Cold Fusion

( + ) - =

Make that Cole fusion--well, except for the "minus the brain" part, which is my own corollary:

Late night comedian Conan O'Brian does a shtick where he has a silly computer program meld the faces of two celebrities to see what their kids would look like, only the program works to exaggerate the features of each, so that you always have a freakish result.

The news today makes me think that it would be worthwhile melding Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon to see if the result looked like W. Because George W. Bush faces the weight of a long Asian land war gone badly wrong, just as Johnson did. And he faces the charges of high-level corruption and illegal wiretapping that dogged Richard Nixon. He has become both "Mah feller Amurcans" Bush and "tricky Georgie." W. has survived all this relatively well, given the dreadful facts of it.

Unlike Johnson, he does not operate a hated draft, but depends on gung-ho volunteers (some of whom are a little too gung-ho and have made a lot of unnecessary trouble in Iraq by shooting a lot of people for DWI, Driving While Iraqi). The volunteers' families and friends are not clamoring for an end to the war with the fervor that those of the draftees did in the 1960s and early 1970s. Johnson was in the end defeated by powerful challenges from within his own party, which caused him not to seek another term. Bush faced no such challenge in '04. His party has gone along with him. Of course, Tom DeLay is not exactly a paragon of virtue. The corruption of the party itself, which has few Robert F. Kennedys, has abetted Bush's continued dominance and free ride for his crimes.

Nixon faced an FBI willing to leak to the press to get him, a Supreme Court willing to order him to turn over tapes of his conversations, and a Democratic Congress willing to impeach him (well, a lot of Republicans were willing to, by the end, too). It is pretty clear that Scalia, Thomas and Alito would have all voted against making Nixon turn over his tapes, and maybe Roberts, as well. It is a different court, one that is willing to show deference to the imperial presidency, as Rehnquist openly admitted before he went out. Bush's party dominates both houses of congress, as well. The Senate Intelligence Committee under Pat Robertson has dragged its feet in investigating Bush administration crimes. The only strike against Bush is that the FBI still has a good deal of independence and has every reason to want to hold administration officials accountable for leaking Plame's name, since ruining undercover agents' careers can get them and their family's killed. It is mainly the FBI and an independent prosecutor (the appointment of which Bush resisted) that have shown integrity with regard to the Bush scandals, whether the AIPAC spying affair or Libbygate. (People call it Plamegate, but it is Libby who is the scandal here).

YRHT has more than once made the explicit comparison between the two Texans (Shrub & Lyndon), and I doubt anyone these days doesn't consider the similarities between Tricky Dick and Greasy George (though, to be fair, Dick wasn't nearly as stupid).

THAT Dick actually had a number of staunch defenders back in the day--indeed, even after the tapes revealed criminal activity, there were still a few rats dedicated to the sinking (or slinking) ship--and I'm willing to bet that Karl Rove was one of them. But the public was quite fed up with claims of "executive privilege." They might have voted for the guy, but their vote was not an endorsement of criminal activity.

I'm pretty sure all but the most rabid of pissers-on-the-Constitution were aware of that then, and should be aware of that today. Which is why Shrub clings to the war rationale for his illegal activities despite explict evidence and logical inferences pointing not to any desire for "protecting Americans" but sheer balls-to-the-wall, I'm-king-not-president-damnit sputterings from the dauphin.

Thank heavens, though, it looks like it's not going to work. I think the public is getting pretty sick and tired: Iraq is a quagmire, bin Laden's still a fugitive, the Gulf Coast is still a mess, Al Qaeda is stronger than it was BEFORE Team Bush launched Operation-We're-Actually-the-Keystone-Cops, etc.

To be fair, I'd also guess a fair bit of public dissatisfaction with Team Bush is not necessarily in their strategery, but their execution. Well, one step at a time, I suppose...