Political harmony v. the rule of law: an easy choice for the political establishment

Former Congressman Harold Ford appeared at the Netroots Nation conference yesterday, argued that Bush officials shouldn't be held accountable for crimes they committed while in office, and then insisted that Democrats shouldn't be expected to defend civil liberties and Constitutional rights because -- as one observer summarized Ford's point -- "the Constitution doesn't poll very well."

 

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As I documented last week, the idea that the Rule of Law is only for common people, but not for our political leaders and Washington elite, is pervasive among the political and pundit class, in both parties. While common Americans should be imprisoned in record numbers when they break the law, the worst that should happen to the political elite when they commit crimes is that they should be voted out of office. That's the dominant mentality governing how our political system works.

For all the talk about how radical and lawless the Bush administration has been, this widely-shared view that our political leaders should be immune from consequences for lawbreaking is the administration's defining belief. After the 2004 election, President Bush held a news conference and was asked about the failures in Iraq, and this is what he said:

QUESTION: Why hasn't anyone been held accountable, either through firings or demotions, for what some people see as mistakes or misjudgments?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, we had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 election.

On December 16, 2005 -- the day after the NYT revealed that Bush was breaking the law in spying on Americans without warrants -- Digby noted that exchange and wrote:

He, like Nixon, believes that the president has only one "accountability moment" while he is president. His re-election. Beyond that, he has been given a blank check. And that includes breaking the law since if the president does it, it's not illegal, the president being the executive branch which is not subject to any other branch of government.

But it isn't only the Bush administration that believes that. That was why Gerald Ford was widely praised for pardoning Nixon (Ford said "he acted to restore harmony and move on"). That's the same argument used by Bush 41 to pardon Iran-contra lawbreakers, and it's what the Washington Establishment said when -- liberal and conservative pundits alike -- they defended those pardons of Casper Weinberger and the other Iran-contra lawbreakers:

Another favored Republican was Reagan's Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who like Shultz earned his insider spurs during the Nixon administration. Weinberger's false Iran-contra testimony was even more blatant than Shultz's, causing Walsh to indict Weinberger for perjury in 1992.

The Washington elites rallied to Weinberger's defense. In the salons of Georgetown, there was palpable relief in December 1992 when President Bush pardoned Weinberger and five other Iran-contra defendants, effectively ending the Iran-contra investigation.

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen spoke for many insiders. In a column, Cohen described how impressed he was that Weinberger would push his own shopping cart at the Georgetown Safeway, often called the "social Safeway" because so many members of Washington's Establishment shopped there.

"Based on my Safeway encounters, I came to think of Weinberger as a basic sort of guy, candid and no nonsense -- which is the way much of official Washington saw him," Cohen wrote in praise of the pardon. "Cap, my Safeway buddy, walks, and that's all right with me." [WP, Dec. 30, 1992.]

As Atrios pointed out and documented, "This was the basic view of much of the establishment 'liberal' commentariat."

And this is exactly what we are now hearing from the likes of Harold Ford, Chuck Schumer, Cass Sunstein, David Broder, Tim Rutten, and on and on and on -- criminal prosecutions for government lawbreakers are far too disruptive and politically untenable and unfair.

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