The latest gift Republicans have given Democrats in this,
an election year, is the Senate Intelligence Committee’s refusal to initiate an
investigation of the secret, warrantless NSA spying fiasco. I say “gift”
because, in spite of their fecklessness in standing up to Republican domination
of all three branches of government, the fact is the GOP is playing right into
the Democrats’ hands (if only that were truly the Democrats’ tactic).
On issue after issue, from the “Phase II” investigation of
the intelligence failures leading up to the war in Iraq (which Pat Roberts, the
chair of the intelligence committee
has been promising for nearly two years) to investigations of Abu Ghraib,
secret prisons, torture, Katrina, congressional ethics, oil company gouging,
etc., the Republicans, including the president, have stonewalled and obstructed,
because, quite simply, they can.
But the Democrats need to be careful not to bray too loudly
about the Republicans’ cover-ups (e.g.,
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/) lest the party in power take their
protestations seriously, and actually appear to do something of an investigative
nature with regard to so many of their, and their fearless leaders’, screw-ups.
The Dems are far better off, politically, with a party that refuses to hold
anyone accountable for the vast and far-reaching excesses and serial
incompetence of the government they control than they would be with sham
investigations which would end up being nothing more than window dressing
anyway. What use would another Republican-led congressional “investigation” be,
given that party’s reluctance to swear witnesses who testify before it, or to
issue subpoenas to recalcitrant administration minions, as has been the case
with so many prior investigations, and given the Democrats’ status as eunuchs on
any investigating committee anyway.
The failure to investigate, however, gives Democrats a
powerful stump theme, both in the upcoming mid-term elections and in the ’08
presidential contest. Not only, they can say, are the Republicans responsible
for a “culture of corruption,” they are also responsible for a culture of deceit
and obfuscation.
The reality is that with the hegemony enjoyed by the
Republicans, nothing meaningful would be likely to come of any investigations
anyway. The only time congressional investigations have meant anything was when
the parties shared power. The prime example of that, of course, is during
Watergate, when the investigation that revealed so many crucial facts about the
Nixon White House came as a result of the Democrats’ control of Congress.
That and the fact that there were Republicans who were
willing to jump on the “get Nixon” bandwagon (a “do-right” philosophy that is
completely absent from the current crop of kowtowing Republicans) resulted in an
investigation that actually accomplished something (most notably, the revelation
of the Nixon tapes). The Democrats should hope that the Dubai ports deal doesn’t
completely wake the Republicans from their robotic obeisance to their leader, or
at least that it doesn’t translate into party defections on other issues (as it
seems unlikely to, given the party line vote on the NSA investigation question).
The Democrats
need to keep their powder dry for when it will count—the upcoming elections.
In the meantime, and as
I’ve predicted before, the only meaningful accountability this
administration is likely to suffer will be at the hands of the federal judiciary
which, as we speak, is handling lawsuits covering virtually every
Bush/Republican excess, from
the NSA debacle to
prisoner abuse/torture to
Katrina. I’m still holding out hope that Henry Whittington will realize he’s
a lawyer, not a priest, and change his apology for getting in the way of
Cheney’s shotgun into a big fat personal injury suit, since that too is the only
way we’ll ever find out what really happened that fateful day on the real-life
Ponderosa.
