Frank Rich: The Coup at Home "more insidious than Musharraf's"

NYT: The Coup at Home
By FRANK RICH
Published: November 11, 2007

....there’s another moral to draw from the Musharraf story, and it has to do with domestic policy, not foreign. The Pakistan mess, as The New York Times editorial page aptly named it, is not just another blot on our image abroad and another instance of our mismanagement of the war on Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It also casts a harsh light on the mess we have at home in America, a stain that will not be so easily eradicated.

In the six years of compromising our principles since 9/11, our democracy has so steadily been defined down that it now can resemble the supposedly aspiring democracies we’ve propped up in places like Islamabad. Time has taken its toll. We’ve become inured to democracy-lite. That’s why a Mukasey can be elevated to power with bipartisan support and we barely shrug.

This is a signal difference from the Vietnam era, and not necessarily for the better. During that unpopular war, disaffected Americans took to the streets and sometimes broke laws in an angry assault on American governmental institutions. The Bush years have brought an even more effective assault on those institutions from within. While the public has not erupted in riots, the executive branch has subverted the rule of law in often secretive increments. The results amount to a quiet coup, ultimately more insidious than a blatant putsch like General Musharraf’s....

***

To believe that this corruption will simply evaporate when the Bush presidency is done is to underestimate the permanent erosion inflicted over the past six years. What was once shocking and unacceptable in America has now been internalized as the new normal.

This is most apparent in the Republican presidential race, where most of the candidates seem to be running for dictator and make no apologies for it....

What makes the Democrats’ Mukasey cave-in so depressing is that it shows how far even exemplary sticklers for the law like Senators Feinstein and Schumer have lowered democracy’s bar. When they argued that Mr. Mukasey should be confirmed because he’s not as horrifying as Mr. Gonzales or as the acting attorney general who might get the job otherwise, they sounded whipped. After all these years of Bush-Cheney torture, they’ll say things they know are false just to move on....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/opinion/11rich.html?hp

He is absolutely right that people have been conditioned to accept the 'democracy-lite' as the 'new normal.'

A must read article.... It's great that he points out the devastating ramifications of Mukasey's confirmation with Dem votes (like Schumer and Feinstein) but also terrifying to believe the next Pres no matter who, will continue this quiet coup....

:kick:

K&R

Lucrative contracts.

Her sixteen million dollar home in the Presidio needs upkeep. And servants are expensive.

Mr. Rich nails it yet again!

There was also an excellent Editorial in the NYT today as well that I would like to recommend:

Abdicate and Capitulate

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/opinion/11sun1.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=login

I found it on this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2255943

Recommended.

Bravo Frank Rich.

in spades.

‘More Machiavellian still, Mr. Bush has constantly told the world he’s championing democracy even as he strangles it’.

Indeed.

of true democrats.

VISIT OUR INCOMPARABLE ARCHIVES: It was astounding to see how hard Rich worked to denigrate Gore, even after the debut of An Inconvenient Truth. (Imus, of course, knew just what Rich meant as he listed his endless, absurd complaints.) But then, Rich told Times readers, all through Campaign 2000, that Bush and Gore were just alike. And he baldly lied about Gore in 2002, after Gore gave his speech warning against the war in Iraq. In short, nothing will stop this pandering fellow from his long, destructive jihad against all things Clinton-and-Gore. But then, we liberals tend to be easy; speaking completely Frankly here, it’s very easy to win our affections. *See THE DAILY HOWLER, 6/9/06, for all five parts of our report on Rich’s long, damaging war.

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh051407.shtml

*http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh060906.shtml