Paul Begala did a terrific job highlighting one of the emotional responses Dems are feeling as a result of the Plame scandal and the charges against Libby. It’s not exactly schadenfreude, and it’s not quite disgust, but rather the satisfaction that comes with knowing that these smug, self-superior hypocrites have fallen from their undeserved high-horse.
…George W. Bush campaigned on a pledge to “restore honor and decency to the Oval Office.” He spoke of moms and dads on the campaign trail who showed him photos of their children and asked him to give them a president their kids could be proud of.
We all knew what he meant. With a wink and a nod he told us he wouldn’t cheat on Laura. And after he took office Mr. Bush and his henchmen smeared the Clintonistas, falsely accusing them of vandalism and theft. They told the press that in this Oval Office the gentlemen would wear suits, the ladies, skirts. And no more paper coffee cups. Nothing but the finest bone china. The Bushies even claimed moral superiority because of their punctuality. Everything was designed and marketed to stress the virtue of the Bushies and the vice of the Clintonians. And it worked. In the first year of George W. Bush’s presidency, one major media figure told my wife and me to our faces that the difference between the Clinton crowd and the Bush team was that, “They’re just better people than you are. They’re more loyal to their President, more patriotic, less self-interested and ambitious. They’re just better people.”
Now we learn that these Better People have turned the White House into a criminal enterprise. And that the purpose of that enterprise was to mislead the country into going to war. 2,000 Americans killed. 15,000 horribly wounded. $200 billion gone. And a Muslim world — and a non-Muslim world, for that matter — that hates our guts. Al Qaeda is recruiting terrorists faster than we can kill them. And there is no end in sight.
But thank God there were no blow jobs. They really are Better People.
Anyone who’s watched this gang closely since the 2000 election knew that the masquerade about moral superiority was always a sham. For crying out loud, the Bush-Cheney ticket was the first ticket in American history to feature two candidates with criminal records.
But yesterday rips off the mask. Oliver’s bottom-line summary is as good as any: “The White House leaked classified information to the media, while a member of the White House staff lied under oath and obstructed justice.”
All the spin in the world won’t change the fact that there is neither honor nor decency in that.