Is Trump the Worst President in American History?

 This historian seems to think so.

Naftali presents a strong case for Trump being the worst despite there being a lot of competition for the all-time worst president.  In addition to being a history professor, he used to work for the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, and therefore he knows quite a bit about Nixon as a result.  Nixon might be the closest president to Trump in terms of being the worst, but Nixon was smart and did have some administrative and leadership abilities, two things Trump completely lacks.

In the above-linked article, Naftali looks at various presidents starting with Harding, who made the initial worst of the early "worst" lists compiled by the Schlesinger father-and-son historians.  Harding's reputation has gone up just a bit, not because he was a better president than previously thought, but because there were presidents who were so much worse, namely those immediately preceding and succeeding Abraham Lincoln.  Those three presidents--Pierce, Buchanan, and Andrew Johnson--were little more than traitors to the United States in their support for the confederacy and the existence of slavery.  Naftali goes into more detail about  these three failures' policies than I am going to do.

Other presidents like Woodrow Wilson have taken a bit of a hit in recent decades because of racist attitudes, while others like Bush II, although mediocre and iffy on his foreign policy, weren't the absolute worst.

In the end, the worst president comes down to just two,  Trump and Nixon, at least in my view.  Naftali presents their shortcomings in all their dubious glory.  Nixon, though, did something truly evil in my book which can never whitewashed, and that is his entire presidency was based on a coverup.  This coverup was to hide his violation of the Logan Act when, as a private citizen running for the presidency in 1968, he, through third parties, sabotaged the Paris Peace Accords, the so-called Chennault Affair.  He did it because he thought LBJ, who was trying to end the Vietnam War after he realized the Tet Offensive was a complete failure, was playing politics with the accords so he could help Hubert Humphrey in the fall elections.  However, this was not true according to the LBJ tapes.  LBJ thought Nixon would win, and he was horrified to find out Nixon indeed committed what he termed "treason" against the United States.  LBJ had the dirt on Nixon, and Nixon knew this and was afraid of exposure.  He spent his entire presidency in fear of being exposed; hence, Watergate and all the rest of the illegal activities he committed.  After LBJ died early in 1973, Nixon became more paranoid and wanted to find where the files implicating him were, but those files were in Texas, far away from D.C. in safe keeping by LBJ associate Walt Rostow.  LBJ trusted him enough to keep them far, far away from Nixon.  The content of those files was kept confidential for many years, but after they were released, historians have had to completely rewrite the history of the Vietnam War, LBJ, and Nixon.   

What was really bad, though, was that Nixon stretched that war out four years longer than it needed to be, thus costing hundreds of thousands of lives in southeast Asia.  Those war victims, including many U.S. military, died just so that Nixon could get elected and then re-elected.  Then, just before the 1972 elections,  Nixon and Kissinger hammered out a peace agreement that was nearly identical to the one LBJ worked on four years earlier.  

Nixon resigned rather than be impeached over his conduct in the Watergate scandal, which in retrospect ties in closely with the Chennault Affair, but he   should have been tried at The Hague for his war crimes instead.

It is very tough for any president to exceed the evil  Nixon did, and I am not sure  Trump is in fact worse.  Watergate and Vietnam damaged the United States for decades, and still have a negative effect on politics today.  It is difficult to overstate how divisive both were to the country.  I think one has to live through the era to appreciate the negative ramifications.

Trump committed three major presidential sins in Naftali's view.  The first stems from his ties to Russia and his support of Russia and other totalitarian regimes, a direct assault on this country's national security.  The second stems from Trump's incompetence and indifference to COVID-19, which has infected millions of people and caused over 400,000 deaths.  However, as Naftali notes, other presidents like Wilson and Reagan were also inept or indifferent to major diseases unleashed on the country (Spanish flu and AIDS), so Trump isn't unique here.  The third sin may be the most damaging, and that, of course is Trump instigating an insurrection against the U.S. Capitol and thus against the United States government, something no president, not even Nixon, would have ever dreamed of doing.  What Trump did was undercut the Constitution of the United States, the very foundation of our country.  It remains to be seen what the long range impact of Trump's actions would be.

It might be a photo finish as to whether Nixon or Trump is worse, but I still say Nixon by just a whisker.  Both could share the bottom spot of presidential rankings.

The All-Time Worst President

There is no question at all who that would be, and his reputation continues to go into the gutter.

There was a reason why Nixon spent the remainder of his life after the presidency fighting tooth and nail against the release of those tapes.

