Why Legitimate Journalists Pretend Fox Is A News Outlet

March 12, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Harold Raines, a former editor of The New York Times asks a good question over at The Washington Post: Why don’t honest journalists take on Roger Ailes and Fox News?

One question has tugged at my professional conscience throughout the year-long congressional debate over health-care reform, and it has nothing to do with the public option, portability or medical malpractice. It is this: Why haven’t America’s old-school news organizations blown the whistle on Roger Ailes, chief of Fox News, for using the network to conduct a propaganda campaign against the Obama administration — a campaign without precedent in our modern political history?

Through clever use of the Fox News Channel and its cadre of raucous commentators, Ailes has overturned standards of fairness and objectivity that have guided American print and broadcast journalists since World War II. Yet, many members of my profession seem to stand by in silence as Ailes tears up the rulebook that served this country well as we covered the major stories of the past three generations, from the civil rights revolution to Watergate to the Wall Street scandals. This is not a liberal-versus-conservative issue. It is a matter of Fox turning reality on its head with, among other tactics, its endless repetition of its uber-lie: “The American people do not want health-care reform.”

Fox repeats this as gospel. But as a matter of historical context, usually in short supply on Fox News, this assertion ranks somewhere between debatable and untrue.

The American people and many of our great modern presidents have been demanding major reforms to the health-care system since the administration of Teddy Roosevelt. The elections of 1948, 1960, 1964, 2000 and 2008 confirm the point, with majorities voting for candidates supporting such change. Yet congressional Republicans have managed effective campaigns against health-care changes favored variously by Presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Clinton. Now Fox News has given the party of Lincoln a free ride with its repetition of the unexamined claim that today’s Republican leadership really does want to overhaul health care — if only the effort could conform to Mitch McConnell’s ideas on portability and tort reform.

It is true that, after 14 months of Fox’s relentless pounding of President Obama’s idea of sweeping reform, the latest Gallup poll shows opinion running 48 to 45 percent against the current legislation. Fox invariably stresses such recent dips in support for the legislation, disregarding the majorities in favor of various individual aspects of the reform effort. Along the way, the network has sold a falsified image of the professional standards that developed in American newsrooms and university journalism departments in the last half of the 20th century.

Raines proceeded to further discuss how Fox abuses journalistic standards:

For the first time since the yellow journalism of a century ago, the United States has a major news organization devoted to the promotion of one political party. And let no one be misled by occasional spurts of criticism of the GOP on Fox. In a bygone era of fact-based commentary typified, left to right, by my late colleagues Scotty Reston and Bill Safire, these deceptions would have been given their proper label: disinformation.

Under the pretense of correcting a Democratic bias in news reporting, Fox has accomplished something that seemed impossible before Ailes imported to the news studio the tricks he learned in Richard Nixon’s campaign think tank: He and his video ferrets have intimidated center-right and center-left journalists into suppressing conclusions — whether on health-care reform or other issues — they once would have stated as demonstrably proven by their reporting.

There are at least three answers I can think of (none of which are all that good) as to why Fox and the arguments they spread to the rest of the media are not challenged enough:

  1. Far too many journalists are lazy. They don’t see any point in taking on Fox or those who repeat the GOP/Fox line. It is easier to put on a conservative who repeats their usual lies, a liberal who might be telling the truth, and not to bother trying to determine the actual facts.
  2. Accusations of liberal bias. Conservatives whine about a mythical “liberal media” and the lazy journalists decide it isn’t worth fighting. Often this leads to putting on the lying conservative without even bothering to put on the reality-based counter arguments.
  3. Journalists often stick together. Sometimes this might even be due to a misguided belief this is necessary to defend freedom of the press. In reality it is the abuse of journalistic standards by Fox which is harmful to the free press. Fox is essentially a propaganda arm of the Republican Party and it should be treated just as an official GOP press office would be treated, and not as a legitimate news organization.
Posted in Health Care, Mitch McConnell, News Media, Op-eds, Richard Nixon. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 9 Comments »

Will Winning the Nobel Peace Prize Help Or Hurt Obama and Political Conditions in the United States?

October 10, 2009 — Ron Chusid

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The natural reaction to finding that our president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize would seem to be an expression of gratitude, and perhaps even pride. Instead the far right used this to attack Obama, ironically making statements sounding little different from those of the Taliban and Hamas. Steve Benen notes that CBS White House correspondent Chip Reid questioned if “that this is going to widen the partisan divide and make things even more difficult to accomplish on every front.”

