Will He or Won't He??

It seems to be the big question of the past few weeks, doesn't it? Will our new President fundamentally change the drift of our current domestic and foreign policies? Or will he make only minor course corrections that keep the ship of state on track to a greater doom?

Well, it is certainly hard to tell when one can only engage in Kremlinology of personnel appointments, read the tea leaves left behind by "unnamed sources close to the transition," listen to the unceasing drone of worthless pundits or parse the few words and speeches given since the election.

One thing is clear, all of us are intent to project upon the new President our own desires for our shared future. I'll admit that I too am happily projecting my hopes that starting January 21st, our new leadership will back away from the expanded executive powers they will inherit, renounce the numerous legal and ethical malpractices issued by the Office of Legal Counsel, and re-establish some national moral authority in the arena of rule of law, economic fairness and human rights.

And like many others, I too hope that I will not be disappointed. Especially after soldiering on these past several years in the labor of a government whose policies are increasingly unsupportable and whose obvious hypocrisy is (or should be) a massive embarrassment.

So, will he or won't he??

Will he renounce the use of "enhanced interrogations"? Or won't he??

Will he uphold his campaign commitments to draw down the Iraqi conflict and close Guantanamo? Or won't he??

Will he direct his new Justice Department to investigate the past Administration's abuses of power? Or won't he??

Will he once again use the government to regulate the unrestrained forces of Wall Street? Or won't he??

Will it be a "new birth of freedom"? Or a continuation of our ruin??

Time will tell. And that time is nigh. It starts in one week. And President Barack Obama has his work cut out for him.

(Photo of Lincoln's Second Innaugeration, March 1865. From the National Archives)

"Where were we???"

The unbelievably great Driftglass serves up another seminal post.

...and the Moderate, worse than any of them "because he knew what they were and went along with them"

Using a simple clip from that great film, Judgement at Nuremberg, the indictment rings as true today as it did then:

"What was going to be a passing phase became a way of life."

Responsibility without authority is the road to inaction. Likewise, authority without accountability is the road to disaster. Finally, apology without accountability is the rankest of hypocrisy -- and the end of the way of life we say we hold dear.

Without some accounting for the last few years, we have indeed traded a "passing phase" for a new "way of life."

As they say, go read it all...

NYROB - The Co-President at Work

How to understand the last eight years....

Volume 55, Number 18 · November 20, 2008

By David Bromwich

When George W. Bush testified before the 9/11 Commission, Dick Cheney was with him in the Oval Office. What was said there remains a secret, but throughout the double session, it appears, Cheney deferred to Bush. Aides to the President afterward explained that the two men had to sit together for people to see how fully Bush was in control. A likelier motive was the obvious one: they had long exercised joint command but neither knew exactly how much the other knew, or what the other would say in response to particular questions. Bush also brought Cheney for the reason that a witness under oath before a congressional committee may bring along his lawyer. He could not risk an answer that his adviser might prefer to correct. Yet Bush would scarcely have changed the public understanding of their relationship had he sent in Cheney alone. "When you're talking to Dick Cheney," the President said in 2003, "you're talking to me."

The shallowest charge against Cheney is that he somehow inserted himself into the vice-presidency by heading the team that examined other candidates for the job. He used the position deviously, so the story goes, to sell himself to the susceptible younger Bush. The truth is both simpler and more strange. Since 1999, Cheney had been one of a group of political tutors of Bush, including Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz; in this company, Bush found Cheney especially congenial—not least his way of asserting his influence without ever stealing a scene. Bush, too, resembled Cheney in preferring to let others speak, but he lacked the mind and patience for discussions: virtues that Cheney possessed in abundance.

(rest of the article here)