And apparently we ain't seen nothing yet:

Deceit and disregard for the law were the common threads. The abuses that constituted Watergate began with events tied to the Vietnam war: first was the attempt to sabotage LBJ’s peace talks in October 1968. In 1969 came the secret bombing of Cambodia and the wiretapping of reporters and White House aides, provoked by a leak to The New York Times about the secret bombing. Then the break-in at the office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers about the war. The Huston Plan, drawn up by a White House aide in 1970 and approved by Nixon, proposed break-ins and black-bag jobs aimed at radicals, especially anti-Vietnam activists. The plan was rescinded, but many were kept under surveillance. Nixon explicitly ratified the use of illegal break-ins when he ordered aides to “blow the safe” at the Brookings Institution in Washington in search of Vietnam secrets from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. That order was also never carried out, but soon after Nixon issued it, Mitchell and others came up with the idea of breaking into the Democratic committee offices. Ultimately, deceit and lawlessness forced Nixon from office, and sent twenty-two of his colleagues to jail.10

We have learned more about the Nixon presidency than about any other, but, astoundingly, there is much more to come. Nearly 2,700 hours of Nixon tapes have been released, but 774 hours more are still being withheld for various reasons. So are hundreds of thousands, perhaps more than a million pages of White House documents. Some of this material is still classified; some involves personal records of the Nixon family; some is being withheld without explanation. Eventually everything will come out, assuring that Nixon will live on as the subject of new books with new revelations. None of this seems likely to be exculpatory.

Richard Nixon--NOT the Pardon--Was the Reason for the Utter Cynicism in American Politics

I don't know how old Rick Perlstein is, but I can say Nixon's pathology more than anything Gerald Ford did was the catalyst for the distrust we have with our governmental institutions today.

Nixon was totally off in the head. There is nothing else that can describe this man based on what we know now. Think about it: WHO in his or her right mind would even THINK of putting his or her ambition above the good of the American people, of human lives at risk in a war thousands of miles away? This man operated on absolutely NO moral core whatsoever--Richard Nixon's cause was Richard Nixon, and nothing else. His ruthlessness destroyed the Republican Party forever--they now operate routinely on Nixon's utter lack of moral core in pursuit of power.

That may be his worst legacy, what he did to the Republican Party, but his crimes were bad enough. The man was absolutely beyond the pale, and what he would invariably do is claim "everybody else is doing it" to justify his own criminal actions. Obviously, not everybody else was "doing it."

We can look at the Nixon pardon 40 years later with hindsight and criticize it, but at the time it seemed to be the right thing to do given the fact the country was completely paralyzed by the Watergate scandal. Of course, we didn't know the entire story at all. Not even close.

It figures. A search shows Perlstein was born in 1969. He has NO clue whatsoever what it was like back then.

The Sleaze Stands Alone

One of Richard Nixon's greatest hits, his desire to hit the Brookings Institution based on some wrong information that the file showing Nixon committed treason by subverting the 1968 Paris Peace Talks was there:



Of course the file wasn't there but in Austin, Texas, hidden safely away by LBJ official Walt Rostow.

It totally boggles the mind just how mentally "out there" Nixon was. He was all about himself, and to hell with the consequences.

He even dragged the Vietnam War out long enough to ensure his re-election while at the same time employing dirty tricks and other lawbreaking through third parties against any Democrats who posed a threat to that re-election.

That was Watergate in a nutshell.

Ken Hughes talked about his book, Chasing Shadows, and Chennaultgate last month:

link

Nixon's reputation can never be rehabilitated.

What Did Nixon Do and How Did He Do It?

Ever since I was in middle school in the late 1960s, I have closely followed American politics. I have always been an avid follower of Richard Nixon and his crimes, which we know now were vastly worse than we ever thought possible. They are not just bad, they are heinous because of all of the lives needlessly lost in Southeast Asia when the Vietnam War could have ended years before it did.

The best thing that ever happened for American history were those tapes, both Nixon's and LBJ's. In a way it's unfortunate no subsequent president has had a taping system in the White House. When you hear these tapes, it's like being a fly on the wall, being a witness to history. What has been released so far is just incredible.

