Olbermann: Bush, Cheney Should Resign
By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown
Tuesday 03 July 2007
'I didn't vote for him, but
he's my president, and I
hope he does a good job.'
"I didn't vote for him," an American once said, "But
he's my president,
and I hope he does a good job."
That - on this eve of the 4th of July - is the essence of this democracy,
in
17 words. And that is what President Bush threw away yesterday in
commuting the sentence of Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
The man who said those 17 words - improbably enough - was the actor
John
Wayne. And Wayne, an ultra-conservative, said them, when he learned of
the hair's-breadth election of John F. Kennedy instead of his personal
favorite, Richard Nixon in 1960.
"I didn't vote for him but he's my president, and I hope
he does a good
job."
The sentiment was doubtlessly expressed earlier, but there is something
especially appropriate about hearing it, now, in Wayne's voice: The
crisp matter-of-fact acknowledgement that we have survived, even though
for nearly two centuries now, our Commander-in-Chief has also served,
simultaneously, as the head of one political party and often the scourge
of all others.
We as citizens must, at some point, ignore a president's partisanship.
Not that we may prosper as a nation, not that we may achieve, not that
we may lead the world - but merely that we may function.
But just as essential to the seventeen words of John Wayne, is an
implicit trust - a sacred trust: That the president for whom so many did
not vote, can in turn suspend his political self long enough, and for
matters imperative enough, to conduct himself solely for the benefit of
the entire Republic.
Our generation's willingness to state "we didn't vote for
him, but he's
our president, and we hope he does a good job," was tested in the
crucible of history, and earlier than most.
And in circumstances more tragic and threatening. And we did that with
which history tasked us.
We enveloped our President in 2001.And those who did not believe he
should have been elected - indeed those who did not believe he had been
elected - willingly lowered their voices and assented to the sacred oath
of non-partisanship.
And George W. Bush took our assent, and re-configured it, and honed it,
and shaped it to a razor-sharp point and stabbed this nation in the back
with it.
Were there any remaining lingering doubt otherwise, or any remaining
lingering hope, it ended yesterday when Mr. Bush commuted the prison
sentence of one of his own staffers.
Did so even before the appeals process was complete; did so without as
much as a courtesy consultation with the Department of Justice; did so
despite what James Madison - at the Constitutional Convention - said
about
impeaching any president who pardoned or sheltered those who had
committed crimes "advised by" that president; did so without the
slightest concern that even the most detached of citizens must look at
the chain of events and wonder: To what degree was Mr. Libby told: break
the law however you wish - the President will keep you out of prison?
In that moment, Mr. Bush, you broke that fundamental com-pact between
yourself and the majority of this nation's citizens - the ones who
did not
cast votes for you. In that moment, Mr. Bush, you ceased to be the
President of the United States. In that moment, Mr. Bush, you became
merely the President of a rabid and irresponsible corner of the
Republican Party. And this is too important a time, Sir, to have a
commander-in-chief who puts party over nation.
This has been, of course, the gathering legacy of this Administration.
Few of its decisions have escaped the stain of politics. The
extraordinary Karl Rove has spoken of "a permanent Republican majority,"
as if such a thing - or a permanent Democratic majority - is not
antithetical to that upon which rests: our country, our history, our
revolution, our freedoms.
Yet our Democracy has survived shrewder men than Karl Rove. And it has
survived the frequent stain of politics upon the fabric of government.
But this administration, with ever-increasing insistence and almost
theocratic zealotry, has turned that stain into a massive oil spill.
The protection of the environment is turned over to those of one
political party, who will financially benefit from the rape of the
environment. The protections of the Constitution are turned over to
those of one political party, who believe those protections unnecessary
and extravagant and quaint.
The enforcement of the laws is turned over to those of one political
party, who will swear beforehand that they will not enforce those laws.
The choice between war and peace is turned over to those of one
political party, who stand to gain vast wealth by ensuring that there is
never peace, but only war.
And now, when just one cooked book gets corrected by an honest auditor,
when just one trampling of the inherent and inviolable fairness of
government is rejected by an impartial judge, when just one wild-eyed
partisan is stopped by the figure of blind justice, this President
decides that he, and not the law, must prevail.
I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.
I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people, a false
implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.
I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq
were disastrously insufficient.
I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our
brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.
I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but
sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but to stifle dissent.
I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the
very terror you claim to have fought.
I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of
your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a
political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents.
I accuse you of handing part of this Republic over to a Vice President
who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.
And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President,
carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by
any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and
before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of
that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison,
and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last
night, of becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.
When President Nixon ordered the firing of the Watergate special
prosecutor Archibald Cox during the infamous "Saturday Night Massacre"
on October 20th, 1973, Cox initially responded tersely, and ominously.
"Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men, is now for
Congress, and ultimately, the American people."
President Nixon did not understand how he had crystallized the issue of
Watergate for the American people.
It had been about the obscure meaning behind an attempt to break in to a
rival party's headquarters; and the labyrinthine effort to cover-up that
break-in and the related crimes.
And in one night, Nixon transformed it.
Watergate - instantaneously - became a simpler issue: a President overruling
the inexorable march of the law of insisting - in a way that resonated
viscerally with millions who had not previously understood - that he was
the law.
Not the Constitution. Not the Congress. Not the Courts. Just him.
Just - Mr. Bush - as you did, yesterday.
The twists and turns of Plame-Gate, of your precise and intricate lies
that sent us into this bottomless pit of Iraq; your lies upon the lies
to discredit Joe Wilson; your lies upon the lies upon the lies to throw
the sand at the "referee" of Prosecutor Fitzgerald's analogy.
These are
complex and often painful to follow, and too much, perhaps, for the
average citizen.
But when other citizens render a verdict against your man, Mr. Bush - and
then you spit in the faces of those jurors and that judge and the judges
who were yet to hear the appeal - the average citizen understands that,
Sir.
It's the fixed ballgame and the rigged casino and the pre-arranged
lottery all rolled into one - and it stinks. And they know it.
Nixon's mistake, the last and most fatal of them, the firing of
Archibald Cox, was enough to cost him the presidency. And in the end,
even Richard Nixon could say he could not put this nation through an
impeachment.
It was far too late for it to matter then, but as the decades unfold,
that single final gesture of non-partisanship, of acknowledged
responsibility not to self, not to party, not to "base," but to
country,
echoes loudly into history. Even Richard Nixon knew it was time to resign
Would that you could say that, Mr. Bush. And that you could say it for
Mr. Cheney. You both crossed the Rubicon yesterday. Which one of you
chose the route, no longer matters. Which is the ventriloquist, and
which the dummy, is irrelevant.
But that you have twisted the machinery of government into nothing more
than a tawdry machine of politics, is the only fact that remains relevant.
It is nearly July 4th, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we
Americans decided that rather than live under a King who made up the
laws, or erased them, or ignored them - or commuted the sentences of those
rightly convicted under them - we would force our independence, and regain
our sacred freedoms.
We of this time - and our leaders in Congress, of both parties - must
now
live up to those standards which echo through our history: Pressure,
negotiate, impeach - get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are
now perilous to our Democracy, away from its helm.
For you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task. You need
merely achieve a very low threshold indeed. Display just that iota of
patriotism which Richard Nixon showed, on August 9th, 1974.
Resign.
And give us someone - anyone - about whom all of us might yet be able
to
quote John Wayne, and say, "I didn't vote for him, but he's
my
president, and I hope he does a good job."
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