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Welcome, Carnival of the Vanities readers! This article was honored to be included in the latest Carnival of the Vanities, hosted this week by Read My Lips.
We’ve got to stop wasting the time of our Presidents, and that of the nation, over trivialities.
Nixon was the one who taught us to impeach a President over a relatively minor matter. Everyone’s always said that if he’d just admitted Watergate and apologized for it, that would have been the end of it.
Acting out some tragic character flaw, Nixon burned up decades of goodwill felt by the American people toward the Presidency. He taught us to distrust government. And we’ve been trying to impeach the President, regardless of party, ever since.
The left tried to impeach Reagan over Iran-Contra, and tied up that administration for years. The Iran-Contra affair was far from trivial. But the right was offended. It was unprecedented to use a scandal such as Iran-Contra to attack and distract an administration for years.
In the Clinton era the right responded with an effort to impeach Clinton. Unfortunately it was over something relatively trivial—Monicagate. I was not a fan of Clinton’s, but I wrote to the LA TIMES that we had to leave our Presidents free to govern, and not seek to impeach unless the charge was extremely serious.
Now the left has been having a field day over the Abu-Ghraib story. And lo and behold, it actually seems to have hurt Bush’s approval ratings. Just as Monicagate hurt Clinton. As in the case of Monicagate, a relatively small story has been blown out of proportion.
And a few months ago, the left was talking about impeaching Bush over the argument that he lied when he accused Hussein of having WMD, despite the fact that any number of prominent Democrats had also charged Hussein with having WMD.
Of course I was offended by Clinton’s use of the Oval Office for sex. And I’m offended by the behavior of the soldiers at Abu-Ghraib.
But if we want to continue to have a successful nation, we can’t be tying the hands of our Presidents, by making gigantic stories out of things like these. Monicagate was about sexcapades; Abu-Ghraib is about the actions of a relatively miniscule number of soldiers.
The Abu-Ghraib story has all but run its course; it’s done most of the damage it was going to do. We can take this opportunity to do the country a great deal of good by noting the damage done to Presidents of both parties by blowing such stories out of proportion. Whoever the next President is, whatever his party, he deserves stronger support from the American people, and from politicians on both sides of the aisle.
From Mayor Daley of Chicago:
“The thing I worry about in politics is all of these people hating one another [saying], ‘I hate Kerry’, ‘I hate Bush.’ I wish the former presidents—Carter and Ford and Clinton and Bush—would all get up and tell people, ‘You may support candidates, but don’t hate the other candidate.’
“You see too much hate. And I’ll tell you one thing—hate will turn on people. . . . When hate gets in politics, it’s a very, very dangerous aspect.”
Update 6-4-04: See also my follow-up article, We’re Following Nixon’s Lead (and What to Do About It).
#1
#2Well said! Thanks for the great comment, Tim.
Amen to this.
For too long now both parties have used heated rhetoric to further their own campaigns. Both left and right are now overstating every misstep by their opponents in an effort to move numbers on the allmighty polls of public opinion.
If we continue down the path of polarization we are going to wind up with a completely nonfunctioning government that is incapable of defending the citizenry.
Unfortunately, the polls do rule politics, and leadership on both sides of the aisle know it. The pessimistic view is that with such an even split between party membership both parties must grab any incremental advantage they can. If that means unfairly maligning lifelong public servants to win election, then that is exactly what is done.
I am a lifelong Democrat, but I agree that expressing hate for a Republican is ignorant at best. Firstly, many Democrats who express hatred for Bush have never even stood in the same room with him. I would hope that people would at least know someone before they could feel hatred. If we have descended to a point where we are calling one another Nazi, and saying we hate the other side, then we will not continue to be the strong country we currently are.
Let's all remember the preamble to our founding document. "We the people . . ."
Be proud of your citizenship, whether you have just taken your oath or you are from a Mayflower family. The diversity of our population is its strength. Without a wide range of political and social views we will stagnate. Love your opponent as the brother or sister that they are.
Then, kick their dumb ass just like the brother or sister they are.