A few of those infamous Chennaultgate tapes have also been uploaded on YouTube as well as at the LBJ Library. Here is the infamous "This is Treason" phone call by Johnson to Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen:



Of course Dirksen told Nixon about LBJ's concerns, and then Nixon talked to LBJ, lying his ass off like he didn't know about this, and oh, how terrible it was, and how he support LBJ's efforts to bring about peace in Southeast Asia, and other such things that made the Old Nixon the Nixon we who lived through the time loved to loathe so much. After all, there never was a "new Nixon"; even if he had been cloned, it would still be the Old Nixon no matter what.

Tricky Dick on the phone with LBJ. Of course LBJ KNEW Nixon was up to his shifty eyeballs in the scheme, but he played along with him:



Chennaultgate wasn't Watergate, but instead it complemented it while both insulted the law, the American people, and American history. This country has never recovered from the trauma resulting from both the Vietnam War and Watergate. What I say about both scandals is that Chennaultgate was Nixon's way to guarantee his election, while Watergate--especially the break-in and the "dirty tricks" operation knocking out the strongest Democratic candidates running for the Democratic presidential nomination against Nixon in 1972--ensured his re-election. Vietnam was the dark undercurrent beneath both scandals, as we now know.

Both were heinous, downright EVIL, because countless people died solely because of one person's political ambitions.

It's also clear if it wasn't before that Nixon was psychologically unfit to be president. Yes, he did do many good things as president that would be considered liberal today, but in the end it just doesn't matter at all. He had a dark side to him, an utterly vindictive streak, to lash out at others no matter what the cost. He demanded loyalty from people who were basically decent people to commit crimes on his behalf while Nixon pretended to be above the fray. He can never get out of the cellar of the worst U.S. presidents. With more and more of the tapes and classified documents being available to historians, Nixon is destined to return to the bottom of the presidential pantheon, even below Buchanan and Harding.

Yet another commentary about Chennaultgate, Watergate, and Ken Hughes's new book is here:

There was one last twist to the story, playing out the day before the election. The Christian Science Monitor’s Saigon correspondent Beverly Deepe filed a story based on her local sources describing the Republican gambit to prevent the peace talks. In Washington, the Monitor’s Saville Davis ran Deepe’s information past Bui Diem, who denied it, and then past the White House.

President Johnson considered confirming the story but consulted with several of his top advisers – national security adviser Walt Rostow, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Defense Secretary Clark Clifford – who all urged him to stay silent. Clifford warned that if the story was published and Nixon still won, Nixon might be unable to lead the country. With the White House declining comment, the Monitor decided not to go with Deepe’s scoop.

Humphrey ended up losing the election by less than one point in the popular vote, leaving history to ponder the painful question of whether the disclosure of Nixon’s operation might have cost him the election and brought the war to an end years earlier saving countless lives.

Lots of "what ifs" there.

Nixon's Treason

I just started reading the new book about the so-called "Rosetta Stone" of what would be called Watergate titled Chasing Shadows. Based on the Johnson and Nixon White House tapes, it is well worth the read. While I don't entirely agree with the author that everything sleazy Nixon did as president was to cover up his treasonous act of sabotaging the 1968 Paris peace talks to ensure his election, there is little doubt Nixon was Machiavellian and would do anything to get elected and re-elected.

The Chennault scandal, like the rigging of the 1972 election via dirty tricks in order for Nixon to get an easy candidate to run against him in the fall elections (meaning Senator George McGovern), was a symptom, not the cause, of Nixon doing what he did. Nixon's overwhelming paranoia and hatred for his enemies were actually the causes of his lawbreaking.

Nixon's fatal character flaws made him unsuitable to be president despite being obviously intelligent and experienced in the political realm. His story is utterly tragic, not just for himself but for the country.

The Channault scandal is much worse than the somewhat similar "October Surprise" of 1980 because of the thousands of Americans and Vietnamese who died needlessly when the Vietnam War could have ended much, much earlier, and all because of somebody's presidential ambitions.

One summary of the Chennault scandal can be found from Robert Parry in this article from last month. An excerpt:

The documents – many based on FBI wiretaps – show that Johnson had strong evidence about Nixon’s peace-talk sabotage, particularly the activities of campaign official Anna Chennault who passed messages to South Vietnamese Ambassador Bui Diem in Washington urging the South Vietnamese leaders to maintain their boycott of the Paris peace talks.

On Nov. 2, the FBI intercepted a conversation in which Chennault told Bui Diem to convey “a message from her boss (not further identified),” according to an FBI cable. Chennault said “her boss wanted her to give [the message] personally to the ambassador. She said the message was that the ambassador is to ‘hold on, we are going to win’ and that her boss also said, ‘hold on, he understands all of it.’ She repeated that this is the only message … ‘he said please tell your boss to hold on.’”

