Island Life: This just in: incumbent President worst in history of the union
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heh - did you finish this after updating Libby's bio on wikipedia?
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While I concur that GWB is an abominable president, I'm not sure that this use of executive power is the clincher.
What's the point in being President if you can't get your mates off? More accurately, the president has the power to "grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States" and this one alone has already used that power about 116 times (before today). Amusingly, perhaps, there have been quite a few pardons for those found guilty of abandoning military duty, and breaching alcohol laws.
Bill Clinton issued about 140 pardons and commutations in his last day in office, including one for his half-brother, another for a woman involved in Whitewater, and quite a few sundry Democrats.
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You're quite right, he does have the power, but a better President (and this could equally apply to Clinton) might also consider the effect his action will have on the citizens' attitude to the rule of law and the probity of their government. 'One law for all' resonated pretty strongly here in recent times, and it has no less significance elsewhere in the democratic world.
As for it not really being a clincher, you're quite right: it's not. It's just one more dismal validation of the misgivings so many of us have had for so long. Hence the ironic 'this just in'
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WH,
Our only consolation is that his name will forever be synonymous with ignorance and incompetence.
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A Rolling Stone article published a year or so ago (actual date escapes me) by a leading political historian compared George W's performance in his career with similar situations other presidents had faced. The historian then compared how the other presidents fared afterwards compared to GWB.
The result was: GWB is the worst US president in history.
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Ok, if I had done a little work I could've added more than anecdote: The Worst President in History, Rolling Stone, April 2006.
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what i find depressing is the way americans tolerate this crap.
I wouldn't be surprised if GWB secretly pays paris hilton to stay in the news
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These things happen in a monarchy...
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when you're sitting on 27% what have you got to lose. His legacy is set in stone anyway. I imagine the hard word came down from Dick and he had no choice.
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Dubbya is THE PRINCE in every respect of that great cynic Machiavelli
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"These things happen in a monarchy..."
I like that.
Do they have no shame?
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And how many has he had executed? Those things used to happen in a monarchy...
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And how many has he had executed?
that lovely old Orange Juice song "The Day We Went Down To Texas" just came to mind.
Oh and Saddam.......
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Two points:
- Firstly, I think the US system of grand juries, where someone can be hauled up in front of a prosecutor, forced to testify and jailed if they either refuse or lie, is an affront to human rights. It's a 17th century artefact that most other democracies abolished long ago.
So it follows that I don't think people should be jailed for that sort of thing anyway.
- Secondly, second-term presidents have very little accountability and can do anything they like as they will never need to be reelected. Which is an argument against term limits.
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Does anyone know one of the 27% who still support him and is willing to admit it openly?
Maybe you should run a competition to find one.
All the Americans I know disown him when the introduce themselves, often before giving their own name (it may just be the my circles, but maybe it's common?, anyone?).
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From "Devil May Care" by Tucker Carlson, Talk Magazine, September 1999, p. 106
While driving back from the speech later that day, Bush mentions Karla Faye Tucker, a double murderer who was executed in Texas last year. In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. 'Did you meet with any of them?' I ask.
Bush whips around and stares at me. 'No, I didn't meet with any of them,' he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. 'I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like 'What would you say to Governor Bush?'
'What was her answer?' I wonder.
'Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, 'don't kill me.'
I must look shocked -- ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel, even for someone as militantly anticrime as Bush -- because he immediately stops smirking.
'It's tough stuff,' Bush says, suddenly somber, 'but my job is to enforce the law.' As it turns out, the Larry King-Karla Faye Tucker exchange Bush recounted never took place, at least not on television. During her interview with King, however, Tucker did imply that Bush was succumbing to election-year pressure from pro-death penalty voters. Apparently Bush never forgot it. He has a long memory for slights.
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- Secondly, second-term presidents have very little accountability and can do anything they like as they will never need to be reelected.
Yes, but they typically have a party machine that wants to win the midterms and the next Presidential. Those guys are not without influence.
I think Simon Grigg is right about Dick, though, and he probably trumps the rest. Apart from anything else I imagine he didn't relish the prospect of Libby coming out of the pen and writing tell-alls in the Liddy/Dean fashion.
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Dubbya is THE PRINCE in every respect of that great cynic Machiavelli
Hadly. Machiavelli's Prince was supposed to be smart.
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Does anyone know one of the 27% who still support him and is willing to admit it openly?
Yes. My husband and I are related to several of them. Lovely people - just not particularly politically astute, very religious, and really, really frightened by the terr'rists. Oh, and they all think Saddam was in charge of 9/11, too.
(Although to be fair, there were many more Bush supporters last time we visited the rellies in 2004 than there were in April, when we last visited. And *way* fewer Bush-Cheney bumper stickers, even in Texas. That could be a function of everyone buying new pickup trucks since 2004, of course!)
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I just read the news article on stuff relating to this. I couldn't have been less surprised by the news that Bush got Libby off. The odds on that happening were pretty short.
I'm just surprised that it took him longer than 30 seconds to do it.
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http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1226200
William Pitt says enough already impeach Cheney. & Bush I say *
This is completely intolerable. Does anyone remember Bush saying he would hold an investigation into who leaked Plame's name and then take action? Is a clip of this going to be shown on the news tonight as lead? It bloody well should.
I find the second response in this thread simply astonishing. How can anyone continue to cry Clinton in the face of this abomination!
As William Pitt says.....
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"A blogger I read last week had a great line that I recall now in paraphrase: The Decider decided to let Cheney make all the decisions. We knew this, we could see it, and thanks to some astonishing (albeit far overdue) reporting by the Washington Post, we have details and data to the dot.
Forget impeaching Bush. He almost certainly hasn't been making most of the heavy decisions on policy, which means he probably hasn't actually committed any crimes. Sins of omission and collaboration? Accessory to murder, fraud and grand larceny? Conspiracy to commit same? Sure, yes, clearly, but I don't have much interest in trying to convict a rubber stamp."
- William Pitt
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WH,
http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince17.htm
COMING now to the other qualities mentioned above, I say that every prince ought to desire to be considered clement and not cruel. Nevertheless he ought to take care not to misuse this clemency.
Nevertheless he ought to be slow to believe and to act, nor should he himself show fear, but proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and humanity, so that too much confidence may not make him incautious and too much distrust render him intolerable.
Hmm.
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I just read the news article on stuff relating to this. I couldn't have been less surprised by the news that Bush got Libby off. The odds on that happening were pretty short.
As Jon Stewart said in his commentary to the Libby sentence a few weeks ago, "some people think that Bush will pardon him and spare him prison. Everybody else *knows* he will."
I guess it's easier to designate a fall guy when the fall is only about 30 centimetres, though, ay?
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Alastair Thompson wrote:
I find the second response in this thread simply astonishing. How can anyone continue to cry Clinton in the face of this abomination!
Quite easily ... the point is that the executive power to pardon is so obviously open to partisan (ab)use. This holds regardless of whether the President is an appalling Republican or a disappointing Democrat.
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