Associated Press
The Watergate in Washington, D.C.
With the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal coming last week, it's worth pausing to appreciate the extent to which Republicans are still looking for the controversy's progeny.
For example, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, told Fox News the other day that alleged national security leaks from the Obama White House are "worse than Watergate."
That's obviously quite silly, but the larger point, which we discussed several months ago, is that the GOP's preoccupation with finding Obama's "Watergate" is getting a little embarrassing.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), May 2010:
An e-mail from Rep. Darrell Issa's (R-Calif.) campaign suggested Wednesday that the controversy over Rep. Joe Sestak's (D-Pa.) alleged administration job offer could be President Barack Obama's Watergate scandal. [Issa sent] an e-mail with the subject line "The Sestak Affair - Obama's Watergate?"
The Weekly Standard, September 2011:
Will the 'Fast and Furious' Scandal Be Obama's Watergate?
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), November 2011:
Bachmann made a striking accusation against the Obama administration, presenting a severe conspiracy surrounding the government's involvement in the failed Solyndra solar power company. "It just stinks on every level. This makes Watergate look like child's play," Bachmann declared.
The American Spectator, February 2012:
Is Media Matters Obama's Watergate?
So far, these assorted controversies haven't amounted to much. In fact, some aren't even coherent controversies at all.
But even putting that aside, can the right at least come up with a new touchstone to serve as a point of historical comparison?
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I lived through the Watergate era. Actually got to meet Sen. Sam Ervin, who chaired the Watergate committee.
What infuriates me about the Democrats, especially Pelosi and Obama, is their reticence to hold Republicans to impeachment potentials while the Republicans throw up the charge at the drop of a hat.
Bush, Cheney and Yoo should be sitting in prison.
So the Dems should go as B*tsh*t crazy as the Republicans? Not sure that solves anything at all. Someone has to be the grownups.
Dogjudge ... You beat me to it. The right can't find anything comparable to Watergate, but the left can--or could have. There was enough wrongdoing within the Bush administration to merit several impeachments. If the Repubs want to talk about scandal, the Dems should be happy to reopen the chronicles of Bush 43 and his cronies.
Kevin ... They don't have to go crazy. They just have to be serious about holding Republicans accountable. Unfortunately, meekness seems to be part of the Dems' genetic code.
Dogjudge is correct. At least the Dems should have had hearings on Bush, Cheney, Yoo and Rumsfeld and their roles in the Iraq disaster and torture. And the hearings about the financial crash should have been more extensive.
**Oops, this was supposed to be a reply to Dogjudge**
I agree with the tenets but now it is too late. What would be a Water-shed moment is if (by Executive order) Mr. Obama closed Guantanamo and gave the detainees fair trials in the United States by whom they actually stand charged (with something?/anything?). For somebody who espouses the "high road" he takes the low road quite often with the basic principles of what the United States used to aspire to. That and assassinations by drone strike are his lowest roads traveled. Maybe that wraps up the militant vote but it doesn't do dick for freedom or liberty!
Why is it too late? Supposedly, as one pundit last week said after Friday's Immigration/Partial Dream Act Executive Order, the President has a lot of these EOs ready to release in the next five months.
Frankly, I do disagree about the drones though b/c I'd rather they be used in going after enemies of this country than either troops on the ground or scatter bombs that would cause far more death to our soldiers and to civilians. So, I don't see it as a low road, rather it causes far less harm.
I hope to see more Executive Orders in the next few weeks as Congress refuses to address the needs of the American people.
Thoughts on the unlimited secret campaign finance rules in the US & the loose term ‘taxes’
A bit of my background first – for over 6 years I was housing advisor to the government of Papua New Guinea functioning mostly as Secretory of Housing surviving three changes of government and four Housing Ministers.
What has developed in this country is really the short term outlook of a few very rich individuals that is currently working to the advantage of one party. However, this situation has what I see as many long term concerns; the most worrying to me is national security. Just consider how much a war would cost a country or clique wishing control over the USA and then consider the cost of funding a political operation that is over time is designed to weaken the government so that the funding country could just walk in and take over. If I can develop such a plan; there are many more that can (although it is a pattern somewhat outside the average American’s thinking) and many countries who would consider it a really great bargain to spend only a few tens of billions of dollars and a few years to take over the USA.
If freedom of speechis really a concern on campaign financing rather than short term advantages to winning elections then one of the ways to still have private funding and give everyone close to an equal say it to:
Allow only citizens to give to campaigns and issue promotions and to limit the amount given. I think the fairest way of limits is that the amount would be limited to what a “normal”person could afford to give. Normal – being defined the mean income in the district where the campaign is taking place. The candidate no matter how wealthy would also be limited to same amount. By using citizen as the definition of an eligible contributor this would limit all outside funding. It would be easy to set up an automated system that would keep contributions legitimate.
