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ONE OF BARACK Obama’s first decisions after being elected president continued to haunt the country over the weekend, as Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in as the fifth hard-line conservative on the Supreme Court.

In January 2009, George W. Bush left office with an abysmal 22 percent approval rating, the lowest ever recorded. Almost everyone with anything to do with his administration was considered politically toxic.

With full Democratic control of the federal government, calls came for an investigation into the scandals of the Bush administration, including torture, mass surveillance, and war profiteering. While some called for criminal prosecutions, others wanted hearings or an independent investigation that would — at minimum — put into the public record the details of who did what and when. At the least, the argument went, Democrats could ensure that the GOP had to wear the Bush administration for years; that the officials involved in wrongdoing would be written out of polite society; and that future administrations would not revert to those practices.

Obama refused. “We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards,” he said famously on January 11, 2009, days before he took office.

I tended to dismiss those arguments when they were prevalent on leftist sites like the now defunct Firedoglate as I felt that as Democrats we needed Obama to win in 2012 rather than belaboring decisions already made which, in any case, couldn’t now be changed. But now, post the Kavanaugh debacle I think I’m beginning to see the light.

The trouble is, the Bushies-outside perhaps W himself-have largely been rehabilitated-which is particularly ironic considering how Trump attacked the Bushies during the 2016 GOP primary-going after Jeb and his dynastic family. But despite Trump’s alleged opposition to the Iraq war-he loves to throw the WMD fiasco at the intel agencies when Russia is mentioned, Trump’s Russia House is full of Bushies.

Indeed, what’s amazing is considering how low repute both the W Administration and the entire Republican party was by the end of 2008 how they were able to rehabilitate so quickly. It’s certainly plausible that if Obama and the Dems had demanded public hearings on the Bushies they and the larger Republican party wouldn’t be enjoying their current renaissance.

More specifically, all of Kavanaugh’s documents-he only released about 7%-that the GOO withheld would have been public information if there had been hearings in 2009.

Let’s not kid a kidder: had the shoe been on the other foot-had a Democratic Administration been accused of such crimes and corruption with such low public standing-there’s no way the GOP would not have exploited it to the hilt-‘time for healing’ be damned.

We’ve seen Trump, Kellyann Conway, and friends serving a poop sandwich to the majority of Americans who neither supported Kavanaugh, nor Trump nor the GOP Senate-all of which received the minority of the vote-Kav has only 41% public support.

Can you imagine if a Democratic Administration ever had the level of documented crimes of the Bush WH?  Yet Obama and the Dems took their foot off the GOP’s neck when they had them dead to rights.

FN: I wrote this initially in early October, 2018; seeing how gingerly the Dem leadership has pursued investigations and oversight of Trump-who is a clear and present danger-it’s not at all surprising that they let the W Adminstration which was already gone off the hook. Kamala Harris did offer us some hope a few months ago when she declared that the DOJ would have no choice but to prosecute after the Presidency but of course the MSM was all over her for ‘being no better than Trump’-even though his crimes are real as opposed to the fake ‘crimes’ he claims Clinton should be jailed for-but, of course, she backed down.

Her point wasn’t that she would be involved in the decision just that presumably she wouldn’t do a Gerald Ford and pardon Trump-or an Obama 2009-or Bill Clinton 1993: who did the same thing with Iran-Contra and other related Irangate investigations. Clinton and the Dems ended it an outburst of magnanimity-don’t stop thinking about tomorrow-enabling the GOP to turn the page from Iran-Contra to Whitewater-which was a fake scandal about events which were ironically about events that happened longer ago than Iran-Contra-or even possible  Reagan-Iran collusion.

So her promise was welcome but unlike Trump who has never taken back Lock Her Up, Harris immediately backpedaled.

End of FN.

Which brings us to: Hillary Clinton. Mitch McConnell-of all people-has the nerve to criticize her CNN interview from the other night. 

In the wake of divisive confirmation battle for now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday after she told CNN that Democrats should be unwilling to be “civil” with Republicans because the GOP wants to “destroy” what Democrats believe in.

