I’ve written before about a phenomenon that we’re on the verge of seeing writ large in American politcs. To a certain extent, with Tom DeLay, we’ve already seen the right defending an accused criminal because he’s one of their own. They’ve made accusations straight from the Clinton playbook on this. Well, I think we’re about to see that erupt if Cheney and his top aides are indicted. The shame of it is that I think most of the allegations against Ken Starr and his team were true. I don’t say this because I’m a partisan. In fact, I think it’s somewhat fair to say that Ken Starr and the vast right wing conspiracy turned me into a Democrat. I didn’t vote for Bill Clinton in either election.

I think the public eventually got that Starr and his ilk were partisans who were trying to overturn an election. I think they got that there was no substance to the charges and that the impeachment was a witch hunt. I thought that for a good couple of years, at least. My faith has been shaken many times over the last five years, though. I honestly believe that the Bush administration has committed serious crimes, crimes that wouldn’t have been committed by some of the top contenders for the GOP presidential nomination in 2000. When it seemed as if the american public didn’t care about these things either, I began to formulate my views on our post-political society. I think maybe I’ll see those views put to the test in the next couple of years. It’s vaguely possible that’ll happen with DeLay, but I don’t think he’s a big enough fish nor do I think the crimes for which he’s indicted are clear enough and obvious enough. Cheney would be a different story, though. If he’s indicted and the public doesn’t care, then I’m right. But if he’s indicted and the political pressure actually forces him to resign, no one will be more pleasantly surprised than I.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 18th, 2005 at 2:49 pm and is filed under Big "P" Politics, electoral politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.