I’ve been reading Hedrick Smith’s fascinating 1976 book The Russians, an in-depth account of life in Russia in the era of Brezhnev and détente. Smith says that even well-informed Russian officials had a hard time understanding the Watergate affair, and tended to view it as an insignificant factional squabble. He quotes Deputy Prosecutor General Mikhail P. Malyarov as saying “All Nixon has to do is show a little firmness, and the whole thing will come to nothing.”
Obviously Malyarov was wrong about Watergate. But I fear that his comment will prove true with respect to the present administration and its scandals. Does America want a strongman?
What do you mean by “come to nothing” in this case? That there won’t be high-up indictments or impeachments? Probably true. That Bush and his policies won’t be discredited in any way, because America likes its strongman? I don’t think that’s true. I think Bush’s policies have already provoked widespread disillusionment and dislike towards this Administration, and I don’t see Bush really recovering from that in the fourteen months he’s got left.
We Americans value our Constitution which provides for a balance of power among the three branches of government: Legislative, Judicial, and Executive. The current administration seems to have tried to increase the powers of the Executive Branch. That’s a big no-no, but he’s gotten away with it and done some terrible things.
The sad thing is that the Legislative Branch still seems to be cooperating by not standing up to the President. Many citizens expected more of a change when Democrats became the majority. It’s pitiful.
I’m wondering if we will ever have a strong balance again.
I can’t speak for the rest of our country, but I do not. I am so disillusioned with this administration that basically the only thing the Dems could do to lose my vote is to float Hillary as the candidate. (I honestly never thought that would happen, but it is looking like it might.)
I believe all people want a strong individual leader to rise up and promise to protect them in times of uncertainty and chaos. Americans are no different; we may be very marginally more immunized from the phenomenon due to decades of “self government” indoctrination (which is not a bad thing), but history shows it doesn’t take much stress to cause us to abandon our ideals and fall back to our primate hard-wiring.
He may be despised, but he still has the job, he’s still doing what he wants regardless of the law and public opinion, and there appears to be no effort to prematurely change that.
What really hurts is being someone who thought this was all a bad idea right around the middle of November 2000. At no point in the last seven years has Bush given me any reason whatsoever to go back and revise that opinion…
I read that book the year it came out. It’s been awhile, so the memory may be failing.
I believe what you need to do it put the comment in context. It had nothing to do with what could happen in the U. S. It was about the Russian “take” on the situation.
Remember that by then (as Smith points out) more than a few Russians were looking somewhat nostalgically at the “order” created by Joe Stalin. Whenever they would mention his name they would make a fist with a strong-arm gesture. Stalin would have taken out those slackers. Stalin would have made that factory work if he had to…(fill in blank). In other words, Stalin was a “strong” leader and that’s what it took to maintaim order.
The Russians were simply imposing their local take on a situation.
Yes. His point is that “Watergate was something the Russian could never fathom” because “[t]hey simply could not grasp that many Americans regarded the Watergate break-in and cover-up as an intolerable transgression against the essence of democracy.” (All these quotations, by the way, are found on pp. 242-243.) It disturbed me to realize that the authoritarian Russian take on the situation may have become more accurate since then.
I guess I view the essence of democracy as the principle that you train your leaders like dogs: catch them in the act or they’ll never learn. If you abuse power, you should lose power. I was a teenager during the Clinton administration, and like many liberal-leaning people, I dismissed the Monica Lewinsky affair as a mere partisan attack. But looking back on it, it bothers me to realize that Clinton blatantly perjured himself (although on a matter of no national importance) and went unpunished. Did that give Bush the idea that he could get away with anything? If so, what are we in for in the future?
Hillary Clinton told the Guardian that, if she is elected, renouncing some of Bush’s power grabs “has to be part of the review that I undertake when I get to the White House, and I intend to do that.” I’m damn glad they got her on the record on that. I hope the American papers aren’t ignoring this issue.
Nixon couldn’t just brazen it out because the 93rd Congress, with Dem majorities in both houses, was ready to investigate and impeach him – and even though the Dems held only a six-seat majority in the Senate, outrage at Nixon’s actions was widespread enough that a two-thirds majority probably would have voted to convict. Times are different now. Republican party discipline is stronger. The Senate Pubs would never vote to convict Bush.
That doesn’t make impeachment pointless, however. The process of investigation and hearings would put a lot of evidence on the record – ideally, evidence sufficient to make sure that W’s high- and mid-level operatives would not be able to just wait out a spell out of power and serve in a later administration like Cheney did, they would be banished from the corridors of power forever.
And approval ratings for Congress – the branch that would have to impeach – are also in the toilet. (Of course that’s for the whole Congress, Dems and Pubs alike – and it’s possible that Congress’ reluctance to impeach, or to defund the war, is partially responsible for its unpopularity.)
Banished? Feh. I am not a fan of state-sanctioned executions, but as I grow older and crankier, I am increasingly coming to the belief that a deliberate subversion of democratic processes by anyone in power should be the sole death-penalty crime.
What Bush deserves is removal from office. I don’t want tax dollars paying him a pension & supplying him with a Praetorian Guard.
Of course, I imagine some families of National Guardsmen think what he really deserves is beyond anything Congress will ever do to him. And if there are some who think that who don’t believe in Hell or Purgatory but do think he deserves retribution, Bush may get assassinated once he’s out of office.