Carl

Here is What Carl Bernstein had to say today in an online chat about the passing of Watergate figure Howard Hunt.

He mused again about Nixon, Sirica, Sam Ervin and President Ford. A great remembrance, synopsis; cogent.

Carl Bernstein: Talking about Watergate--in its larger context, with the benefit of hindsight, especially--can be interesting, and constructive. Re-hashing old facts, long ago confirmed (or assertions proved unfounded) is tiresome, and I try to avoid it. This seems to me a particularly important time to be talking about Watergate and its legacy--and I'[ve written about it extensively in two long articles relating to the Bush Administration and its war in Iraq. Both articles were in Vanity Fair and on its Web site--I'm a contributing editor of the magazine. Watergate was about a constitional conspiracy by the president of the United States and the men around him. Afterwards, it was often said that "The American System worked." It did. The press did its job as an independent entity trying to obtain the best obtainableversion of the truth--what good journalis really is. A courageous judge--John Sirica--refused to bow to conventional wisdom of the day: that no-one with ties to the Nixon presidency would be involved in something like the break-in at Dmocratic National headquarters. A great Senator--Sam Ervin of North Carolina, and a bip=-partisan group of senators, led by Republican Howard Baker of Tennessee, conducted one of the most thorough, un-biased and definitive investigations in the history of the Republic. From the beginning, Baker asked the right question: 'What did the president know, and when did he know it." a truly independent series of special prosecutors pursued the facts, and a courageous attorney general refused to carry out Nixon's illegal orders, or be part of the coverup, and forded the president to fire him--and his assistant attorney gnereral, rather than perpoetuate the coverup. A bi-partisan impeachment investigation by the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee definitively established grounds for impeachment: the key votes were cast by Republicans. When it was clear that Nixon would be convicted of high crimes and misdemanors in the Senate, leaders of his party--with Barry Goldwater, the great conservative at the front--demanded of the President that he resign. Nixon did. That long answer is intended to show that, yes, the American system worked--including Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon, that allowedthe country to move on. In the case George W. Bush, the American system has obviously failed--tragically--about which we can talk more in a minute. But imagine the difference in our worldview today, had the institutions--particularly of government--done their job to insure that a mendacious and dangerous president (as has since been proven many times over-beyond mere assertion) be restrained in a war that has killed thousands of American soldiers, brought turmoil to the lives of millions, and constrained the goodwill towards the United States in much of the world.
_______________________

For the full chat you may try

a click on this link
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/01/23/DI2007012301482.html

Proverbs 8:8 has been doing some serious Musing on Bush in Iraq. Hope he will make available his thoughts on or to this blog soon.