Despite the controversial outcome of Election 2000--which actually saw Gore getting a half million more votes than Bush--the new Republican administration behaved as if it had a popular mandate. Right-wing economic theories were pushed, including tax cuts aimed at the rich and "self-regulating markets." Reagan’s notion that “government is the problem” was back.
In foreign policy, especially after the 9/11 terror attacks, it was time for “tough-guy” swagger, American “exceptionalism” and “preemptive war.” Regarding presidential power, Nixon’s imperial theories returned with talk of the “unitary executive” exercising “plenary”--or unlimited – powers.
Along with these old Republican concepts came some of the same people who were responsible for the abuses in the 1980s, such as Elliott Abrams who parlayed his pardon from Bush-41 into a key job on the National Security Council staff of Bush-43.
However, as happened 16 years ago, the Washington Establishment is circling the wagons around the departing Republicans. Pundit after pundit insists that prosecutions for torture and other crimes would amount to misguided partisan revenge. Again, the incoming Democrat is being urged to look to the future, not the past.
Yet, the combined lesson of Bill Clinton’s feckless gestures of bipartisanship in the 1990s and George W. Bush’s reckless application of right-wing nostrums this decade should give pause to anyone who thinks that ignoring--and indeed covering up--past crimes is a smart way to guarantee a better future.
What recent history has shown is that failure to address serious government misconduct only invites a repeat of those abuses or worse. It can be unpleasant to exact accountability--it is often easier to look the other way--but it has been a hard-learned lesson for America that leniency in such circumstances can have devastating consequences.
That lesson arguably is President Bush’s only gift to the Republic – and it is one that Barack Obama might well take to heart.
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