Third in a series of essays I wrote about Election 2000, but never posted until now, just in time for Election 2002.
One of George W. Bush's campaign promises was to bring a "new tone" to Washington. Personally, this statement offends me and I am offended that the media hasn't debunked it for the scam that it is. How can it be a scam? After all, the tone in Washington during the Clinton years (at least) has ranged from partisan bickering to rabid accusations. Don't we deserve a more civilized tone? Certainly. But who is responsible for the tone that was present during previous administrations? The extremist conservatives have clearly been most responsible for the vitriol that has characterized the "debate" (if you can call it that) in our nation's capitol. It hasn't helped that as proponents of smaller government, the right wing has every incentive to make accusations, launch investigations, and use every opportunity to distract lawmakers from the tasks of making laws and implementing policy. A day spent by the Clinton administration refuting allegations was a day not spent "making big government bigger." And so they did. Whitewater, Travelgate, the FBI file scandal, Vince Foster, fund-raising at Buddhist temples -- any activity of the Clinton-Gore administration resulted in an investigation by rabid Republicans. And they never found evidence of wrongdoing until Monica Lewinsky's blue dress. Let me put that a different way: the only evidence the right wing nuts ever found on Clinton or Gore was still, in the end, evidence of perfectly legal activity. So the Republican presidential candidate campaigns on the promise of changing the tone, conveniently ignoring that his party is responsible for the tone in the first place. The press, dutiful as ever, never mentions that this is obvious. And he can't lose: if he wins the election, his party hacks will shut their rabid traps and all of a sudden -- poof! -- the tone has changed. Promise kept. That the tone has changed since Little Bush stole the election cannot be denied. But neither can it be denied that the opposition party controls the tone. When Clinton was president, the tone, aimed at him, was irresponsibly immature and vituperative. Now that the Democrats are the opposition party, true statesmen such as Tom Daschle and Pat Leahy have focused on governing rather than accusing. But don't think for a moment that this is a good thing. Presented with the opportunity to investigate chief Bush political strategist Karl Rove for advising Intel officials on an International merger -- while Rove owned $100,000 in Intel stock (which he had promised to divest) -- Daschle decided to pass. Despite the fact that, for a change, there was probably substance to the allegation. And despite their current occupation of the White House and promises to the contrary, the Republicans are still guilty of a distinctly nasty tone. Replacing Democrats in the executive branch was not enough for the Republicans, ignoring for the moment that they had to steal the presidency to do it. While Clinton may have left, there is still ample opportunity to attack him, especially now that he no longer has a press secretary addressing the media every day. These attacks are apparently necessary to make the feeble new administration look better than it actually is by comparison. First, it was the gift scandal. This scandal, completely debunked in a Salon.com article, was never corrected in the mainstream media. The Clintons were accused of taking bribes, both for pardons the President still had time to make, and for Senator-elect Hillary Clinton, whose favoritism seemed to be being bought outright. As always, the accusations are entirely false. Like every administration before them, the Clintons deferred many gifts until the end of the President[base ']s administration. Divided by eight years, the Clinton gifts were significantly smaller than the gifts taken by Big Bush and his family amortized over four. Of course, no one in the so-called "liberal media" reported this fact. Furthermore, there is a long string of exceptions in the Senate ethics rules, any one of which makes the gifts given to Hillary Clinton perfectly legal, by the Senate's own standards. But the accusations sound good, and the Republicans predictably distorted the facts, as they had done for eight years, simply for their own political advantage. But it doesn't stop there. The outrage over the Mark Rich pardon was deafening. This outcry ignores that Rich can still face civil charges if he returns to the United States. By comparison, Big Bush pardoned a Cuban terrorist (i.e., mass murderer of innocent people) at the urging of his own son, Jeb. Why wasn't this more egregious case reported? Probably because the Democrats were the opposition party at the time and were actually concerned about the tone in Washington. And finally, we come to the ever-so-coy accusations that Clinton staffers trashed the White House before they left. Again, it didn't happen. Again, the press buried the Government Office of Accounting letter that exonerated the Clinton staffers. Press Secretary Ari Fleischer continued to insist that the vandalism occurred, even though he was unable to produce one piece of evidence. Excuse me -- he produced a photo of an office that looked, well, like it was in transition. As it turns out, the office in question is actually used for storage space, and frankly is one of the more orderly storage areas I've ever seen. Then, despite this pathetic attempt to continue trashing a departed administration, Fleischer had the gall to refuse to apologize and claim that he would "remain gracious." My stomach churns at the man's brazen disingenuousness. But of course, the standard, accepted story is that this administration is changing the tone. And the press keeps reporting it like it was true. Meanwhile, Little Bush gets to appoint Ted Olson, lead attorney of the vast right-wing conspiracy, to be Solicitor General. Not to mention John Ashcroft as Attorney General. As always, Bush gets it both ways. And the Democrats, busily trying to actually change the tone, will get no credit for it, and shouldn't bother anyway. Sometimes the tone
should be ugly. [
Naked Emperor]
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