Consider this lede from a story published today by McClatchy Newspapers. In fact, read it twice.
“For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates,” McClatchy reported. “The administration intensified its efforts last year as President Bush’s popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a midterm battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won.”
We’re well over six years into Bush’s presidency, and I suspect a lot of Americans have become desensitized to political outrages — we’ve learned so many infuriating things, it’s easy to become inured to what once was shocking. After a while, one is tempted to throw their arms up in disgust, say “there they go again,” and wait for January 2009.
But these two sentences are, or at least should be, breathtaking. When it looked like Republicans were going to have a tough election year, the Justice Department helped prevent Americans from voting, in specific areas, to help GOP candidates. This isn’t normal. It’s not politics-as-usual. It’s not consistent with the American tradition. And if it sounds at all familiar, it’s because, as Jonathan Chait explained, we’ve seen it before — in Russia.
As Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales takes to Capitol Hill to testify today, it’s worth keeping in mind what this whole imbroglio is really about. It’s not about whether Gonzales and his minions lied to Congress and the public. (They did, repeatedly.) It’s not even about whether the Justice Department improperly fired federal prosecutors. (It did, of course.) It’s about whether the Bush administration sought to subvert democracy by turning the federal judicial system into a weapon of the ruling party.
Many people think of democracy as free elections, some other basic rights (like free speech) and not much more. But really, that’s only the beginning. There are plenty of countries that have free and fair elections and yet are clearly not democratic because their ruling parties have a permanent, immovable hammerlock on power.
One key thing that separates strong democracies (such as the United States) from weak democracies (such as Russia) is that the latter use the police power of the state as a tool of the ruling party.
It’s a painful thought, and Bush hasn’t started throwing political enemies in jail, but using federal law enforcement as a Republican-protection operation is absolutely Kremlin-like.
Chait’s list of examples, while familiar, is chilling.
* U.S. Attorneys were fired for prosecuting Republicans or failing to prosecute Democrats.
* U.S. Attorneys retained their jobs after bringing trumped up charges against Democrats before the election.
* U.S. Attorneys have investigated or indicted 298 Democratic officeholders and only 67 Republicans, which no one seems to even try to defend as reasonable.
* The Department of Homeland Security was used to track down state lawmakers in Texas who planned to oppose Tom DeLay’s re-redistricting scheme.
* NYC used police spies to monitor critics of the Republicans during their national convention in 2004.
Chait concludes:
It would be very easy to overreact to all these things and conclude that our democracy is imperiled or that Republicans are wannabe Putins. But almost nobody seems to be overreacting.
Most people are under-reacting. Allowing the security apparatus of the state to help tilt elections is an extremely grave precedent. When the line of acceptable behavior can be moved without much protest, it often can be moved further the next time.
No, we’re not becoming Russia. But becoming just a little bit like Russia still ought to be considered a major scandal.
Our justice system is premised on equality and fairness. Americans need to have confidence that the law will be applied impartially.
The Bush gang has not only abandoned the principle, they no longer care whether the electorate has that confidence or not. The top goal is the protection of the ruling party — and there is no second goal.
Something to keep in mind during today’s hearings.