There aren't MANY scandals, There's really only one: that America's current rulers are the most morally bankrupt in the nation's history. It's time for the Democrats to talk about the elephant in the room.

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Time to Talk About the Elephant in the Room

The time has come for the Democratic Party to stand up and do what any responsible, self-respecting opposition party would do at such an extraordinary moment in our country’s history as this. The time has come for the Democratic Party to stand up and talk about the elephant in the room: that America’s current rulers are the most morally bankrupt in the nation’s history.

For too long this opposition party has cowered in fear—fear that the American people will punish them for speaking so important a truth. Bested so often by the spinmeisters and manipulators on the other side, most of the Democrats in Congress have sought to save themselves from further defeat by careful positioning rather than to advance themselves toward victory by speaking with real conviction.

Meanwhile, American democracy is suffering damage like nothing seen in our lifetimes. And millions of Americans are awaiting genuine leadership to save this nation from this degradation.

Now the time is right. The country is ready to hear it. It’s even good politics.

It’s time to set fear aside. With polls now showing that fully 47 percent of the American people strongly disapprove of the Bush presidency, how much risk can there be in speaking the terrible truth about what’s been happening in our country under this Bushite regime?

There is Only One Scandal

It has been said by some that there are now so many scandals –a new one breaking virtually every few days—that the American people are so overwhelmed by the complexity that they just tune out. The result, it is suggested, is that the regime gets a kind of protection from the sheer multiplicity of these scandals.

The strategy of the opposition should accordingly be to simplify the picture, and there is a straightforward way to do it. For the reality is that there are not many scandals, but really only one: the moral bankruptcy of the Bushites. The various individual stories –the lies, the crimes, the arrogance, the lack of accountability—are all parts of that one larger story.

This is the story the Democrats should now tell. The nation needs the story told, and the Democrats will be well-served by telling it.

The best hope for the Democrats, it is widely understood, lies in nationalizing the 2006 mid-term elections. How else to overcome the gerrymandering of districts to minimize real competition? How else to prevent the Republicans –who have opportunistically served as part of this regime to gain the spoils of power—from running away from this floundering but still dangerous presidency?

And so telling this story –connecting the dots to bring into sharp relief the morally debased nature of this leadership, and showing how the Republicans in Congress, in their cozying up to corrupt power, have violated the trust of the American people—is the best strategy for the Democrats asking the voters of this country to shift the power in Congress to them.

Telling the Story in Stages

Most Americans are already getting the picture. Even the only somewhat attentive American citizen –even the person who gets his/her news from the mainstream broadcast media—now knows, or at least can recognize, a great many facts about the Bushite scandals.

The first stage in calling attention to the elephant in the room is to reduce these many well-known facts to a handful of important realities for which those facts are the supportive evidence. For example…

It’s not just that the president put sixteen words into the State of the Union message –about Iraq’s alleged efforts to acquire uranium in Africa-- that he and his people knew were not true. It’s not just that the Downing Street memos indicate that the Bush administration was determined to “fix” the intelligence to sell a course of action they’d already decided upon. It’s not just that the president said that no one anticipated the New Orleans levees being overwhelmed when we have videotape of his being told just that less than a week before his false excuse. It’s not just that the president assured the country several times that “nothing has changed” regarding the need for a court order before surveillance could be conducted. It’s not just that the administration deliberately kept from Congress the true anticipated cost of its prescription drug bill. It’s not just that the Bush administration lied when it said that it would turn to war in Iraq “only as a last resort.”

No, these –and the many other deceptions told to the American people and to Congress—are indications of a larger truth. It’s not just the lies. It’s that this president and his people are liars. They have lied repeatedly and chronically and about the most vital of matters, even matters of war and peace, life and death.

It’s not just that the president willfully and secretly violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the constitutionally-protected rights of American citizens against warrantless searches. It’s not just that the president leaked classified information –and that in a highly selective and distorted fashion—without following the established rules, and for purposes of political advantage. It’s not just that the administration practiced torture, in violation of the law of the land. It’s not just that the administration has put forward outrageous arguments usurping the constitutional powers of the other branches of government to create an unchecked, tyrannical presidency.