Hearing such an absurdity makes me miss once again the days when White House correspondents such as Dan Rather confronted Richard Nixon on Watergate as opposed to raising such a ridiculous right wing meme. Steve pointed out the absurdity of Reid’s question:

Reid’s fears that a Nobel prize the president did not seek might “widen the partisan divide and make things even more difficult to accomplish on every front” are almost comical. It reminded me of the scene in “Life of Brian” when Matthias says, “Look, I don’t think it should be a sin, just for saying ‘Jehovah.’” Shocked, the official overseeing his execution says, “You’re only making it worse for yourself!” To which Matthias responds, “Making it worse? How can it be worse?”

At this point, Republicans reflexively oppose every single policy Democrats embrace. The GOP has even decided to reject ideas they originally came up with. They’re running a scorched earth campaign … and Chip Reid thinks an unsolicited Nobel Peace Prize will make it “even more difficult” for the parties to find common ground?

Making it worse? How can it be worse?

If anything this can only make things better.

As Steve says, with current conditions there is no way to make matters worse, at least with respect to Republicans in Congress, as well as Republicans in leadership positions, talk radio, and Fox.

Fortunately these are not the only Republicans. When Obama strives for bipartisanship, he is looking beyond these people and considering all the people who have voted Republican in recent years. This includes both those who crossed over and voted for him, and Republican voters who voted against him but are open to supporting his positions based on the merit.

There are Republican voters who do like Obama. While I have no numbers on this nation wide, I do know people who voted against him but believe he is doing a good job. It probably does help when Obama points out that he is considering Republican ideas, such as on health care reform, even if he does not pick up any Republican votes outside of the state of Maine. Winning the Nobel Peace Prize is also likely to improve how such people see him.

This may or may not help much, but I cannot see any way that it can hurt.

Sure, talk radio will attack him over this, but things couldn’t get any worse here. Even this might help us if it helps demonstrate to rational people just how nutty the right wing noise machine and conservative movement is. This will show that, while liberals criticized Bush over real matters of policy, the fanatics of the right simply hate him. Besides hating him as a person, they hate the American values he represents, and the conservative movement which would oppose such a man under any circumstances will never tolerate the thought of having a black man in the White House.

For the authoritarian right, to have a president who supports diplomacy and international cooperation as opposed to preemptive warfare and torture is unthinkable. Historian Douglas Brinkley, who has worked on books about Americans including Theodore Roosevelt, John Kerry, and Ronald Reagan, has this impression of the award:

No matter how his presidency develops or the planet evolves, he has already confirmed his place of greatness. For he didn’t just write “The Audacity of Hope,” he actualized it on the campaign trail of 2008. We spend billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to win over hearts-and-minds to the American Way. President Obama has done the same service on the cheap.

Many will appreciate this accomplishment world wide, perhaps including some Americans who have voted Republican.

Posted in Barack Obama, Republicans, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Democracy and Protests Against Health Care Reform

August 11, 2009 — Ron Chusid

I’ve had numerous posts regarding the distortions being spread by those protesting health care reform. Opposing such spread of misinformation, and disagreeing on principles, should not translate into opposition to protests and questioning of government in principle. Ezra Klein writes that It Is Democracy, Not Health Reform, That Is Sick. He concludes:

What we’re seeing here is not merely distrust in the House health-care reform bill. It’s distrust in the political system. A healthy relationship does not require an explicit detailing of the “institutional checks” that will prevent one partner from beating or killing the other. In a healthy relationship, such madness is simply unthinkable. If it was not unthinkable, then no number of institutional checks could repair that relationship. Similarly, the relationship between the protesters and the government is not healthy. The protesters believe the government capable of madness. There is no evidence for that claim, which means that there is no answer for it, either. That claim is not about what is in this bill, or what government has done in Medicare and Medicaid and the VA. It is about what a certain slice of Americans think their government — and by extension, their fellow citizens — capable of.

The protesters are wrong in their facts on this case but a certain amount of distrust of the political system is a prudent thing. The founding fathers even advised this. Ezra doesn’t believe the government is capable of madness. Has he forgotten Vietnam, Watergate, Iraq, and the entire Bush years? Remember when we argued that protest was patriotic?