That same day, Thieu recanted on his tentative agreement to meet with the Viet Cong in Paris, pushing the incipient peace talks toward failure.

Several years ago, the National Archives released tape recordings of Johnson’s phone calls further clarifying the depth of Johnson’s knowledge – and anger. On the night of Nov. 2, Johnson telephoned Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois and urged him to intercede with Nixon.

It just boggles the damned mind.

The "New Nixon" Was Always the Old One

It was forty years this month that Richard Nixon opted to resign from the presidency rather than face certain impeachment and trial. With the release of yet more of his tapes during his time at the White House, it becomes clear those old rumors he engaged in subverting the 1968 Paris Peace Talks have validity.

A new book called Chasing Shadows goes into the matter in depth. There isn't any question Nixon did this; the only questionable part is whether this was the reason Nixon engaged in a series of elaborate coverups throughout his presidency. I think those coverups were simply a result of his paranoia and hatred, and those character flaws were what ultimately did him in. Furthermore, subverting the Paris talks was yet another manifestation of his paranoia.

Taut and laden with touches of humor, “Chasing Shadows” mainly seeks to highlight the importance of the Chennault Affair to Nixon’s undoing. What was the Chennault Affair? Late in the 1968 presidential campaign, President Johnson, having forsworn another term, was ready to halt the bombing of North Vietnam to try to revive peace negotiations. Nixon, the Republican nominee, considered the decision a ploy to help Vice President Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic candidate, who was trailing in the polls. So Nixon had his law partner (and later attorney general) John N. Mitchell speak to Anna Chennault, a 43-year-old Chinese-born Republican activist, who in turn spoke to Bui Diem, the South Vietnamese ambassador, who in turn told South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu to reject LBJ’s initiative, promising a better deal once Nixon was elected. This skulduggery arguably violated the Logan Act, which bars private citizens from freelancing in foreign policy.

In implicating Nixon in this episode, Hughes adduces a great deal of strong evidence, including from LBJ’s own White House tapes (yes, he made them, too — though not nearly as many as Nixon). Roughly the first third of “Chasing Shadows” meticulously maps out the twists and turns in the bombing-halt negotiations, creating a delicious portrait of pervasive suspicion among Nixon, Johnson, Humphrey and their aides. Hughes establishes that as soon as Nixon came into office, he knew he had a big secret to hide.

Hughes then shows how this secret contributed to Watergate. Told by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in late 1968 that the bureau had bugged his campaign plane (a falsehood, Hughes says), Nixon decided he needed his own dirt on LBJ. After taking office, he assigned H.R. Haldeman, his top aide, to gather intelligence from across the government to show that LBJ had acted to help Humphrey. Haldeman delegated the task to a young flunky named Tom Charles Huston.

The book might be worth checking out.

Incidentally, as of the date of this blog post, Anna Chennault is still alive. She is 89 years old.

Obituary: David Frost

British journalist and broadcaster David Frost, 74, died yesterday of an apparent heart attack.

Frost might be best remembered as having interviewed former president Richard Nixon after he disgraced himself and resigned from office. Those interviews formed the basis of a movie made a few years ago.

While popular in Britain and beginning to launch a career on U.S. television, Frost did not become internationally known until 1977, when he secured a series of television interviews with Nixon.

The dramatic face-to-face was make-or-break both for him and for the ex-president, who was trying to salvage his reputation after resigning from the White House in disgrace following the Watergate scandal three years earlier. At the time, it was the most widely watched news interview in the history of TV.

The interviewer and his subject sparred through the first part of the interview, but Frost later said he realized he didn't have what he wanted as it wound down.

Nixon had acknowledged mistakes, but Frost pressed him on whether that was enough. Americans, he said, wanted to hear him own up to wrongdoing and acknowledge abuse of power — and “unless you say it, you're going to be haunted for the rest of your life.”

Those interviews are on YouTube. Part One:



You can find the rest here.

Nixon Was a Worse Foul Ball Than We Ever Thought

Watergate alone was bad, but I'd argue it's legacy is far, far, far worse. I don't think political discourse would be as bad as it is now if it hadn't been for Nixon's personal demons overtaking him and nearly bring down the country as a result.

Watergate, at bottom, was a successful attempt to rig Nixon's 1972 re-election by tampering with the opposition party in the primaries. The seeds of it began as soon as he took office, but Nixon's paranoia that he wouldn't be re-elected was the catalyst.

