We need more Democrats to make this point, to stay on this message, and to then live up to its ideals:
Not since the days of Watergate, when our judicial system and intelligence community were deployed by the White House in the service of partisan politics, have we seen such abuses. And in many ways, what we have seen from this administration is far more extensive than that scandal.
Partisan politics has infiltrated every level of our federal government – from scientific reports on global warming to emergency management services to the prosecutorial power of the federal government itself. Even the Iraq War – from our entry to the reconstruction – has been thoroughly politicized and manipulated.
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During the 2000 presidential campaign, Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s political architect, often drew an analogy between that election and the election of 1896, in which adviser Mark Hanna joined forces with many of the plutocrats of that Gilded Age and ushered in a 35-year era of Republican dominance – dominance that didn’t end until the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Without a trace of reserve, George Bush and Karl Rove set out to recreate that earlier era of one-party rule. And they pursued their goal by inverting the very purpose of government.
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Principals and supporters of the Bush Administration have taken to attributing its myriad failures to mere incompetence. This is an ironic defense for an Administration that once touted President Bush as the first MBA President and boasted about a cabinet filled with CEOs.
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Once the Iraq War was launched, we all knew how important the reconstruction would be to securing the peace. But politics extended to that country’s reconstruction and the examples are truly shocking:
The person chosen to oversee Iraq’s health care system was the community health director for the former Republican governor of Michigan. The man he replaced was a physician with a master’s degree in public health and post-graduate degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and UC-Berkeley and taught at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health where he specialized in disaster response.
A 24 year-old with a background in commercial real estate was hired by the Authority to reopen and manage the Iraqi stock exchange.
The daughter of a prominent neoconservative was tapped to manage Iraq’s $13 billion annual budget.
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The Administration would like the press and public to believe all of this corruption and cronyism consists of isolated instances and one-offs. But I ask you:
Michael Brown. Scooter Libby. Bernard Kerik. Halliburton. Philip Cooney. David Safavian. Lurita Doan. Matteo Fontana. Sue Ellen Wooldridge. Steven Griles. Alberto Gonzales. FEMA. Iraq intelligence. Iraq reconstruction.
This Hall of Shame is no accident and these are not isolated incidences. It’s a pattern of political appointees who put partisan interests ahead of country – and were told to do so.
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The saddest legacy of the Bush Administration’s six-year trail of cronyism and corruption is that it contributes to the public’s already cynical view of government. This makes it even more difficult for those of us who believe that the purpose of government is to secure a better future for our country and all of its people. Repairing this sorry legacy is the first challenge our next President will face.
It is the saddest legacy, and we’ve even seen it on FatMixx. “It’s politics” is the lazy way out, and it’s the easy way out. It’s not “politics.” As Rep. Emanuel says in his speech, political appointees aren’t inherently corrupt. There isn’t a requirement that they put party over country. The requirement is actually quite the opposite.
Read the rest of the speech. It is the right point to make to the American people and to the world. We must reclaim our dignity as a country and show that we can rise above partisanship when it comes to the key issues of the day.
