Bertie Wooster: Were you frightfully bright as a kid, Jeeves?
Jeeves: My mother thought me intelligent, sir.
Bertie Wooster: You can’t go by that. My mother thought me intelligent!
– from a Wodehouse novel, a rough recollection
If I am one of the 200 million whose phone records have been tracked by the government, Gen. Michael Hayden has probably come across my name, but I am unable to say I reciprocated his interest. He only came up on my radar screen when he mounted his unapologetic defense a few months ago of the warrantless phone-tapping program.
It says something about a country when a president in the 30-percent approval range can nominate a confessed lawbreaker for one of the most powerful offices in the land. (Hayden’s assertion that he didn’t think he broke the law, which so many senators found so persuasive, seems rather like Wooster’s mom marveling at her Bertram’s intellect.) It says even more when he encounters anything other than scornful indignation at his hearings. That he should be acclaimed and passed on by the Senate committee, and then approved by a resounding margin by the full Senate, speaks volumes about the Senate’s own lack of self-esteem. There was a time when Congress would bristle at the merest presumption upon its powers of oversight. Now it overlooks the most brazen usurpations with a practiced acquiescence, honed by five years of cowering.
We live in a new world. The law be damned, the hell with freedoms, what we we need is “competence” in this age of terrorism: this is the standard Bush response to any and all apprehensions after 9/11.
Since so many of our lawmakers seem to have bought this line, let’s talk about competence. I thought Gen. Hayden led the NSA during 9/11, didn’t he? How could anyone who held a high position in national security on that day be even considered for further office? Richard Reeves wrote in the Washington Post that if 9/11 had happened in Japan, there would be no one left in the government to turn off the lights. Let us concede that shame is not in our DNA. Corporate executives lay off workers and run up gigantic losses, all while raising their own salaries and pensions. A leader who presided over two national disasters continues smugly with the air of one who has invented sunlight. A Congress that signed on to starting an unprovoked war cannot bring itself to do anything to end the catastrophe it has wrought. We are all-forgiving. We are, after all, a compassionate people.
Democrats, especially, pride themselves as the keepers of this compassion; nothing bears out their claim more than their deference to people like Michael Hayden, Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet, Donald Rumsfeld, and others, all of whom were in charge when the greatest attack in American history (per the administration’s own repeated phraseology) occurred. If one felt compelled to demonstrate bipartisanship, it is understandable that one might perhaps refrain from seeking the prosecution of these high officials for incompetence and criminal negligence. But why lionize them, vote to keep them in their posts, give them promotions, or participate in ceremonies to pin medals of honor on them?
Julius Caesar spoke of the brave dying but once and the cowardly dying repeatedly. One always assumed suicide was a one-time affair, but the Democrats have long exploded that canard, elevating suicide to a repeatable art form. They refused to raise 9/11 as Bush’s failure in 2002, and lost. Kerry refused to touch it in 2004, and lost. They still won’t raise it in 2006…
What credibility can they have on national security when they bolster the same individuals and teams that were in charge on Sept. 11, 2001? And with what voice can they challenge the administration’s precept and practice that obedience to the law is optional, a mere courtesy, dependent upon the pleasure of the executive, when they praise, vote for, and install those who take pride in their disdain for due process?
As a purely political act, an opposition normally attempts to distinguish itself in the public mind by positioning itself contrary to the ruling party. Even an opposition without principle would instinctively seek to challenge any senior appointee as a matter of course, just to increase the administration’s discomfiture. That’s politics. In this case, a proven incompetent and confessed lawbreaker should have received no votes from either party. That’s principle. In fact, principle should dictate that almost everything Bush does be opposed, with assent being the rare exception. A look at the polls would suggest that’s the conclusion the country has reached.
When, after all that has happened, the Democrats can vote 4-3 in favor of such a nominee in committee and support him in droves in the full Senate, it demonstrates not just a comprehensive bankruptcy of both political instinct and moral principle on their part. It also proclaims their still-petrified mindset, leaving them far behind their constituents, who have long seen through the tattered bona fides of a lawless and incompetent administration.
