Fitzmas will be a beginning, not an end. WILL AMERICA CARE?

[the_spectator]

I'm quite confident that Fitzgerald will issue a number of indictments next week. But this will not mean "curtains" for the Bush administration. Instead, the indictments of Fitzmas will raise the curtain on what is becoming one of the great American dramas: the second term scandal. Every two-term president since Nixon has faced one of these, where he or members of his administation face trouble with the law.

I have no doubt that another one of those great dramas is about to unfold. No one knows, at this point, how it will play out, after the sound and fury have strutted and fretted their hour upon the stage. And no one knows the answer to the greatest question of all, which wil be decided not by the players, but by the audience: WILL AMERICA CARE?

Will America Care enough about this for this President to be impeached, or for his party to be punished at the polls? No one knows yet.

America did care about Watergate. Nixon was forced into resignation, the Republican party was decimated in the '74 midterm elections, and of course Carter won the Presidency in '76. I was not politically sentient at the time, being only 6 in '74, but from what I understand now, it was not the "third-rate burglary" or even the cover-up that made America care: it was the tapes that revealed Nixon to be a vulgar, mean-spirited crook with a heavy dose of paranoia.

But America didn't care about Iran-Contra. Reagan maintained at least some plausible deniability throughout. Ollie North's testimony before Congress may have been the turning point of that one. ("He was just POURED into that uniform" as Homer Simpson once said!) The drama there began after the mid-term elections, but of course America didn't care - Reagan maintained his popularity and then G.H.W.Bush won the Presidency in '88, in effect, as Reagan's third term.

America also didn't care about Hummergate. That drama played out over the year 1998, coming to an end in the Senate impeachment vote in February of 1999. In the mid-term elections of 1998, really near the height of the drama, the Democrats picked up a measly 5 seats in the House, and the Senate results were unchanged. And of course, Gore did receive more votes than Bush in the 2000 election, and many said that Gore could have won outright if he hadn't been so scared to run on the Clinton record.

Will America care about this one? America will be drawn into the drama, no doubt. There will be great, magic moments in this drama that everyone will talk about around the water-cooler. But will we really care?

I am not going to make a prediction. But let me throw up a couple things that seem to go one way or the other:

America is likely to Care because:
Bush is far less popular than Nixon, Reagan or Clinton were.
Bush may lose his Vice-President in this scandal, mirroring Nixon's story rather than Reagan's or Clinton's.

America is not likely to Care because:
It (probably) will only be about the cover-up: perjury and obstruction.
Like Reagan, Bush has a strong chance of maintaining plausible deniability for himself.

But I think it is almost useless to speculate at this point. The Sam Ervins, the John Deans, the Butterworths, the Ollie Norths and the Fawn Halls, the Linda Tripps, the blue dresses, all the great players and props of these great American dramas have yet to make their appearance in this one.

:popcorn:!

[GreenArrow]

1. America is asleep

this may make for a fitful moment, but the sleep is deep. America will slumber on.

[melody]

2. Oh, please

Of course they'll care. They've always cared. Not to sound like a bad Gordon Sinclair impression, but who elected Bill Clinton twice? The Americans. Who never elected George Bush? The Americans. Simply because we have a huge country and an economic existence that makes it nearly impossible for us to show up every weekend at "speaker's corners" to tell everyone what we think, don't think Americans are unconscious or asleep or apathetic. Patrick Fitzgerald is an American, you know.

[tridim]

4. Thank You!

I'm usually an pessimist, but this thing is different. The fallout will be massive and beginning next week it will be impossible to ignore. I really think this will change America in ways we can't even imagine.

[the_spectator]

3. So we have one solid vote for "won't care" at post 1,

and one solid vote for "care" at post 2. I myself still solidly come down on the side of "too soon to tell."

(I really need to buy my star soon; for one thing, I could have pollified this question!)

[Demobrat]

5. They will care.

Nobody's kids died for Iran-Contra. (Well, no American's kids, anyway).

Nobody's kids died for Hummergate.

People's kids are dying in Iraq. Some of those people voted for Bush.

That's the difference.

[SpiralHawk]

6. A prudent asessment

prudent

A Great Player and Prop who I feel will reappear: Jeff Male White House Prostitute Gannon.

If and when his story gets told, it will blow a major hole in the S.S. BushCo (below the water line) and the Republican Culture of Corruption and Hypocricy.

[the_spectator]

7. Thanks!

And yes, if Jeff Gannon has a role in the upcoming-drama, that could definitely tip the whole thing over. Americans are OK today with age-inappropriate hummers, lesbian action, etc, but I think they still draw the line at man-sex.

[janx]

8. Care? Good Lord. This administration lied to the American

people in order to take the country to war. When that is revealed as a result of this GJ, look out.

The American people will be pissed. And they will be very hurt and extremely embarrassed, too--it isn't going to be pleasant.

[sickinohio]

9. I really, truly and seriously

hope that you are right - no I PRAY that you are right!!

[the_spectator]

10. You have a good "care" argument there,

and as poster #5 points out, this is unprecedented in the Scandal Cycle so far. Even Watergate, the only "care" scandal so far, was not really war-related. Even though the original break-in did have Vietnam War roots, by '73, when the scandal hit, the draw-down in Vietnam was already in full stream. That debate was already over.

However, relatively few Americans are actually being affected by this war either in terms of finances or personal connection to it. Now it is true that polls overwhelmingly show, at THIS point, that Americans would prefer to see withdrawal. Yet for people to get riled up by Plamegate, they have to want to condemn Bush for the original decision to go to war in Iraq. Most Americans DID support the war back then, and are happy Saddam was taken out. They'd now like to "move on" but I have a feeling many of them won't want to punish Bush too strongly for a decision they supported whole-heartedly.

Most importantly, the populace WILL be surprised by the indictments of Fitzmas. The average person knows NOTHING about this story - it hasn't been a blip on the radar for most people. So they WILL sit up and take notice when indictments "unexpectedly" drop out of the sky. But THEN they will need to LEARN about this story. And I have to admit, it is a little complicated. Yellow cake in Niger? Who sent Joe Wilson to Niger? An Op-Ed in the New York Times? The administration talks to reporters, saying "his wife sent him, not us - she's CIA"?

A lot of Americans will go "mmmm... ...yellocake" a la Homer and lose the thread of the story right there. The President's defenders will say, "they only lied about leaks" as Clinton's said "he only lied about sex." So I contend we still don't know how it will all play out.

[the_spectator]

11. Forgive a self-kick, but

I think this question still needs to be faced by more people, especially now, literally on "Fitzmas Eve." (If not today, tomorrow perhaps, certainly this week.) People need to think about this question so we don't crash after the initial day of victory.

Look at the threads today informing us that Rush et al are already ginning up the right-wing spin machine to counter the indictments! This is going to be a fight.

And thanks to the DUer whose contribution to the Fitzmas carol compilation began, "Don't Rest, Ye Merry Democrats." If the Democrats on Capitol Hill fight as fiercely and un-ashamedly as the Republicans did during Hummergate, they might actually overturn this Administration. Even if they don't succeed in this, they should go forward boldly - after all, America DID NOT PUNISH the Republicans for the whole Hummergate Impeachment farce! Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!