The nation's current litany of domestic scandals coupled with foreign crises too numerous to count strain credulity beyond the breaking point. In short, you just can't make this stuff up - nor would you ever want to do so. With no partisan rancor or feelings other than deep regret, this observation of a Presidency reeling out of control is proffered only to keep hope alive.
Only once before in my sixty-five years of toil, turmoil and triumph have I felt real fear of a coup de tat in America in which the Rule of Law was to be crushed by tyranny - "The Saturday Night Massacre", in which the then President Nixon sent in armed FBI agents to shut down, without any due process or basis in law, the Office of the Special Watergate Prosecutor. That President's egregious lawlessness when fully exposed (but for eighteen and one-half minutes of a tape recording) ultimately lead to his impending impeachment by the House of Representatives and certain conviction in the Senate, thereby forcing his resignation in richly deserved disgrace.
Of course, this salutary outcome - saving our Constitutional Republic - was not ordained from on high, it took more than 26 months to unfold in the Congress and in the Courts in which many leaders in both political parties took great personal career risks to become Statesman worthy of this high honorarium. Peter Rodino and Barbara Jordan are but two individuals whose courage and stead fast loyalty to the Rule of Law will forever be remembered by all of us who shuddered in fear when Nixon turned the FBI and the IRS into weapons of political retribution against everyday Americans.
In 1972 through early 1973, Nixon was riding high, having been re-elected overwhelmingly, with his support among Republicans nearly at unprecedented levels. Then, with the Watergate cover-up beginning to unravel, due to the courageous break-in trial rulings by federal district Judge Sirica, the US Senate empaneled a Select Watergate Investigative Committee co-chaired by Tennessee Republican Howard Baker. This ambitious Republican senator was on the fast track for pre-eminent leadership of his Party, yet he immediately and openly put country and the Rule of Law before shielding the Nixon White House from disclosure of the truth of its attempted destruction of the Constitution.
Today, we see ominous chords of Nixonian abuses of executive power, most shockingly, the weaponization of the IRS to punish the dissent of everyday Americans opposed to the current administration's policies. Nonetheless, the public arena is without a solitary democrat leader willing to forgo partisan attacks on republicans investigating these abuses by claiming that these critics are dishonest "conspiracy bedeviled fools". Clearly, defending President Obama is appropriate and proper for democrats in Congress, but it is not just or ethical to do so by demonizing the republicans as being a possibly racist mob in the face of real evidence of egregious executive abuses of power.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of prominent democrats holding high elective office in the federal Congress and in the fifty states across this great country. Would it not be inspiring to hear just one single voice in this cadre of political expediency cry out in defiance of party loyalty: "What did the President know and when did he know it?".
Regrettably, these sounds of silence speak their own clear answer: "Nothing much until he read about it in the newspapers." Shame on them.
