Super Friends

We've discussed how Chimpco's illegal superpowers (wiretapping; circumventing FISA; imprisoning people for years without trial or even charges; torture and extraordinary rendition) would likely never be allowed to pass on to a Democratic administration.

Here's a blast from the past that retroactively confirms just that:

So Bill Clinton, rather than just breaking the law as Bush did (then again, perhaps this is why Bush broke the law - he knew from history that the Republicans controlling the congress would oppose his efforts to expand wiretapping), decided to go to the Republican congress in 1996 and ask them for increased authority to do more eavesdropping in order to stop the terrorists - stop September 11. Senior Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, one of the GOP's top picks for the Supreme Court and a GOP committee chair, objected.

No doubt Hatch, weasel that he is, will just say that if only he knew then what he knows now. But that's nonsense. The threat was known; the World Trade Center had been attacked just three years prior. Oklahoma City, with its initial suspicions of swarthy foreigners before it turned out to be a psychotic veteran, was still fresh in everyone's mind. Countering terror -- domestic and foreign -- was very much a priority for sensible people. The question was where to draw the line, and Hatch -- and I'll wager virtually every Republican of note on the record -- drew that line much closer then than now.

John points out that perhaps this is why Bush and Cheney just went ahead and got their program going without any consultation with those pesky peoples' representatives. It's possible, but I'm a bit skeptical. Until very recently, this Congress has been a Politburo-grade rubber-stamp for everything on Chimpco's laundry list. I don't think they would have balked at this at all.

The problem for them would come after the presumably secret approval and enactment, because then they would have to go about finding a way to undo it in the event the Diebold machines fail or the gay marriage lunatics forget to vote, and a Democrat manages to squeak back into office. This way they can just drag their feet and demagogue the issue the entire time, and if the Dems take over in the midterms and make them shut it down, you can bet the next attack will instantly be made the fault of feckless Democrats.

It's a very dangerous game they're playing, like the fractured Risk tournament they've got going in the Middle East. And like that game, this extrajudicial one may simply be a by-product of their own hubris. They couldn't see how they could possibly fail in Iraq; similarly, they assumed that Karl Rove was the second coming of Mark Hanna, and would start this benighted new century off with a generation of Republican domination.

Pending midterm results, of course, I would put the safe money on victorious Democrats making some sort of trade-off -- investigate this, but not that, and we'll shut this other thing down. One would hope that the Democrats would be just as sore winners as the Republicans have been (but at least in the right direction). But there are too many Ben Nelson types in the party, who will always consider glad-handing capitulation and gutless compromise first, and fighting for principle somewhere down the list. And that's just not going to happen; even a Democratic takeover of both houses will be by a narrow margin, and unlike the Rovians, they will not have the balls to pretend that they have a large-margin mandate.

Now, chances are that they'll still have to hand the John Conyerses some busywork, and if that turns up something definitively earth-shattering, then of course all bets are off. But it would have to be something big -- that magical spirit of Fitzmas from last year seems to have faded without enough truly momentous revelations. People have been burnt already by credulous morons like Jason Leopold, and the glacial pace and limited blowback of the Libby case. They are understandably leery of the ultimate efficacy of future "scoops".

I dunno. I wish I had more confidence in the Democrats to really get in there and fight the good fight, and perhaps there'll be some pleasant surprises in that regard. I hope so. But even in midterm victory, their stars will be devoting much energy to polishing their own presidential aspirations, and start trying to big-tent as many issues as possible, rather than risk signing on to what could turn out to be a tiresome and ultimately fruitless fishing expedition.

There may be a sacrificial lamb here and there -- Bush has never shied away from throwing underlings under the bus rather than taking a hit himself, as Scooter Libby knows too well -- but I don't think that the Democrats even have a clue about the things they don't even know, when it comes to what this obsessively secretive administration is up to. And without real focus, commitment, and an aggressive stance on finding out, they'll never get to the bottom of it all.

I think the warrantless sigint controversy is just the tip of the iceberg, and now that Chimpco sees its heady dreams of political domination already foundering, their minions are desperately booga-boogaing the "appeaser" imagery, while they frantically try to figure out how to not hand off their self-granted superpowers -- and all their dirty little secrets -- to the opposition party.