No, these –and the many other instances of the violation of law and Constitution and treaty and tradition —are indications of a larger truth. It’s not just the specific violations of laws. It’s that this president and his people are criminals. They have shown contempt for the sacred American principle that we are a nation of laws, not of men. They have run rough-shod over those structures –those sets of laws and rules—that our Founders and generations since have erected to govern how power is wielded by the most powerful people in the country.

Similar sets of widely known facts –from the multiplicity of scandals—can be assembled and simplified into other major conclusions, such as:

· The administration, and the Republican Congress, have been willing to serve the mighty and the rich at the expense of the average American and of future generations, and corrupted the political process to serve greed and the lust for power.
· The Bush administration has refused to take responsibility, or to hold its members accountable, and the Republican Congress has abetted the lies, the evasions of responsibility, and the law-breaking of the administration.
· The Bushite regime has deliberately sown division –waging unnecessary war abroad, turning groups of American against each other—just to expand its power and achieve political advantage.
· This regime has shown an arrogance that has led the nation into disasters, both at home and abroad, because of its reckless assumption that it knows all it needs to know, and its wanton disregard of good counsel and information that doesn’t suit its assumptions and desires.

These are the intermediate conclusions to which the facts of the many individual scandals point.

The first stage could consist of connecting the well-known scandals to these larger conclusions (perhaps starting with the idea that this regime is a bunch of liars). And by election day in November, if these various elements have been established –that they are lying, self-aggrandizing, law-breaking, arrogant, destructive, irresponsible—it will be time to name the one big elephant in the room: that this Bushite regime (in the White House, and on Capitol Hill) is the most morally bankrupt ruling force America has ever endured.

The issue here is not liberal versus conservative. It’s moral versus immoral.

Fielding the Inevitable Questions

If the Democrats do in fact take the field for this year’s campaign to tell Americans the Big Scandal about this Bushite regime, several questions or challenges to them can be anticipated. It would be good to have suitable answers ready.

Here are some of those questions, and the corresponding answers that might be given.

Q: If this regime is as bad as you say, and if the evidence goes back as far as you’re citing, so how come you Democrats didn’t tell the American people about all this sooner?

The best answer to this question involves some confessional honesty. Such honesty would be a refreshing change from the political atmosphere created by the Bushites, and might even be rewarded.

A: As with the American people themselves, the Democrats might say, some of us saw what was happening sooner, and others of us took longer to recognize just how dangerous this group is. Also, some of us have been brave, and others of us have not. Profiles in Courage are known to be rare—among politicians as well as elsewhere; people hesitate to risk their jobs by stating a truth for which they might be punished. And in recent times, we’ve been operating in a political environment in which the liars have been very effective at punishing the truth-tellers.

It’s now up to the American people whether that’s changed now or not, i.e. whether the truth –even an unhappy truth—will defeat the lie.

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Q: You criticize the administration’s handling of Iraq. But do you Democrats have any better plan for how to deal with that mess?

Though this question does not go away, it is a foolish one. The best way to handle it is to expose its folly.

A: There are some messes that are so bad that there is no good solution to them. The mess that the Bushites have made in Iraq appears to be one of those. With such disasters, the issue is not who can make everything OK –there are some blunders that cannot be made OK--but who is responsible for the debacle.

Of course, we Americans have to find the least bad solution to this situation in Iraq. But so long as our course in the world is being charted by the same people who created this mess, the first order of business is to rescue our destiny from the people whose arrogance and recklessness and colossal bad judgment has given us this greatest policy disaster in American history.

If the American people make us the majority party, we will hold public hearings and invite the best foreign policy and military minds in the country to see if we can get some consensus on what is the least worst course of action—in view of America’s interests and values and responsibilities. And we can do what is within Congress’s power to do to try to assure that the people who gave us this mess in Iraq do not give us another one.