I also disagree with Ezra’s lack of respect for the importance of “institutional checks.” The breakdown of such checks is responsible for many of the horrors of the Bush years. In reforming health care, as in most government action, the devil is in the details and it is important that we institute the right institutional checks.

Ezra ends with mention of Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA. Government has been successful in one out of three here. Medicare does an excellent job of providing coverage for the elderly and the disabled and, with some tweaks, would be an excellent model for a public plan. Medicaid, due to limited funding to care for the poor, is a total disaster and ideally I would like to see it abolished with Medicaid patients instead transferred to the public plan if it survives. I have also discussed in previous posts how those outside of the medical profession such as Klein are misled by faulty data to believe the VA system is far better than it really is. While some liberal bloggers might be mislead by faulty data on the VA, many of those who have experienced its flaws first hand have legitimate reason to question those who promote this as a desirable system. Fortunately  a totally government run program such as the VA isn’t on the table.

There is a lot of misinformation being spread by the right, but there are also legitimate questions about health care reform. Questions about what types of “institutional checks” will prevent “madness” on the part of government is not unreasonable. Of course the protesters should also keep in mind that, while no government program will be perfect, there is also a lot of madness in our current system.

Posted in Blogs & Social Media, Health Care. Tags: , , , , , . 12 Comments »

And That’s The Way It Was, November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009

July 17, 2009 — Ron Chusid

Walter Cronkite, often called “the most trusted man in America,” has died at age 92. Cronkite was anchor of the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981, bringing many key moments of modern world history into American homes before the age of cable “news.”  The Washington Post writes:

CBS was widely considered the best news-gathering operation among the three major networks, and Cronkite was a major reason why. With his avuncular pipe-and-slippers presence before the camera and an easy, yet authoritative, delivery, he had an extraordinary rapport with his viewers and a level of credibility that was unmatched in the industry. In a 1973 public opinion poll by the Oliver Quayle organization, Cronkite was named the most trusted public figure in the United States, ahead of the president and the vice president.

“He was the voice of truth, the voice of reliability,” said Todd Gitlin, a Columbia University journalism professor and sociologist. “He belongs to a time when there were three networks, three oil companies, three brands of bread.” He was the personification of stability and permanence, even when, in Gitlin’s words, his message was “that things are falling apart.”

In the decades before media outlets and media audiences splintered into numberless shards, Cronkite’s broadcasts reached an estimated 20 million people a night. His name became permanently linked in the minds of millions of Americans with the major news events of his time: the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.; the triumph of the first moon landing; the Watergate scandal; the return of American hostages after the Iranian Revolution; and a series of political conventions, national elections and presidential inaugurations.

Cronkite was on the air for hours after the Kennedy assassination. The video above shows Cronkite announcing the death of JFK. He was a such a strong promoter of the space program in its early years that he was called “the eighth astronaut.” When Apollo XI landed on the moon, “Cronkite was on the air for 27 of the 30 hours that Apollo XI took to complete its mission.”

Many have wondered where the media was in the build up to the Iraq war as the press frequently repeated the lies of the Bush administration without doing independent reporting. Walter Cronkite experienced a similar situation with Vietnam, ultimately becoming instrumental in changing public opinion:

Initially, Cronkite was something of a hawk on the Vietnam War, although his program did broadcast controversial segments such as Morley Safer’s famous “Zippo lighter” report. However, returning from Vietnam after the Tet offensive Cronkite addressed his massive audience with a different perspective. “It seems now more certain than ever,” he said, “that the bloody experience of Vietnam is a stalemate.” He then urged the government to open negotiations with the North Vietnamese. Many observers, including presidential aide Bill Moyers speculated that this was a major factor contributing to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s decision to offer to negotiate with the enemy and not to run for President in l968.

Posted in Breaking News, News Media, Television. Tags: , , . 11 Comments »

The Danger of Killing Health Care Reform From The Left

July 8, 2009 — Ron Chusid

Matthew Yglesias has made an important point about the strategy of the “progressive block” to attempt to block any form of health care reform which does not meet their ideological goals. This now includes blocking plans which might serve the goals of health care reform if they do not include  a public option. An example of this was seen yesterday when they attacked an extremely sensible statement from Rahm Emanuel who argued that “The goal is non-negotiable; the path is.” I have used the Clinton’s as an example in criticizing the strategy of opposing any reform plan which the left does not consider to be perfect. Hillary convinced Bill to veto any bill which differed from the ideas of HillaryCare. As a result nothing was able to pass and the number of uninsured and under-insured has grown tremendously. Yglesias notes an even earlier parallel.

