Your Humble Blogger can’t help but notice the timing of today’s announcement. I mean, I am prepared to have coal in my Fitzmas stocking, myself, but there is a strong possibility that the White House Counsel could be very busy indeed over the next few weeks. Furthermore, the reluctance of Ms. Miers (and her employer) to produce the records necessary for fighting this thing may well be just the instincts of the secretive cabal (of incompetents and crooks) who Our Only President has chosen to surround himself with, but then there might just be something that somebody might subpoena if somebody knew about it...
I’m just saying. As much as Our Only President may want a(nother) lap dog on the Supreme Court, it may be even more important to have somebody he can trust absolutely in the chair Ms. Miers now occupies.
You know, while I’m at it ... I have no idea if a crime was committed in the attack on Joe Wilson’s credibility. Clearly, if a crime was committed (including perjury, or obstructing the investigation), then it should be prosecuted. However, left blogovia is getting all misty-eyed about indictments, and I think this is wrong, wrong, wrong. I mean, I understand the shadenfreude, and I will gloat as much as the next guy. The serious point about government is getting missed in this whole focus on criminality. The point is that this administration has shown a pattern of behavior that is inimical to good government: when somebody describes to them a world that differs from the one they see, they respond not by judging the merits of the description, but by attacking the person. Whether they broke the law in this case is a matter for the officers of the court, but even if they did not and never would break the law, they still would be incapable of governing well so long as they will not listen.
This is a moment for us—Democrats, lefties, progressives, the grand coalition of rabble and riffraff—to talk about the root of the thing, the basic principle. This is a great moment for us to provide an alternative. Not an alternative policy agenda, although we need to be working on that as well, but an alternative approach to government, and an alternative frame through which to view our elected officials and their jobs. Here’s what I expect: An open mind, a willingness to compromise, tolerance (at least) for difference of opinion, a soupcon of humility, and most of all, an instinct for openness and transparency so that whatever is done can be talked about in the proverbial marketplace of ideas. If Democrats can become the party of openness, the party that says what it means and shows what it does, the party that acknowledges differences and talks with its opposition, then not only can it regain the confidence of the voters (and some of the non-voters, perhaps) and win a few damn legislative seats, but maybe, just perhaps, call the whole nation to its better self. Which is in our long-term self-interest, because a liberal or even center-left party can’t sustain itself in a nation with an instinct to distrust its government.
Now, I don’t want to get high-minded and all, because I know that the Party (and its accoutrements) is in it to win elections, and that they can’t afford to call the nation to its better self if it’ll lose elections in the short run. But this is a moment—really, I think it is, I don’t think I’m fooling myself here—when we can do ourselves some good in the short run and the long run. Let’s not let that opportunity pass while we’re gloating.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
Hear, hear!
i am currenly insanely drunk (for good and valid reasons) and writing this this in the hope that there is still some room in this group for direct and honest valuation of what i have to say.
#1: in the very long term, this county reaches zero over infinity for its importance.
#2: it is more important that harriet miers is a human being like every other member of our species than any other aspect of her behavior over her relatively short (in terms of #1) existence.
#3: in 50 years we will be tremendously different. in loose talk tonight i suggested that by 2050 a dolphin could be president of the united states. this was both silly and cynical, based on physical environmental changes and genetic manipulation.
#4: we aren’t what we think we are. if i knew what that meant, i probably wouldn’t have written it.
over and out.
Good Morning, david! Rise and shine!
1) Well, in the long run (as Stephen Fry said) we’re all dead. It’s good to keep perspective, but it’s also quite likely that the run before the US recedes to zero/infinity importance is very long indeed.
2) A certain respect for Ms. Miers humanity is certainly good. However, like most of humanity, she oughtn’t be on the Supreme Court of the United States.
3) Fifty years is way too short a run for a dolphin to gain the sort of experience that would qualify him (or her) for President. Even figure the breakthrough in the next five years, your dolphin would have to have at least a dozen years of education, even with that superior dolphin memory, then either a moderately slow trajectory through local politics to a governor’s or senator’s office (say, another twenty years) or a rocket to business fame and then to a governor’s or senator’s office (probably fifteen years, unless the novelty of dolphin business turns out to be a plus, and some dolphin turns out to be surprisingly good at innovation or expropriation). That’s—what—thirty years, even assuming the first dolphin to go that route doesn’t turn out to have mob connections or a tunafish mistress or dark skin or come from a northeastern state or have some other disqualification. And, of course, we’re assuming that the dolphin will be a natural citizen, which implies that the breakthrough would happen on American soil (or off an American shore), which seems unlikely in the next ten or twenty years, given where the good stuff is happening in Moreau tech. And, of course, if the Singularity is within fifty years, it would not only make the whole qualifications stage obsolete but the presidency as well.
4)Um, it’s probably too late, but my advice is a tall glass of water before bed. I mean, you’re right, of course, we aren’t what we think we are, particularly Eleanor Bron.
Thanks,
-V.