This sentence from Glenn really nails it:Of course I do not really expect Obama to pursue hard-nosed investigations into Bush's cabal, nor do I expect the US media to be reformed. But this is what "needs" to be done. And while Obama is investigating Bush, others should be investigating the Dems."The most important aspect of this Tuesday's election is to finalize their humiliating repudiation and to bury them for what they've done."Exactly right. There has been zero accountability throughout this administration. The US public missed the opportunity to hold them accountable in 2004 and the whole world has been paying the (very high) price ever since.
Obama's win really needs to be a massive, humiliating landslide defeat that will bury the GOP as it now exists.
And then, after he wins, he needs to vigorously pursue criminal prosecutions. I fully expect Bush to issue blanket pardons for everybody, but that shouldn't stop Obama pushing for justice. Of course the media will decry this as a partisan witch-hunt that sets a dangerous precedent, but there are plenty of voices in the media who should also be investigated.
When it began to become obvious a year ago that Bush's "political capital" was all spent, he began promising reporters that he would be "sprinting towards the finish line". He should have mobs of angry voters chasing him across that line, down the road, and all the way to Paraguay.
There should also be radical job cuts in newsrooms. Papers like Wapo and NYT have been in a state of virtual civil war for years, with GOP propagandists on one side and decent reporters increasingly marginalized. Those decent journos should be demanding the dismissal of their partisan hack colleagues and editors.
If Obama cannot achieve that kind of massive, permanent change, the rats will be crawling all over the kitchen again in another four or eight years. Dick Cheney's embarrassing endorsement of McCain was actually a vote for Sarah Palin 2012.
Get out there and vote, America!
It won't happen, but that's no reason for not saying that it SHOULD happen.
1 comment:
This is interesting, the notion of a civil war within newsrooms. I read the Greenwald column you linked to in hopes that he'd have more examples, but no.
As a former journo, I can't imagine siding with people in power myself. But when I think back to the management of the papers where I worked, and some of the reporters, I recall many establishment suck-ups. And this was in the 80s and early 90s, when the anti-authority ethos was stronger and ideological dividing lines were not so deep.
As for how people could cling to an ideology that's so obviously failed, itamazing to me. But then, I just got finished talking with my mom. She's lost tonnes of money, and can see American society falling apart. So who does she blame? The liberals, because they're always talking so negatively. Republicans have nothing to do with it, in her view.
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