Thinking About Blago and Bush Two Days Before the Inaugural

There are great stirrings of hope in the land. People are abuzz with talk of historical significance and change. And this is as it should be. We don’t get such a confluence of events and personalities more than once in a lifetime.

Yet the context for hope is always determined by fear. And our belief in Obama’s ability to restore our economy and our country takes its power from the depths to which we have been led since 9/11 by the wretched administration of George W. Bush.

In a time of great anticipation like this, it’s tempting to say forgive and forget, which is what the President-Elect seems disposed to do. This is good politics and part of reaching across the aisle. It would be loutish to sound the note of recrimination and accountability when you are trying to build a broad spirit of reconciliation.

Well, I guess so, but at some point there needs to be accountability if only to understand how the train went off the rails. NTSB investigates the Hudson River airline crash not to point fingers but to make future flying safer.

The end of Bush’s term has seen an efflorescence of scandal, thievery, corruption and mismanagement personified in truly amazing characters like Bernard Madoff and Rod Blagojevich. It’s like turning over the rock and watching the bugs scatter. With only two days left, any forthcoming Bush pardons will turn another stone. Who will be the next Scooter Libby to get off?

Anyway, George has a lot in common with Governor Rod. If their styles are different, their fundamental narcissism unites them. One fixates on his achievements, as in the Farewell Speech; the other screams if he can’t find his hairbrush. Here are some typical symptoms; you be the judge:

• Overreacts to criticism, becoming angry or humiliated
• Uses others to reach goals
• Exaggerates own importance
• Entertains unrealistic fantasies about achievements, power, beauty, intelligence or romance
• Has unreasonable expectation of favorable treatment
• Needs constant attention and positive reinforcement from others
• Is easily jealous.

Compared to the president’s accomplishments (war crimes, torture, spying on citizens, last-minute regulatory rewrites, the usual list), the governor’s “high crimes and misdemeanors” pale in comparison, as some have noted. But Rod’s ambition clearly surpasses GW’s, and he’s an easy target.

It will be very much tougher to bring George & Co. to the bar of justice. But Congress still needs a serious investigation at some point with some serious consequences to result. Yesterday, Paul Krugman presumed in a lengthy Rolling Stone article to advise Mr. Obama on a number of policy matters. He claimed we need a full accounting of what the Bush administration has done:

Not a witch hunt, maybe not even prosecutions, but something like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that helped South Africa come to terms with what happened under apartheid. We need to know how America ended up fighting a war to eliminate nonexistent weapons, how torture became a routine instrument of U.S. policy, how the Justice Department became an instrument of political persecution, how brazen corruption flourished not only in Iraq, but throughout Congress and the administration. We know that these evils were not, whatever the apologists say, the result of honest error or a few bad apples. . . .

The present economic crisis casts a pall over everything. But let’s not forget, in celebrating a hopeful future, how we got here.