Dead Presidents
One president has passed on and another is set to go in 30 days. Is that too cavalier? Should I be more circumspect or respectful of the passing of Gerald Rudolph Ford?
No. I think not.
While a lot of years have passed since his unelected and unelectable presidency, the damage of his administration is still being felt.
Damage? Ford? What, you may well ask, did he fall on?
Ford's greatest sin was his pardon of Richard Nixon. It was an event that people screamed about back in the day, but seem to have come around to accept today - even Ted Kennedy now says it was a good idea. I don't.
What I see in the pardon is the unpardonable acts of today's loathsome administration. The key players today are the same people who rejected Nixon's guilt in 1974. Yes, I'm looking at you, Dickie Cheney. Cheney never accepted that there was a limit on executive power - specifically that anything that Nixon did was illegal.
And that's the crux of everything that's gone so horribly wrong in the past six years. The country is being run by a cabal of authoritarians who reject the Constitution of the United States. They believe - counter to every word and intent in that document - that there is no legal constraint on the president. When the president says or does something - or orders others to do so - it becomes legal by the fact that it is his order.
If Nixon had been hauled in front of a judge and convicted of his massive and illegal conspiracy - along with his own Junta Fellow travelers - maybe we wouldn't be facing a Constitutional crisis today.
Ford saw his job as a calming of political emotion, that his day called for a leader who was simply decent and legal. But what the country really needed was a clear destruction of the authoritarian belief that resides in the hearts of Republicans.
Look: if Georgie and Cheney and Rummy had pulled their bad acts on an America that did not have a fascistic strain in the right wing, they never could have gotten any where. Imagine an America - the country I thought I had grown up in - where people didn't allow the Junta to get away with what they've done.
Because it's been the media and the Congress and the people - lied to, but still responsible - who have let this government have its head. Were you ever curious about where a political movement would go if it could go anywhere? Wonder no more about conservatism - we know the hell it leads to when left unchecked.
And maybe if Nixon - a kinder, gentler version of Junior Bush - had had his day in court, we wouldn't have let these guys do what they did.
The other president who is destined for his ultimate reward is Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi court has spoken: hanging for him in 30 days. Look, I have no wish to see this man live. My opinion is that hanging is too good for him. He should be tortured to death in exactly the same fashion as he had his many victims tortured to death.
But there remain questions about his trial. It went through so many judges and lawyers (several killed by insurgents), how can it really have been a fair trial? Once again: fair trial, more than his victims got, I know. But not more than a real justice system demands. It's the image of real justice that will make a difference.
And of course, there will be weeks in increased violence afterward. His loyalists - and anybody else who wants to make trouble - will be out in force. Why bring all that on?
But Georgie will have his pound of flesh. And he'll say goodbye to Gerry Ford - and hope that there's another Ford around who will do for him what Ford did for Nixon when the time comes.
No. I think not.
While a lot of years have passed since his unelected and unelectable presidency, the damage of his administration is still being felt.
Damage? Ford? What, you may well ask, did he fall on?
Ford's greatest sin was his pardon of Richard Nixon. It was an event that people screamed about back in the day, but seem to have come around to accept today - even Ted Kennedy now says it was a good idea. I don't.
What I see in the pardon is the unpardonable acts of today's loathsome administration. The key players today are the same people who rejected Nixon's guilt in 1974. Yes, I'm looking at you, Dickie Cheney. Cheney never accepted that there was a limit on executive power - specifically that anything that Nixon did was illegal.
And that's the crux of everything that's gone so horribly wrong in the past six years. The country is being run by a cabal of authoritarians who reject the Constitution of the United States. They believe - counter to every word and intent in that document - that there is no legal constraint on the president. When the president says or does something - or orders others to do so - it becomes legal by the fact that it is his order.
If Nixon had been hauled in front of a judge and convicted of his massive and illegal conspiracy - along with his own Junta Fellow travelers - maybe we wouldn't be facing a Constitutional crisis today.
Ford saw his job as a calming of political emotion, that his day called for a leader who was simply decent and legal. But what the country really needed was a clear destruction of the authoritarian belief that resides in the hearts of Republicans.
Look: if Georgie and Cheney and Rummy had pulled their bad acts on an America that did not have a fascistic strain in the right wing, they never could have gotten any where. Imagine an America - the country I thought I had grown up in - where people didn't allow the Junta to get away with what they've done.
Because it's been the media and the Congress and the people - lied to, but still responsible - who have let this government have its head. Were you ever curious about where a political movement would go if it could go anywhere? Wonder no more about conservatism - we know the hell it leads to when left unchecked.
And maybe if Nixon - a kinder, gentler version of Junior Bush - had had his day in court, we wouldn't have let these guys do what they did.
The other president who is destined for his ultimate reward is Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi court has spoken: hanging for him in 30 days. Look, I have no wish to see this man live. My opinion is that hanging is too good for him. He should be tortured to death in exactly the same fashion as he had his many victims tortured to death.
But there remain questions about his trial. It went through so many judges and lawyers (several killed by insurgents), how can it really have been a fair trial? Once again: fair trial, more than his victims got, I know. But not more than a real justice system demands. It's the image of real justice that will make a difference.
And of course, there will be weeks in increased violence afterward. His loyalists - and anybody else who wants to make trouble - will be out in force. Why bring all that on?
But Georgie will have his pound of flesh. And he'll say goodbye to Gerry Ford - and hope that there's another Ford around who will do for him what Ford did for Nixon when the time comes.
posted by fiduciary at 12:20 PM
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