Taxes – a good share of my friends do not really understand percentages – I think a better way to talk about and to give tax breaks is that – everyone in the US is gets the same dollar amount tax break.
Using whatever starting tax rate – let’s say the last balanced budget (Clinton’s tax rate) as a starting point then without any deductions calculate the government’s income and the needed income. The difference would be then divided by the total population, including corporations, that amount would then be everyone’s tax break. The richest tax payer would get no more than the poorest tax payer-very fair and easy to understand
Watergate was the Right's Seminal Crime. Every other criminal scandal since has involved a cast of characters who first stepped on the stage in Watergate, no matter how small their role back then. Like actors in a traveling stage company, the GOP's little criminals have grown up to be big crooks. Example A is Karl Rove, who started out as a low-level "rat f*cker" for CREEP (a more perfectly-named political operation has never existed).
As for Richard Nixon, he is still the greatest criminal in the history of American politics. As Woodward and Bernstein pointed out in their WaPo article last week, the stuff he wasn't charged with was far worse than the things he was charged with. Watergate really was "a collection of horrors" as John Mitchell so aptly put it.
I guess watergate beats waterboarding??
As TCinLA pointed out, the fact most of the current significant actors in GOP affairs cut their political teeth working for/with Nixon in one way or another, is the starting point. If Nixon and many of the key participants in Watergate had gone to jail, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, George H. W. Bush and host of others never would have gotten close to the White House again. Thus, waterboarding is just the natural child of Nixon's Watergate, not some latter day aberration.
"...can the right at least come up with a new touchstone to serve as a point of historical comparison?"
The obvious answer is NO. With the GOP as discombobulated as they are that "there's a black man in the office of the President" they have shown that they cannot even think straight! Other than their Frank Lutz talking points they have nothing! The mountain being made of the "Fast & Furious" program, their lies about who/what/how actually caused "the deficit", whatever you pick is here - they are hysterical and the only thing left to do is slap them as you would for any other hysterical person!
So Americans can WE slap them out of office in November?
Although you are certainly correct to say that what really gets under Republicans' skins these days is the color of Obama's, Republicans have been trying to pin a -gate scandal on Democrats from Carter onward. I don't believe they'll stop trying until they somehow manage to succeed. One of the things that really animates "conservatives" is the need for revenge, which ironically was a leading cause of Watergate in the first place.
Point taken...But can you answer a question as many of these conservatives are evangelical - did they miss that part of the bible that says "vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord"? Just asking...
Well, the snarky answer would be that they see themselves as doing God's work, they might as well take revenge as well. Or, as Brigham Young purportedly once said, "Vengeance is mine, and I have taken a little."
I have argued in print that the entire motivation of the Clinton impeachment was the GOPs (unconscious) desire to undo the horrendous black mark that Nixon and Watergate were.
A psychoanalyst might see the ways the GOP has doubled down on criminal trespasses since Nixon (Iran-Contra, torture, waterboarding, etc.) looks like they continue to feel extremely guilty, so that only repeating their transgressions can make them forget the guilt.
Is Issa doing anything for his constituents besides witch hunting and leaking information?
http://votesmart.org/candidate/16553/darrell-issa?categoryId=43
It looks like he is out to investigate anything he can present as an idictment against Obama Administration to stop the president's agenda (which was the reason he was duly elected to do such things as green energy/jobs).
Thanks R's for all the democracy you try to prevent.
The Issa Watch has been suspended indefinitely, but the gist of it is to show Issa as focused on the task of finding things to pin on Obama, even when he has done the same thing, such as request a loan from DoE for his pet projects (donors).
http://issawatch.couragecampaign.org/
But the leak that was from Issa office was jeopardizing ATF investigation for guns crossing border to drug cartels? What? http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/06/cummings_issa_staff_released_document_under_seal_i.php
More to the point... can we please just stop putting "gate" at the end of political scandals when trying to give them a name by which people might remember them. It's not clever, it's not funny. It's just old and stale Come up with something new.
That is all.
/rant.
I'm more interested in which lie or misstep will be Romney's Waterloo.
The Republican obsession with labeling everything as equivalent to Watergate is no surprise, as they have for years sought to excuse themselves by telling America that Democrats when in power are just as bad as they are, and the mainstream media has by and large bought it hook, line and sinker.
But nothing Republicans have managed to conjure up has measured up to Watergate, and the more Nixon era documents and transcript that are released, the worse Watergate looks.
As revealed in a June 17th, 1971 conversation, Nixon ordered the blowing of the Brookings Institute safe because he feared a file kept by LBJ on Nixon’s sabotaging of the 1968 Paris Peace talks, an arguably treasonous act, was being stored there.
http://consortiumnews.com/2012/06/12/the-dark-continuum-of-watergate/