969. Then, in a futile attempt to interdict the Ho Chi Minh trail, Nixon began a "secret"—to the U.S. public, not the Cambodians—B-52 bombing campaign that killed about 800,000 Cambodian civilians. In 1970, the CIA sponsored a coup during Sihanouk's absence from the country. Lon Nol, the CIA's point man, took power and invited U.S. and ARVN troops into the country in another fruitless attempt to block the Ho Chi Minh trail.

Then Cambodia began to unravel. The U.S.-led coup and invasion provoked a civil war that finally resulted in Lon Nol's expulsion and the establishment of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. Estimates of Cambodian dead range from 1.7-3 million.

So Bush's speech should have read:

"the price of America's intervention was paid by millions of innocent citizens, whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps' and 'killing fields,'..."

Dubya also reiterated familiar claims about the alleged enemy is this endless war:

"The struggle has been called a clash of civilizations. In truth, it's a struggle for civilization. We fight for a free way of life against a new barbarism -- an ideology whose followers have killed thousands on American soil, and seek to kill again on even a greater scale."

A specific ideology seems to animate the relatively small—but apparently growing (thanks in large part to the war in Iraq—number of Iraqis who identify with Al Qaida. But the larger insurgency in Iraq has much deeper roots in nationalist impulses to resist occupation by foreign troops than in any single "Islamist" ideology. In fact, the deep sectarian conflicts between Sunnis and Shi'ites disprove any notion that a unifying ideology motivates them.

The hysterical denunciations of "Islamofascism" and "radical Islamism" (Giuliani's favorite) ring even more hollow than Cold War claims that "international communism" was monolithic. Long ago we began to see the outlines of an updated domino theory based on the notion that the fall of Iraq would lead to radical (and nearly identical) Wassabi or "Islamofascist" regimes in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and elsewhere in the Middle East. Not all hostility to the U.S. in the Middle East countries can be reduced to a fundamentalist religious worldview or "new barbarism."

Nationalism is far too nuanced for those, like Bush, who can only perceive conflict in binary terms founded on ideological and historical distortions.

If there is a valid comparison between Iraq and Cambodia, it would focus on the following observation: heavy-handed U.S. military interventions incited or escalated civil wars that resulted in massive human suffering for no purpose whatsoever.

Dubya should arrange his next vacation, which certainly will come soon, so that he sign up for a couple community-college classes in the reality-based history of southeast Asia and the Middle East.

Pushing the envelope

Veterans for Peace established this memorial on the beach at Arlington West in Santa Monica in 2004, and it has expanded relentlessly each year with the casualty count in Iraq.

As of today, the war in Iraq has inflicted 3,454 deaths and 26,188 wounded on U.S. forces. 980 of those deaths have occurred since last Memorial Day weekend, compared to 807 during the previous year. Over two hundred troops have been killed over the last two months alone. It's not unusual for the same number of Iraqis to be killed and wounded over a single weekend.

And it will only get worse, as Bush warned on Thursday:

"We're going to expect heavy fighting in the weeks and months," he said. "We can expect more American and Iraqi casualties." He added, "It could be a bloody -- it could be a very difficult August."

Meanwhile, yet another poll shows that:

"Six in 10 Americans say the U.S. should have stayed out of Iraq and more than three in four say things are going badly there -- including nearly half who say things are going very badly, the poll found."

Last week the Democrats in Congress blinked in their confrontation with Bush over timetables for withdrawal. They had little choice, of course, since they lack the Republican support needed to override the inevitable second veto. The war is funded through September, and it seems unlikely that even these poll numbers will persuade Republicans to desert Bush in sufficient numbers to have an impact on policy. Unless the situation deteriorates dramatically, they're unlikely to go into total panic mode until the primary season begins in 2008.

As a lame duck, Bush is unlikely to be able to pursue any kind of domestic agenda in Congress, for which we can all be grateful. But on Iraq, as with the Gonzales affair, he can safely adopt an in-your-face posture, defying the growing opposition to do something to force a change.

During the 1996 campaign, Bob Dole got exercised because Al Gore visited a Buddhist temple and was rewarded with some $122,000 in (legal) campaign contributions. He asked: "Where's the outrage? When--when will the voters start to focus? ...How far can you push the envelope? How much can you get away with? What can you do? "

The context has changed completely, but eleven years later Dole's questions—which seemed trivial even back then—are far more momentous. Voters are clearly focused on the war, and there seems to be no lack of outrage, but Bush has plenty of reason to believe that he can get away with just about anything—and nothing can be done about it. Sadly, he apparently faces no political consequences even if another 2,000 Americans die in Iraq before January 20, 2009.

PHOTOS: Arlington West [Thanks to Digby at Hullabaloo for the tip.]