Sitting Contented, Cesspool-side

Our political waters just don’t get any better than this:

Tom DeLay is drowning; Hillary Clinton is sailing; Bill Frist is bobbing; George W. Bush is, naturally, adrift; and if all that isn’t enough to lift the hearts of political junkies everywhere, now a relative of Richard Milhouse Nixon is rumored soon to be diving in.

Oh blessed gods of the sublime and ridiculous. You always see to our nourishment.

For instance when Nixon resigned, political addicts suffered a deep and global depression. What were we to do without sleazy Dick of a Republican to kick around any more? But then you gave us Gerald Ford and his pardon and his Whip-Inflation-Now buttons and Chevy Chase. The skies were blue again.

A steady high is unsustainable as well as unhealthy, so you toned things down for us with a competent albeit uninspiring president for a term, Jimmy Carter. Killer rabbits, sure, but they couldn’t compare to one man’s determination to overthrow the constitution. Still, we understood the necessity of some quiet time.

Having done that time, you then gave us Ronald Reagan and the institutionalization of official shallowness, more constitutional subversion and a bit of arms dickering with international terrorists to boost our spirits. Then down again -- four uninterrupted horrible years of almost catatonic boredom in the personage of George H.W. Bush, the man, The Legend.

Our patience was rewarded, however, with Bill Clinton and farcical Whitewater and a national dialogue on oral sex and the Greek comedy of “collateral” impeachment. It was all great, though we suspected it would never be that good again. We of little faith were wrong. Boy, were we wrong.

For on the heels of those farces you blessed us with a three-branch circus of executive Goebbelses, congressional nitwits and supreme judicial hypocrites.

The 18th-century American politico James Otis once ridiculed his contemporaries as having "the flutter of a coxcomb, the pedantry of a quack, and the nonsense of a pettifogger." Our modern boys, I’m delighted to say, make them look like Pat Boone on Lawrence Welk’s valium.

We have DeLay, for instance, frantically mailing venomous letters to supporters about “Democrats [making it] clear that their only agenda is the politics of personal destruction,” that “they hate Ronald Reagan conservatives,” that the Dems are trying to “demonize” him, and that “their fundamental strategy revolves around attacking [the majority leader] and working to tear down Republican leadership.”

He got that right. We smell blood, but only because DeLay, all on his own, opened up every political vein in his wretched carcass. We won’t always have vampiric scandals like Tom’s to sustain us and we’ll be damned if we’re going to let this one get away from us.

Then there’s the other majority leader, supposedly the adult chamber’s majority leader, Bill Frist, doing Lord knows what. His strategy of securing a broad coalition by pandering to this weekend’s Woodstock of autocratic religious whackos and no doubt the Robertson-Falwell Youth Korps has everyone baffled – except Bill.

Dr. Frist’s curious admixture of abject pandering and extraordinary stupidity doesn’t come along every day. Yes, these are indeed the good times.

And of course there’s George W. Bush, whose popularity is falling as fast as his friend Putin’s.  For reasons that’ll puzzle historians and clinical psychiatrists for decades, George chose to ignore Karl Rove’s edict #7 on the non-importation of the unfamiliar (see yesterday’s piece, below, “Karl Rove’s 12-Step Program to Dry-Drunk Power”). He went out instead and stumped to end Social Security as we know it – that veritable third rail of politics – and now he seems to be toast.  I stress that he only seems toasted, for I’m sure Karl has something up his pernicious sleeve – and that something just might go boom.

Finally there’s the news of that Nixon family member -- presidential son-in-law, lawyer and major-league newcomer Edward F. Cox -- weighing a U.S. Senate race against Hillary Clinton in 2006. Forget that Edward doesn’t have a prayer against Hillary, who is probably the craftiest office-holding politician alive. Remember instead that the ultimate joy of this race will be, quite simply, that we’ll all have another sorta-Nixon to kick around again …

…and for the addicted, the spectator sport of politics doesn’t get much better than that.

Comments

[Ernie Spoon]

Usually I'm in one hundred percent agreement with you, Dr. Carpenter.But of Tom DeLay, to poorly paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of his impending political demise are exaggerated.

I do not for a minute think that any serious ethics charges will be leveled against DeLay, nor do I think he will be ousted from his Texas U.S.Congressional District.

Outside newspapers as The New York Times and The Washington Post and the Internet, DeLay's ethical problems bearly register on the "mainstream" media's radar. Nor
I do think Congressional Democrats have the stomach to push the issue, addicted as they are to Indian casino campaign donations.

[Howard]

But his ethics are being questioned by the Houston Chronicle and some smaller local south Texas papers. Even Texans can get fed up with assholes and vote him out of office in 2006 if he keeps on doing what he has always done.

[Black Dog]

It looks like today the House Ethics Committee will be taking uncle tom to task. Believe it or not, there still are a few sane republicans who do not pander to fools. I harbor no ill will toward them, but to the idiot theo-neo-con types, I do.

[Matt]

Paint me stupid, but how in the world can anyone contend that
" Nor (do)
I do (sic) think Congressional Democrats have the stomach to push the issue, addicted as they are to Indian casino campaign donations."?

Seems to me, suggestions rampant that Delay is tarred by association, and may even be implicated, in the scalping of NA constituents who just wanted to buy into the Easysleaze of Lobbyist / CongressCritter incest to the tune of 60 mil would be more than enough incentive for Dems to further gently and kindly assist this "man" in opening ~all~ of his veins, a spectacle he's been treating us to on an on-going, almost daily basis - paricularly if, as said, they (Dems) are "addicted" to "Indian casino campaign donations."

[Sleepless In Oaktown]

I'll believe DeLay's going down when I actually see it (just like "Klansman" Trent Lott)

On the other hand, you just may be right about Bill Frist. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

And if the Rethugs can't get anyone better than Tricky Dick's son-in-law to challenge Hillary for her Senate seat in 2006, she's virtually running unchallenged and can concentrate on running for Pres in 2008.