Yglesias points to a report on a plan proposed by Richard Nixon back in 1974 which is similar to what the Democrats are proposing today:

“It was an extremely extensive plan, as I remember, that would have given universal coverage” for health care, recalled Rudolph Penner, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and economic official in the Ford administration.

Nixon introduced his Comprehensive Health Insurance Act on Feb. 6, 1974, days after he used what would be his final State of the Union address to call for universal access to health insurance.

“I shall propose a sweeping new program that will assure comprehensive health-insurance protection to millions of Americans who cannot now obtain it or afford it, with vastly improved protection against catastrophic illnesses,” he told America.

Nixon said his plan would build on existing employer-sponsored insurance plans and would provide government subsidies to the self-employed and small businesses to ensure universal access to health insurance. He said it wouldn’t create a new federal bureaucracy.

The Nixon plan won support from a Time magazine editorial on Feb. 18, 1974, which noted that “more and more Americans have been insisting that national health insurance is an idea whose tune (sic) has come.”

Considering his support for HMO’s I would have reservations about a plan advocated by Richard Nixon without seeing further details, but it is remarkable that we are still struggling this many years later over a way to do what every other industrialized country manages to do and enable all citizens to have access to affordable health care. The plan was not killed by conservatives but by those on the left who hoped for something better:

Despite the heated politics of Watergate, national health-care legislation was proceeding in Congress thanks to a compromise brokered by a young Democratic senator from Massachusetts, Edward Kennedy, a Nixon nemesis.

But then, according to a 1974 political almanac published by Congressional Quarterly, the AFL-CIO and the United Auto Workers lobbied successfully to kill the plan. Unions hoped to get a better deal after the next elections.

Yglesias concludes by saying essentially the same thing I have said on this topic in previous posts:

In retrospect, that particular iteration of the progressive block strategy doesn’t look so smart. And it’s possible that this time around, too, it’ll turn out that the votes aren’t there for a bill with a strong public option and the votes aren’t there for a bill without one either.

In retrospect, Emanuel was right and the liberal bloggers attacking him were wrong when Emanuel stated his concentration on the goals of health care reform as opposed to any specific path. For the past eight years we criticized George Bush and the Republicans for governing from the extreme right without compromise. Similar demands from the extreme left are no more rational.

Posted in Blogs & Social Media, Health Care, Richard Nixon. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . 4 Comments »

Nixon on Abortion; Reagan on the Saturday Night Massacre

June 23, 2009 — Ron Chusid

While George W. Bush was probably the worst, there have been problems with other Republican presidents. Newly released tapes provide more information on both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Nixon feared that legalized abortion would increase “permissiveness,” but did see some exceptions where he believed abortion was necessary:

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding: “Or a rape.

Ronald Reagan backed Nixon on the Saturday Night Massacre:

Nine months later, after Nixon precipitated the resignations of two top Justice Department officials and forced the firing of the special prosecutor looking into the Watergate affair, Ronald Reagan, who was then the governor of California and would later be president, told the White House that he heartily approved.

Reagan told the White House that the action — which would become known as the “Saturday Night Massacre” — was “probably the best thing that ever happened — none of them belong where they were,” according to a Nixon aide’s notes of the private conversation.

Posted in Republicans, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Social Issues. Tags: , , , . 2 Comments »

Getting At The Truth, Regardless of Party

May 9, 2009 — Ron Chusid

There’s been considerable question lately as to how much Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats knew about waterboarding. ABC uncritically repeated claims that she was informed while others such as Greg Sargent have shown that this is not entirely clear. The CIA has conceded that the documents cited might not be accurate, while my Congressman, Pete Hoekstra, claims to have the goods on Pelosi. (Hoekstra might or might not be right on this one, but as far as I’m concerned Hoekstra’s credibility has been zilch since he tried to pass off bogus claims of finding WMD in Ira)q.  Marc Ambinder has further background on this controversy.

Many conservative bloggers have once again turned a search for truth into a partisan battle, misrepresenting the situation as Democrats and their supporters being more concerned with covering their asses. The Republicans are holding a pretty weak hand when their defense to committing war crimes comes down to claims that some Democratic leaders also knew about their crimes.