Ed Muskie, the Democrats' strongest candidate in 1972, was the focus. George McGovern, an honorable man to be sure but basically a one-issue candidate (Vietnam), was the man Nixon's boys wanted for he would be the easiest for him to beat.

Contrary to widespread belief, it was NOT clear Nixon would be re-elected, so rigging the election was paramount.

Woodward and Bernstein talk about Nixon's "five wars." One and the key one, in my view, was the "war" on the Democrats:

On Oct. 10, 1972, we wrote a story in The Post outlining the extensive sabotage and spying operations of the Nixon campaign and White House, particularly against Muskie, and stating that the Watergate burglary was not an isolated event. The story said that at least 50 operatives had been involved in the espionage and sabotage, many of them under the direction of a young California lawyer named Donald Segretti; several days later, we reported that Segretti had been hired by Dwight Chapin, Nixon’s appointments secretary. (The Senate Watergate committee later found more than 50 saboteurs, including 22 who were paid by Segretti.) Herbert Kalmbach, Nixon’s personal attorney, paid Segretti more than $43,000 from leftover campaign funds for these activities. Throughout the operation, Segretti was contacted regularly by Howard Hunt.

The Senate investigation provided more detail about the effectiveness of the covert efforts against Muskie, who in 1971 and early 1972 was considered by the White House to be the Democrat most capable of beating Nixon. The president’s campaign paid Muskie’s chauffeur, a campaign volunteer named Elmer Wyatt, $1,000 a month to photograph internal memos, position papers, schedules and strategy documents, and deliver copies to Mitchell and Nixon’s campaign staff.

Other sabotage directed at Muskie included bogus news releases and allegations of sexual improprieties against other Democratic candidates — produced on counterfeit Muskie stationery. A favored dirty trick that caused havoc at campaign stops involved sweeping up the shoes that Muskie aides left in hotel hallways to be polished, and then depositing them in a dumpster.

Hogwash Central

Another rumor should bite the dust.

Anybody who thinks Anthony Summers is any kind of reliable source should have his or her head examined:

The book attempts to buttress the homosexual allegation by repeating rumors that the twice-divorced Rebozo, known as a ladies’ man, was gay. But this claim is secondhand, based on another controversial Nixon book, by author Anthony Summers, that was widely criticized for relying on second- or third-hand sources of dubious credibility. Fulsom provides no independent verification of the sketchy assertion.

Some stories are too good to be true. Others, evidently, are too good to check.

Still, the flimsy report of Nixon’s “gay affair” went viral on the Internet last month after galleys were leaked ahead of the book’s release. When I asked Fulsom about the media reaction, he said that accounts describing his “explosive revelations” that Nixon “carried on a sizzling gay love affair” exaggerated his findings, and he admitted that, without any photos showing Nixon and Rebozo in flagrante delicto, there is “no evidence it actually happened.”

Chickenshits always wait until the principals are long dead before they make their outlandlish claims.

When Elvis Met Nixon

It was a very special day in the Oval Office 39 years ago when Elvis Presley met Richard Nixon. The above is a video report about the meeting. This is the link to the story.

Egil Krogh wrote a good book about this meeting called The Day Elvis Met Nixon. I have a copy of this book somewhere among my thousand-plus books in my library.

For years the USPS sold the 24 black-and-white, 8X10 glossies of the meeting. The photos are from the National Archives. I have 18 of the 24. I bought what I believed were the best ones of the meeting.

An online exhibit of the meeting is at this link from the National Archives.

The Tricky Dick Tapes

While it turns out Richard Nixon wasn't the worst president we ever had (certainly Reagan and our dictator outdo him in that regard), he held his own, as evidenced by his attitude regarding abortion.

Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness,” and said that “it breaks the family.” But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases, such as interracial pregnancies.

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding: “Or a rape.”

Miscellaneous Stuff [Updated]

A UNR K-9 police officer accused of abusing a police dog has denied the charges.
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I now expect a sequel to Frost/Nixon, called Ronnie/Nixon. Nixon was right, of course, and Reagan's health was already declining by 1987.
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Thank God that stupid idea of legalizing prostitution in Vegas is going nowhere this legislative session.
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Update: As everybody knows, a fatal commuter plane crash happened this evening near Buffalo, New York, when Continental Flight 3407 crashed into a home, killing all 48 in the plane and the person inside the house.

