OLEAN -- America's mounting woes couldn't come at a worse time in terms of presidential power.
Not that George W. Bush has exhibited much insight or brilliance over the last seven years whenever it came to solving domestic problems, but even if he wanted to mount some progressive initiatives in his few remaining months in office, it's unlikely he would be able to do so, no matter how dazzling their conception.
That's because he's a "lame duck" in his final months in the White House and faces mounting troubles from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Congress is likely to climb all over his butt.
Remember Bill Clinton in his waning weeks? He was hounded out the door ducking all sorts of accusations, including granting clearly uncalled-for criminal pardons for what looked like payoffs and hefty donations to his presidential library in Little Rock. Bush may experience the same treatment in the resurrection of a controversy he thought he had put to bed: uber lobbyist Jack Abramoff, currently doing five years in the clink for fraudulent business practices.
Politicians are a bit like pack dogs. When one shows weakness or even lack of future prospects, the healthier others are likely to attack. And the higher the power of the newly hurting pol, the more zealous the attack on that poor sap. It's a survival thing.
Before we go further here, let's return to the idiotic term "lame duck" to describe someone still nominally in political power with policy-making duties, but about to leave office either because of an election defeat or because the law prohibits another term. In this case, Dubya, as a second-term president, is proscribed from seeking a third by the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, passed in 1951.
Political reporters and columnists throw the term around casually without explaining it, because it's a common Washington code term for such short-time public servants, but I find in both reporting and teaching, few Americans -- young or old -- understand it on first reference. As do many terms in our language that are vague and nonsensical, it comes from the British, who seem to love such odd references and murky descriptions.
It refers to a duck unable to keep up with the rest of the flock, thus making it a target for predators or starvation. There are various etymological theories, but its origin seems to go back to the mid-1700s, when the London stock market was conducted in a place called Exchange Alley. Originally it was used to refer to bankrupt businessmen or investors unable to pay their debts. After losing their shirts on the day's trading, these broken men often came reeling and waddling out of Exchange Alley like a "lame duck."
But why a duck? Why not a hedgehog, or a lame lion, or a crippled puppy, or a goat, or a pig, or some other barnyard creature? It seems the British think the zero on a scoreboard (or a profit-loss statement) looks like a duck's egg, and use the term frequently -- such as describing one's first run in cricket as "breaking your duck's egg."
It wasn't until the mid-1800s that American writers, often Anglophiles influenced by any British trend, began using the term to refer to American presidents soon to be leaving office. Now the reference is so common as to be trite.
Back to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was convicted for defrauding Indian tribes of just shy of $100 million in political funding deals dressed up as casino enhancement efforts.
Another aside: You may note how I often use the term "lobbyist" in a sneering, derogatory context. It is because while I know there are many honest and idealistic practitioners of this art, and while I accept at least a fraction of the argument that lobbying is the best way to make known the policy views of common Americans and thus benignly influence legislation, and while I am aware that even the smallest of socially productive institutions -- such as the one I work for -- hire lobbyists to advance their aims, I cannot help but believe the entire practice is wildly out of hand and devastatingly harmful to this good nation's aims and future.
Do you know the average amount spent lobbying Congress each day it was in session in 2007, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a reliably non-partisan outfit that keeps track of such things in Washington? It was $16,279,069. That's each day of session.
All too often, the lobbying money goes not to pushing this policy or that, or some other productive end, but as direct campaign contributions to members of Congress and other politicians. Let's call a spade a spade, as my grandpa used to say. These "contributions," while they may be technically legal, are nothing but bribes. And the big power payers aren't shy about calling the ticket, either.
Abramoff got much of his clout by being exquisitely adept at channeling his contributions -- many of them from duped Native Americans -- to Republican candidates as part of the K Street Project, named after the Washington street that is home to many big lobbying firms. The K Street Project was in part spawned by Karl Rove, the political puppet master who was Dubya's political adviser and the most powerful man in the White House for the first seven years of Dubya's two terms there.
According to editor Lou Dubose, writing in the current July issue of my favorite insider newsletter, The Washington Spectator, Rove considered the K Street Project "a critical piece of the campaign to make the Republican Party a 'permanent majority.'"