“She told CNN exactly how she views millions of Americans who hold different political views than her own,” McConnell said with an incredulous tone during a Senate floor speech. “No peace until they get their way? More of these unhinged tactics? Apparently, these are the left’s rallying cry.”

McConnell was responding to an interview Clinton did with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, when the former Democratic presidential nominee said her party needs to draw a harder line with Republicans.

“You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about,” Clinton said. “That’s why I believe if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again. But until then, the only thing that the Republicans seem to recognize and respect is strength.”

As the itemized rap sheet on McConnell above documents, he’s the last person who has any right to moral indignation-somehow the media fails to call him on this. He was allowed to act self righteous over the way the Democrats litigated their resistance to the Kavanaugh nomination despite Merrick Garland. Now he’s acting outraged because Clinton spoke the frank truth-they do respect only strength. Again, this is someone who put party over the country during the financial crisis, who said the debt ceiling is a hostage worth taking as it improved the GOP’s partisan advantage, who refused to even give Merrick Garland a hearing. Then came Russian interference when we learned that even the integrity of our elections themselves, even our rule of law and our standing in the world aren’t enough for Moscow Mitch to take off his partisan GOP blinders.

To say that the GOP respects something other than strength would mean they don’t abuse their partisan power at every opportunity. There are no meaningful examples of that in 25 years. Turns out the pre Newt Gingrich electorate had the right idea in never letting them near the levers of Congressional power.

The basic truism of the modern GOP is any modicum of power they get will always be abused. This is what happens to a party that’s on the Wrong Side of History and has Nietzsche’s guilty conscience.

This reminds you of the debate between Hillary and Obama in 2008. Obama’s message was simply ‘Yes We Can’ and ‘These is no Blue America or Red America there is only the United States of America.’

He suggested that somehow the Clintons themselves were responsible for the GOP ‘s opposition to them. He believed he could get along with the Republicans. Hillary had the much less crowd pleasing speech: ‘I’d love to say we’ll just do the right thing and everyone will just get together  with celestial choirs singing but I know how tough this will be.’

History has, alas, proven Hillary right. At the same time Obama was letting the entire Bush WH and GOP off the hook they were eating dinner and resolving to oppose everything he did-doesn’t matter if it was stuff they’d previously agreed with or that was good for the country just coming out of the financial crisis.’

This therefore was a big mistake by Obama. The Democrats of 2019-2020-I presume they will win back the House better not make the same mistake. The Dem base-speaking of a charter member-expects lots of hearings, revelations and accountability.  The one thing the party can’t afford is a repeat of 2009.

Nancy Pelosi-who I love and can’t wait for her to be the House Speaker again-did say one thing recently that is mistaken. She argued that people care more about their own healthcare, wages, and fighting unfair corporate power than who’s on the Supreme Court. That completely misses the fact that who’s on the Court has a huge impact on healthcare, wages, and corporate power-Citizen’s United, anyone?

UPDATE: As it turns out my misgivings about a few things she said before the election turned out to be right alas. Pelosi is very good at whip counting,  passing legislation she believes in-she’s’ been a great Speaker, she whipped through Obamacare in 2010 and prevented her caucus from voting for the Iraq War in 2003.

Trouble is that her ability to whip her caucus is a double edged sword-when she’s right it’s a wonderful thing; but she’s wrong about impeachment.  Indeed, it seems she has these blinders over impeachment-imagining the Founders made a mistake in giving Congress this power-after all, if Trump isn’t impeachable who is? Clearly nobody will ever be impeachable-other than maybe a Democrat.

Indeed, tough aggressive oversight more generally doesn’t seem to be her thing-her slogan has been ‘don’t impeach, just investigate’ but the investigations-at least based on what we publicly know of them have been moribund. Her whole narrative has been that if you want to impeach Trump you have to bring the country along but there has still only been two public hearings-Michael Cohen in March and Mueller in July.

Meanwhile, Richard Neal hasn’t even taken the demand for Trump’s tax returns to court yet. Is he waiting for after the election?

So it’s not at all clear that this is not a repeat of 2009-or 1993.

As for Hillary-what else is new? History has proven her totally right  again^[1] but as usual no one is listening-which just gives her more in common with the typical American woman.