Meanwhile many liberal bloggers are taking a more reality-based approach, as has been the case throughout the post 9/11 era. Liberal bloggers such as Josh Marshall have no qualms about questioning whether Democratic leaders knew what was going on.

While we do not know all the specifics yet, it looks pretty clear that 1) the Bush years were ones of wanton criminality in the highest levels of government and 2) the Democrats did not do enough as an opposition party to try to oppose their actions. Beyond this it is far from clear as to how much Pelosi or other Democrats knew about specifics such as waterboarding. Any investigations should address failings on the parts of members of both political parties.

Congress should certainly investigate what occurred as this is one of its functions, but the questions raised about Pelosi do show that we might not be able to count on Congress to investigate fully. Any investigation as to what went wrong in these dark years of our history should include why our two-party system failed us at a  time when we needed an opposition party to do whatever was possible to block and expose criminal acts.

Besides any investigations initiated by Congress, a special prosecutor should be appointed to investigate crimes committed by the Bush administration. As many of the problems, including possible inaction by the Democratic leaders, might be worthy of  exposure but do not constitute criminal acts, perhaps some sort of independent truth commission is also needed. As occurred during the Watergate era, it is also possible that some of the truth might come out from investigative journalists. Unfortunately journalism today is weaker and we do not have the smoking gun of incriminating tapes in the White House. It is possible that some former members of the Bush administration will talk and act as a modern day Deep Throats.

Posted in Blogs & Social Media, Congress, Democrats, George Bush, Nancy Pelosi, Republicans, Terrorism. Tags: , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Arlen Specter Leaves a Sinking Ship

April 28, 2009 — Ron Chusid

Arlen Specter is switching from the Republican to the Democratic Party. While this is motivated largely by his personal electoral prospects, it is nevertheless another move towards turning the Republican Party into a regional party of the south and the Mormon belt of the west. In explaining this change, Specter cited the move by the GOP to the far right:

I have been a Republican since 1966. I have been working extremely hard for the Party, for its candidates and for the ideals of a Republican Party whose tent is big enough to welcome diverse points of view. While I have been comfortable being a Republican, my Party has not defined who I am. I have taken each issue one at a time and have exercised independent judgment to do what I thought was best for Pennsylvania and the nation.

Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.

Presumably Specter made a deal to keep his seniority but I have not seen any specifics yet. It remains to be seen whether this will meaningfully affect the amount of power the Democrats have in the Senate. Specter might wind up voting the same way, including on cloture, as he previously would as a moderate Republican. It is also possible that increased association with Democratic Senators, along with no longer being concerned with winning Republican primaries, could have some affect on his future voting record.

Besides further decreasing the amount of Republican Senators in the north, this adds to the view of the Republicans as a party in decline. Recent polls have showed that only twenty-one percent identifies themselves as Republicans. Karen Tumulty argues that one party has not had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate  since 1937 when considering the lack of ideological unity within the parties in more recent years. Can we even consider this a two party system anymore when one party has such little support?

That is actually a question which will become clearer in the future. The Republicans have had bad moments before, such as after the Goldwater loss and after Watergate, and have recovered. Still, today’s situation seems somewhat different. Voting against Goldwater didn’t necessarily mean permanent rejection of the GOP. Besides the political landscape quickly changed when LBJ alienated the south. Watergate was blamed on Richard Nixon and not the entire party.

Today it is not only individual Republicans but the views of the party which are being rejected. While an extremist faction has taken control of the party, increasing numbers of conservatives and moderates have begun to identify with the Democrats out of lack of any alternative.

Most likely the two party system will be restored, but it is not certain that this will be because of the Republican Party as currently constituted finding a way to revive itself. With so many of the remaining Republicans deluding themselves into thinking they lost because they are not conservative enough, the party could be on the way to extinction. In contrast the Democrats are becoming a big tent made up of a wide variety of views. I am increasingly suspecting that a future two party system will come about from a division of the Democrats over disagreements over future issues, either by the formation of a new party or a faction of Democrats moving to take over what is left of a dying Republican Party.

Posted in Barry Goldwater, Congress, Democrats, Politics, Polls, Republicans, Richard Nixon. Tags: , , , , , , . 9 Comments »

The White House Press Corps

April 20, 2009 — Ron Chusid

Anna Marie Cox is critical of the White House press corps, describing the White House briefing room as “where news goes to die.”