When the Abramoff scandal broke more than two years ago, Dubya claimed he could not recall ever meeting Abramoff, and Rove assiduously told all who would listen he only considered Abramoff a mere "acquaintance" whom he had met briefly and casually and years ago at some political event he didn't specifically recall.
When the Abramoff scandal broke, the White House -- and Rove and the president -- adopted a Run Silent, Run Deep strategy, refusing all discussion or comment, and denying Freedom of Information Act requests for anything remotely related to the matter, even standard group photos at White House receptions that may or may not have shown Abramoff mingling in the crowd.
Well, guess what? American voters two years ago put the Democrats back in the majority on Capitol Hill, and the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat whom I found in two decades of covering the national scene in Washington to be an absolute pit bull when it came to investigating aberrant political behavior or anything else amiss in federal government.
For most of Dubya's reign, it was just the opposite when it came to congressional responsibility. The Republicans would sleepwalk through committee hearings -- on the rare occasions they even called one -- whenever anything untoward or with the slightest whiff of impropriety passed their political nostrils. This crippling political syndrome, which terribly damaged the United States in ways yet unperceived, is best described in a book published two years ago, "The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track," by veteran Washington progressives Thomas Mann and Norman Orenstein. As quoted by Dubose, the authors accurately explain how the traditional relationship between Congress and the White House changed after Dubya was elected president:
"The majority saw itself more as a group of foot soldiers in the president's army than as members of an independent branch of government. Serious congressional oversight of the executive largely disappeared, and long-standing norms of conduct in the House and Senate were shredded to fulfill the larger goal of implementing the president's program."
It was largely ignored by a national press corps too busy writing Obama-McCain horserace stories, but a few weeks ago Waxman released an interim report on his panel's investigation of the Abramoff scandal. He has established that Rove was routinely meeting with Abramoff -- usually outside the White House, so as to fend off reportorial attention -- in order to keep the GOP money machine flowing.
Waxman shows that Abramoff provided Rove hard-to-get NCAA playoff tickets. Abramoff paid for a luxury reception suite at the 2002 College Republicans reunion, a pet project of Rove's. Abramoff, Waxman's probe shows, often communicated with the White House through Rove's efficient administrative assistant Susan Ralston, whose previous job -- get this -- was as Abramoff's administrative assistant just before Rove hired her! Right, just an "acquaintance." Waxman details Abramoff working Rove and his staff to get rid of an important State Department official suspected of being a closet Democrat -- all to further Abramoff's lucrative representation of sweatshop owners in a U.S. territory.
And Waxman has obtained, and released, no fewer than six photos of Abramoff and President Bush. Why aren't these plastered all over the nightly news? They show Rove and Dubya to be flat liars.
In all, Waxman has listed 485 contacts between Abramoff and his lobbying team and Dubya's administration. He has corroborated these with signed depositions from former White House staffers. Waxman, Dubose writes, is cautiously and carefully documenting the "transgressions of Abramoff and the White House staff." Waxman shows through subpoenaed e-mails that Abramoff was talking to Rove months before the 2000 election, in which Abramoff raised more than $300,000 for Dubya's campaign.
Congressional staffers for Republican congressmen are taking the fall as cannon fodder for their bosses by pleading guilty to accepting meals, tickets and other favors in exchange for helping Abramoff's clients.
The Abramoff investigation is expanding, not winding down. The FBI is involved. More indictments are coming. This matter is likely to be Dubya's final out-the-door disgrace. If the national media ever cover it like they should, Dubya will be powerless to push anything through Congress again. Harper's Magazine in its July issue published an obscure but interesting tidbit that serves to illustrate how George W. Bush has lost almost all cachet with Americans. On April 21 of this year, Dubya -- for whatever reasons -- agreed to appear on the popular game show "Deal or No Deal." I recall the date, because it was my late dear mother's birthday. The percentage by which the ratings of that night's show lagged the average was a whopping 19 percent.
President Bush is already a footnote to history. You can almost hear him quacking.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | July 8 2008 |