It seems most people, though overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the state of our nation, are content to wait for next year's election. And so it appears that we will not expunge this stain on our democracy all at once and in a national show of commitment to the principles that had made our nation an object of affection around the world. ("We are all Americans now," they once said.) Rather, we are content to replace Bush and the rest of the criminals who now infest the Executive Branch in due course, letting the blemishes they have left recede over time, inevitably to be reviled and made the subject of apology and cautionary tale.
Forgive me for wanting the America of my generation to be recalled as more than cautionary tale. I want my country unambiguously to reject the administration's ineptitude, maximalist theories of power, and what amounts to dictatorial and colonial ambition. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality," they told us in the heady days when fighting terrorism made them feel warm and fuzzy, infused with a sense of historical gravitas. No we're not, and no we don't, I want us to tell them in the cold reality of late 2007.
And so what will it be?
- Do we or do we not reject the proposition that the President can kidnap a human being, even a US citizen, and hold him or her indefinitely, without recourse to any other individual?
- Do we or do we not reject the proposition that the President's prisoners can be held incommunicado and subjected to torture? (Why quibble? I'm absolutely sick of the debate over whether this or that is torture. We've committed, through our wayward employee George W. Bush, disgusting and inhuman acts. We are torturers.)
- Do we or do we not reject the proposition that a President can remain in office after grossly misrepresenting the case for a disastrous foreign occupation?
- Do we or do we not reject the proposition that the President should be permitted unending latitude to expand such conflict despite a record of invariable failure, poor planning, and, it must be added, callousness?
- Do we or do we not reject the proposition that the President has unilateral authority to launch us into yet another, doubtlessly ill-conceived, armed conflict?
- Do we or do we not reject the proposition that the Executive Branch is permitted to listen to our phone calls, read our emails, and otherwise spy on Americans without showing the necessity of such surveillance to a court?
- Do we or do we not reject the proposition that our President can refuse to follow our laws?
- Will we or will we not insist that our nation be grounded in common decency rather than fear and xenophobia?
And so it's come to this. The great uniter, not a divider, has run us into the ground in every conceivable way. He has cynically exploited our political differences. He has violated the Constitution and broken the law. Indeed, his lawlessness is matched only by his incompetence. What will we do? If not today, then perhaps, forgive my unwarranted optimism, the next crisis of mismanagement or immorality will jolt the nation and our Congress into adopting something resembling my proposed Contract with America. It is still my hope that we can recapture the greatness that all but evaporated after September 11, 2001. We picked the wrong President, twice. This is our mess to clean up.