It was the deadliest U.S. plane crash since the Lexington, Kentucky, crash in 2006, which also killed 49.
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My Sisters

went down this weekend to see the new flick called Frost/Nixon, which I will probably see in a day or two, and I thought I'd post this video showing clips from the original interviews:

Richard Nixon Interviewed by David Frost
by pixies-hey

Blasts from the Past, Part I

FDR (1933):



Harry Truman (1949):





Dwight Eisenhower (1953):





JFK (1961):

Part 1:



Part II:




Lyndon Johnson (1965):




Richard Nixon (1969):




Gerald Ford (1974):




Most of these were from C-SPAN, except for JFK and Ford.

Nobody Has Yet

posted the actual video of Ed Muskie's "tears" in New Hampshire back in 1972, but this is an article about it.

I know, the byline says David Broder.

Snip:

Indeed it was. Within 24 hours, Muskie's weepingbecame the focus of political talk, not just in New Hampshire, but everywhere the pattern of the developing presidential race was discussed. His tears were generally described as one of the contributing causes of his disappointing showing in the March 7 primary. Muskie beat McGovern by a margin of 46 to 37 percent, but his managers had publicized their goal of winning at least 50 percent of the New Hampshire Democratic vote. Underdog McGovern claimed that the results showed Muskie's weakness and his own growing strength. Muskie never recovered from that Saturday in the snow.

In retrospect, though, there were a few problems with the Muskie story. First, it is unclear whether Muskie did cry. He insists he never shed the tears we thought we saw. Melting snow from his hatless head filled his eyes, he said, and made him wipe his face. While admitting that exhaustion and emotion got the better of him that morning, the senator believes that he was damaged more by the press and television coverage of the event than by his own actions.

Second, it is now clear that the incident should have been placed in a different context: Muskie was victimized by the classic dirty trick that had been engineered by agents of the distent and detached President Nixon. The Loeb editorial that had brought Muskie out in the snowstorm had been based on a letter forged by a White House staff member intent on destroying Muskie's credibility. But we didn't know that and we didn't work hard enough to find out.

If I remember right, Pat Buchanan had something to do with this situation. That was according to a Muskie associate in an interview with CBS years ago about Watergate.

Obama

is NO JFK:

More Gonzalesgate.

Richard Nixon is alive in the form of our dictator, who decided he was going to pull his own version of the legendary White House edited transcripts by claiming his demands that his aides not testify under oath and not be transcribed are compromises.

He, like Nixon, thinks he is a law unto himself. He can demand Congress do these things "or else." But since his chief puppet in this matter, Turd Blossom, is a graduate of the Nixon School of Political Strategy, it's no surprise.

Despite the tough talk at his press conference, it was clear our dictator was severely stressed and rattled over the whole thing. His role in the scandal is no doubt important, but it is Turd who is at the very core of it.

People call him a genius, but he's not. Sociopathy is not genius. The Republican Party for at least the past 45 years has been under the spell of the sociopaths of the radical right. And unfortunately, these bastards keep coming back like bad pennies. Look at DeLay, who should be in prison, going around peddling his new book and talking about how Gonzales ought to hang in there. And what about Newt, whose "revolution" helped accelerate the ultimate decline of the Republican Party and nearly destroyed our democracy with the legal harassment and bogus impeachment of a sitting president? Why is this guy given ANY forum, much less be seriously considered as a presidential contender (remembering as I do the Elizabeth Drew article many years ago that he was hoping Clinton would be impeached and removed, and then Gore would be out, thus paving the way for HIS ascendancy to the presidency).

It's utterly bizarre and outrageous. But it appears the end may be near. Gonzalesgate may not be the absolute worst scandal of this scandalous administration (I rank the two stolen elections and Katrina ahead of it), but this may be the one that throws it into total disrepute. The difference, of course, is the Republicans are no longer in the catbird seat. The Democrats are now demanding accountability. The Republicans who remain in Congress for the most part feel no longer constrained by crooks like Tom DeLay to toe the line. They are less chickenshit to do something, but probably because they have no choice. It's work with the Democrats or wind up like the Whigs.

Bush and Cheney probably will never be impeached; it's too close to the next presidential election, and besides, their continued presence is a boon for Democrats. Gonzales, if he stays, could be another matter, and he could wind up being impeached. The best thing that could happen to this country is if Turd is finally thrown in the slammer and thrown out of politics.

I can dream, can't I?