Name a major political story broken by a White House correspondent. A thorough debunking of the Bush case for Iraqi WMD? McClatchy Newspapers’ State Department and national security correspondents. Bush’s abuse of signing statements? The Boston Globe’s legal affairs correspondent. Even Watergate came off The Washington Post’s Metro desk.

While the real news on Watergate came far more from journalists like Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, at least White House correspondents such as Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw did put some pressure on Richard Nixon. Watching the softball coverage of George Bush in recent years was very disappointing when compared with these White House correspondents of the Watergate era.

Posted in George Bush, News Media, Op-eds, Richard Nixon. Tags: , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Obama and The Rule of Law

March 22, 2009 — Ron Chusid

In an editorial published today in The New York Times is critical of Obama for not reversing all of  George Bush’s “misguided and dangerous policies on terrorism, prisoners, the rule of law and government secrecy.”

As much as it needs to happen, we never expected President Obama to immediately reverse every one of President George W. Bush’s misguided and dangerous policies on terrorism, prisoners, the rule of law and government secrecy. Fixing this calamitous mess will take time and care — and Mr. Obama has taken important steps in that direction.

But we did not expect that Mr. Obama, who addressed these issues with such clarity during his campaign, would be sending such confused and mixed signals from the White House. Some of what the public has heard from the Obama administration on issues like state secrets and detainees sounds a bit too close for comfort to the Bush team’s benighted ideas.

There are times when the president seems to be making a clean and definitive break. On his second day in office, he ordered the closing of the prison at Guantánamo Bay and directed his cabinet to formulate new policies on detaining and interrogating people suspected of terrorist acts or of supporting terrorists.

Last week, the administration notified a federal court hearing appeals by Guantánamo inmates that it was dropping Mr. Bush’s absurd claim that he could declare anyone an “enemy combatant” and deprive that prisoner of judicial process. The administration affirmed its commitment to the laws of war, the Geneva Conventions and long-standing military doctrine.

But the break does not always seem complete enough. Even as they dropped the “enemy combatant” terminology, Mr. Obama’s lawyers did not seem to rule out indefinite military detentions for terrorism suspects and their allies. They drew a definition of association with Al Qaeda that is too broad (simply staying in a “safe house,” for example). Worse, they seemed to adopt Mr. Bush’s position that the “battlefield” against terrorism is the planet. That became the legal pretext for turning criminal defendants into lifelong military captives.

At this point I am disappointed in some of Obama’s actions but also believe it is far too early to come to any conclusions as to the ultimate policies of the Obama administration with regards to handling of terrorism suspects. It is far more difficult to change course on a policy in effect than to make policies when starting with a clean slate. Realistically I also voted for Obama expecting a considerable improvement in policy, not with any expectations of  total agreement with everything done by Obama. I continue to remain optimistic that when Obama leaves office we will have government policies which are greatly superior to those present when Obama took office.

Another area in which Obama has been resisting taking sufficient  action is in investigating the previous offenses of the Bush administration. The editorial later argues:

Mr. Obama also should stop resisting an investigation of Mr. Bush’s policies on terrorism, state secrets, wiretapping, detention and interrogation. We know he is struggling with many Bush-created disasters — in the economy, in foreign policy and on and on. But understanding all that has gone wrong is the only way to ensure that abuses will truly end. That investigation should be done calmly rather than under the pressure of some new, shocking revelation.

I fear that Obama believes that avoiding such investigations is part of his desire for post-partisanship and to move beyond the political battles of the past. Unfortunately ignoring the past does not put an end to such partisanship, as we saw with Dick Cheney’s recent attacks upon Obama. Even more seriously, failing to take adequate action in response to such violations of law only encourages their repetition under a future administration.

To Dick Cheney the lesson of Watergate was that the Executive Branch must do even more to secure its power. Gerald Ford, like Barack Obama, desired to put aside the political battles of the past. He made the tragic mistake of pardoning Richard Nixon who should have been imprisoned if this is truly a nation of laws and not of men.

The failure to punish Richard Nixon preserved the atmosphere of the president being above the law, teaching the wrong lesson to Dick Cheney. While there is no guarantee he would have behaved any differently had Nixon been punished, such an action would have inhibited other presidents from acting as if they were above the law. We must now investigate the crimes of the past eight years and allow justice to take its course, regardless of how high up in the government this goes.

Posted in Barack Obama, George Bush, Op-eds, Richard Nixon, Terrorism. Tags: , , , , . 19 Comments »
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