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Q: There’s talk of impeachment. The Republicans are warning their base that if you Democrats get control of the Congress you will take the country into a time-consuming and distracting campaign to remove George W. Bush from office. They say that the American people, who didn’t welcome that when the Republicans tried it in 1998 against President Clinton, don’t want to go down that road now either. So, if you gain control of Congress, are you going to try to impeach this president?

A: What is absolutely essential here is that the Congress stand up, on behalf of the American people, and declare that we are a nation of laws, and that it is not acceptable for the President of the United States to act as if he were above the law.

To let this administration’s/president’s lawless conduct and bogus claims to unchecked power escape even without condemnation would undermine the integrity of our American democracy.

The Congress should therefore consider a resolution of censure that includes all of the apparent acts of lawlessness that this administration has conducted—not just the warrantless searches that the American Bar Association has declared to be clearly illegal, but also other apparent violations of the Constitution and lawless acts.

The discussion of this administration’s apparent lawlessness should be conducted publicly, so that the American people can see just what kind of threat this president has posed to our democracy.

The American people will then be in a position to judge for themselves whether censure is a sufficient means to defend our constitutional system, or whether the crimes and misdemeanors of this presidency require that the law-breakers be removed from office.

Indeed, we would propose to create a panel that’s representative of the American electorate –a kind of jury of some dozens of citizens, of every political stripe—to attend the censure resolution debate so that they’d get the complete picture of this administration’s misdeeds. And we would turn to this group of citizens –representative of the public generally, except for being so fully informed of the relevant issues—for a decision as to whether or not impeachment is necessary.

And incidentally, the comparison that the Republicans like to make now to the Clinton impeachment is a foolish one. As objectionable as President Clinton’s conduct was in moral terms, his misdeeds did not involve the performance of the great office with which the American people had entrusted him. That’s why the majority of the American people opposed his impeachment.

President Bush’s actions, however –his wielding his presidential powers as if he did not have to obey the laws passed by Congress, or submit to the oversight of the courts—is the very kind of usurpation that most worried our Founders and for which the process of impeachment was instituted as a means of protecting our constitutional democracy.

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Q: It is clear what you Democrats are against, but what are you for? Do you have any positive vision to offer the American people? Or are you just going to campaign against the shortcomings of the Republicans?

A: Yes, we do have a positive vision. In fact it is the vision on which this nation was founded: a vision of a nation ruled by law, a vision of a democracy governed by a Constitution, a nation in which the people are entrusted with the truth so that they and their representatives can make decisions on their collective destiny.

In ordinary times, there’s no need to emphasize this American birthright. But these are not ordinary times. The integrity of our democracy is now under threat. And with almost half the American people now strongly disapproving of the current presidency, it seems clear that many millions of American recognize that our country is being damaged by the people and the party now in power.

In this extraordinary situation, the most urgent part of our program is for us to fulfill the oath of office that this president, and our Republican colleagues in the Congress, have so egregiously violated: to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

So what we are campaigning for is not just the repudiation of the lawlessness of this regime but also a restoration of the traditional American commitment to the rule of law. We are for that American ideal of constitutional government for which Americans have sacrificed and died for generations.

And just as this regime has sown division, we will work to bring the American people together on the basis of the values that we share.

While these Republicans have sold government to the highest bidder from K Street, we are campaigning to make the American government once again “of the people, for the people, and by the people.” We will also look for constitutional ways of ridding our political process of the flagrantly corrupting influences of big money.

While this administration, with its lies and manipulations, has debased our process of democratic deliberation, we will rehabilitate our ability in our political system to have honest and constructive debate about real issues.

That's why we’re against this lawless and morally bankrupt administration: because we’re for the basic American values of honesty, free and open discussion, pursuing the common good, and playing by the rules.

Authors Bio:
Andy Schmookler, an award-winning author, political commentator, radio talk-show host, and teacher, was the Democratic nominee for Congress from Virginia's 6th District. His new book -- written to have an impact on the central political battle of our time -- is WHAT WE'RE UP AGAINST. His previous books include The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution, for which he was awarded the Erik H. Erikson prize by the International Society for Political Psychology.