Just Say No

It's pretty evident that the Bush Administration has adopted a policy of smiling on the outside while snarling on the inside. How else are we going to interpret the Justice Department's post-election (just yesterday) assertion that any illegal immigrant can be detained indefinitely without recourse to counsel?

Nevertheless, when I was talking to one of my more militant friends over the week-end (and my, the Congressional make-over did do her a world of good), she was insistent upon the idea that the Democratic majority in both houses should not do unto the Republicans as the Republicans have been doing unto them for the last six years (sequestering them in their offices and refusing to divulge even the location of the restrooms, not to mention the nature of the legislativebusiness). Personally, I take a more vengeful attitude but the Big Me managed to keep me quiet during these conversations, though I couldn't stop making faces of agony at the very thought of the Reps being out of jail for one more day.

There are things that the Dems MUST DO, though, and these things signal whether our votes were well spent a week ago. The first of these, obviously, is ousting John Bolton. He is not only in and of himself a disasterous ambassador to the UN, he is the walking symbol of failed policies and failed and dangerous attitudes. He is almost a caricature of Bushism and as such, must go far far away from any power position. Number two is to undo the damage that the Repubs (with collaboration from some Dems) have done to the Constitution, especially every provision having to do with habeas corpus, detention, and the gift the administration has persistently tried to give itself of immunity from prosecution for its misdeeds of lawbreaking and fraud. Note to everyone who is now saying, after the election, that "Democracy works!": it doesn't work until the wounds to the Constitution are healed. It's as simple as that. Democracy doesn't exist while these new laws stand, and the Democrats are not doing the job we hired them to do until they have rescinded them. One effect of the elections was to lift the palpable sense of fear that the Republicans have promoted for six years. If we aren't afraid, then we don't have to gut the Constitution out of panic. If we have voted for Democrats, we aren't afraid. Therefore, Dems, do your job.

Number three, give the boot to all ideas of the unitary executive. This means Alberto Gonzalez, John Yoo, and Dick Cheney must be foiled at every turn. This means a strong and aggressive counter-theory of how our government works put forward by the branch that belongs to us. And this means acting on that theory. If, like my friend, you don't want to put them in jail today, well, don't, but also don't fall for their ideas and do go ahead and investigate them--start with Halliburton and go from there. Haliburton isn't legally an arm of the adminstration yet, so they can give a lot of incriminating evidence without triggering a constitutional crisis.

These three first steps are the Congress's actual business, and should be its first priority. Housecleaning has to begin close to home, and if it does not, the Congress will be permanently hampered in its response to the administration. Ending the adventure in Iraq is important, but bringing the troops home is just PR if the extremely shaky grounds upon which the whole thing was launched that go to the heart of the Bush administration's attempted seizure of the government are not understood and corrected. Fix the coup at home, then prevent an attempted coup in Iran, then fix the coup in Iraq.

My friend is a wise person, and she knows what Republicans since 1992 have demonstrated that they do not know--gloating, insults, exclusion, humiliation, and assertions of raw power destroy oneself faster and more completely than they destroy rivals. The key to the future is not aggression but integrity. We all know more or less the injuries that the Republicans have done to our nation and ourselves as citizens. We need to have a fully articulated understanding of these injuries, and we need to act on it, first to undo the injuries, second, to prevent further ones, and third, to redress, where possible, the damage those injuries have caused. Good sense can prevail, as it did in the election. But democracy isn't saved yet, and there is plenty of work to do before it will be.