Olbermann: Bush, Cheney Should Resign
By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown

Tuesday 03 July 2007

'I didn't vote for him, but he's my president, and I hope
he does
a good job.'

"I didn't vote for him," an American once said, "But he's
my
president, and I hope he does a good job."

That - on this eve of the 4th of July - is the essence of
this
democracy, in 17 words. And that is what President Bush threw
away yesterday in commuting the sentence of Lewis "Scooter"
Libby.

The man who said those 17 words - improbably enough - was
the
actor John Wayne. And Wayne, an ultra-conservative, said
them, when he learned of the hair's-breadth election of John
F. Kennedy instead of his personal favorite, Richard Nixon in
1960.

"I didn't vote for him but he's my president, and I hope
he does
a good job."

The sentiment was doubtlessly expressed earlier, but
there is
something especially appropriate about hearing it, now, in
Wayne's voice: The crisp matter-of-fact acknowledgement that
we have survived, even though for nearly two centuries now,
our Commander-in-Chief has also served, simultaneously, as
the head of one political party and often the scourge of all
others.

We as citizens must, at some point, ignore a president's
partisanship. Not that we may prosper as a nation, not that
we may achieve, not that we may lead the world - but merely
that we may function.

But just as essential to the seventeen words of John
Wayne, is an
implicit trust - a sacred trust: That the president for whom
so many did not vote, can in turn suspend his political self
long enough, and for matters imperative enough, to conduct
himself solely for the benefit of the entire Republic.

Our generation's willingness to state "we didn't vote for
him,
but he's our president, and we hope he does a good job," was
tested in the crucible of history, and earlier than most.

And in circumstances more tragic and threatening. And we
did that
with which history tasked us.

We enveloped our President in 2001.And those who did not
believe
he should have been elected - indeed those who did not
believe he had been elected - willingly lowered their voices
and assented to the sacred oath of non-partisanship.

And George W. Bush took our assent, and re-configured it,
and
honed it, and shaped it to a razor-sharp point and stabbed
this nation in the back with it.

Were there any remaining lingering doubt otherwise, or
any
remaining lingering hope, it ended yesterday when Mr. Bush
commuted the prison sentence of one of his own staffers.

Did so even before the appeals process was complete; did
so
without as much as a courtesy consultation with the
Department of Justice; did so despite what James Madison - at
the Constitutional Convention - said about impeaching any
president who pardoned or sheltered those who had committed
crimes "advised by" that president; did so without the
slightest concern that even the most detached of citizens
must look at the chain of events and wonder: To what degree
was Mr. Libby told: break the law however you wish - the
President will keep you out of prison?

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you broke that fundamental
com-pact
between yourself and the majority of this nation's citizens -
the ones who did not cast votes for you. In that moment, Mr.
Bush, you ceased to be the President of the United States. In
that moment, Mr. Bush, you became merely the President of a
rabid and irresponsible corner of the Republican Party. And
this is too important a time, Sir, to have a
commander-in-chief who puts party over nation.

This has been, of course, the gathering legacy of this
Administration. Few of its decisions have escaped the stain
of politics. The extraordinary Karl Rove has spoken of "a
permanent Republican majority," as if such a thing - or a
permanent Democratic majority - is not antithetical to that
upon which rests: our country, our history, our revolution,
our freedoms.

Yet our Democracy has survived shrewder men than Karl
Rove. And
it has survived the frequent stain of politics upon the
fabric of government. But this administration, with
ever-increasing insistence and almost theocratic zealotry,
has turned that stain into a massive oil spill.

The protection of the environment is turned over to those
of one
political party, who will financially benefit from the rape
of the environment. The protections of the Constitution are
turned over to those of one political party, who believe
those protections unnecessary and extravagant and quaint.

The enforcement of the laws is turned over to those of
one
political party, who will swear beforehand that they will not
enforce those laws. The choice between war and peace is
turned over to those of one political party, who stand to
gain vast wealth by ensuring that there is never peace, but
only war.

And now, when just one cooked book gets corrected by an
honest
auditor, when just one trampling of the inherent and
inviolable fairness of government is rejected by an impartial
judge, when just one wild-eyed partisan is stopped by the
figure of blind justice, this President decides that he, and
not the law, must prevail.

I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.

I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own
people, a
false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the
plans
for Iraq were disastrously insufficient.

I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of
3,586 of
our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends
and neighbors.

I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some
misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat
terrorists, but to stifle dissent.

I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of
creating
the very terror you claim to have fought.

I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the
natural
fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in
peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel
your opponents.

I accuse you of handing part of this Republic over to a
Vice
President who is without conscience, and letting him run
roughshod over it.

And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that
Vice
President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame
Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to
Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order
to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation,
with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and,
in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here
last night, of becoming an accessory to the obstruction of
justice.

When President Nixon ordered the firing of the Watergate
special
prosecutor Archibald Cox during the infamous "Saturday Night
Massacre" on October 20th, 1973, Cox initially responded
tersely, and ominously.

"Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of
men, is
now for Congress, and ultimately, the American people."

President Nixon did not understand how he had
crystallized the
issue of Watergate for the American people.

It had been about the obscure meaning behind an attempt
to break
in to a rival party's headquarters; and the labyrinthine
effort to cover-up that break-in and the related crimes.

And in one night, Nixon transformed it.

Watergate - instantaneously - became a simpler issue: a
President
overruling the inexorable march of the law of insisting - in
a way that resonated viscerally with millions who had not
previously understood - that he was the law.

Not the Constitution. Not the Congress. Not the Courts.
Just him.

Just - Mr. Bush - as you did, yesterday.

The twists and turns of Plame-Gate, of your precise and
intricate
lies that sent us into this bottomless pit of Iraq; your lies
upon the lies to discredit Joe Wilson; your lies upon the
lies upon the lies to throw the sand at the "referee" of
Prosecutor Fitzgerald's analogy. These are complex and often
painful to follow, and too much, perhaps, for the average
citizen.

But when other citizens render a verdict against your
man, Mr.
Bush - and then you spit in the faces of those jurors and
that judge and the judges who were yet to hear the appeal -
the average citizen understands that, Sir.

It's the fixed ballgame and the rigged casino and the
pre-arranged lottery all rolled into one - and it stinks. And
they know it.

Nixon's mistake, the last and most fatal of them, the
firing of
Archibald Cox, was enough to cost him the presidency. And in
the end, even Richard Nixon could say he could not put this
nation through an impeachment.

It was far too late for it to matter then, but as the
decades
unfold, that single final gesture of non-partisanship, of
acknowledged responsibility not to self, not to party, not to
"base," but to country, echoes loudly into history. Even
Richard Nixon knew it was time to resign

Would that you could say that, Mr. Bush. And that you
could say
it for Mr. Cheney. You both crossed the Rubicon yesterday.
Which one of you chose the route, no longer matters. Which is
the ventriloquist, and which the dummy, is irrelevant.

But that you have twisted the machinery of government
into
nothing more than a tawdry machine of politics, is the only
fact that remains relevant.

It is nearly July 4th, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the
moment
we Americans decided that rather than live under a King who
made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them - or
commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them
- we would force our independence, and regain our sacred
freedoms.

We of this time - and our leaders in Congress, of both
parties -
must now live up to those standards which echo through our
history: Pressure, negotiate, impeach - get you, Mr. Bush,
and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our
Democracy, away from its helm.

For you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser
task.
You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed. Display
just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed, on
August 9th, 1974.

Resign.

And give us someone - anyone - about whom all of us might
yet be
able to quote John Wayne, and say, "I didn't vote for him,
but he's my president, and I hope he does a good job."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/070407Y.shtml