a modest proposal

for a modest president of a modest nation, offered to firedoglake's jane hamsher by constitutional lawyer bruce fein:

jane:	... so, ah, george bush pardons everybody on the way out the door, there's a new president: what would you like to see happen in a new administration, in order to be able to look back, and i'm assuming that you're not one of the people who says "let bygones be bygones, let's all look forward" ... ?
bruce:	the first thing the president ought to do is announce that we don't have any war against international terrorism, that these are criminals, and we will treat them as criminals, we'll capture them as criminals, and try them, prosecute them, and punish them as criminals. second thing he should do is say "i don't have any power to detain americans as enemy combatants, ah, we either charge you with [a] crime or let you alone." third thing he'd say "i do not have any power to violate federal laws in gathering foreign intelligence. i can't commit torture, i can't violate fisa, i can't open your mail, except in accordance with what congress has prescribed." fourth thing he should say is "i'm not gonna invoke execute privilege and use secrecy to prevent you from knowing what i'm doing. absent weapons systems, my government will be transparent, and i'll make certain all my officials come and testify before congress. there may be need for executive sessions, if there's sensitive information, but i will not claim executive privilege and hide from congress anything." another thing that he should say is "i do not have authority to engage in extraordinary rendition. i can't go abroad and simply kidnap people, stick them in an interrogation chamber, torture them, dump them out without any political or legal recourses. and i won't do that. that is a formula for returning the world to a hobbesian state of nature, and authorizing other foreign governments to kidnap americans who might be sympathetic to some indigenous force, chechens in russia for instance, or tibetans in china. and the fifth thing he should say is "i'm shutting down the military commissions in guantanamo. all those people charged will be moved to civilian, ah, sector for trial consistent with due process, and all the guantanamo bay detainees will have a right to habeas corpus and i'm not detaining even non-citizens as enemy combatants. if i think i have evidence they've committed a crime, i prosecute them, otherwise, y'know, they can go back." and perhaps the most important thing — i don't have enough time to fully amplify on this idea — is to say "the united states of america chief, really cardinal mission, is to protect america and make it a more perfect union. we don't need and it doesn't make us safer to have a military footprint all over the globe. and i will work to eliminate all of our foreign troops abroad. defense will mean we'll have a defense against anyone who wants to attack us. if anyone attacks us, we'll incinerate them, but other than that, we, um, wish other people in the world happiness and freedom but we're not gonna sacrifice our men and women to protect the lives of people who have no loyalty, no taxes that pay to the united states, they're not u.s. citizens or who aren't involved in any way. we don't go abroad in search of dragons, as john quincy adams said in 1826, to project our power abroad. it's that, that craving for international stature and prestige that's caused disaster to the constitution of the united states," and i'd want to see a president of the united states say "that era is over." "now i'm a president of modesty. i don't want to leave my footprints in the sands of time based upon fighting wars and attempting to transform the world in our own image. we've got enough problems making ourselves a more perfect union, and i'm not gonna do something that i don't know how to do, and in any event, it's not up to me to risk men and women's lives for a people who owe no loyalty to the united states." that is what i'd like to see. now regards to the people who are outgoing? i'd want to say the president should announce that he certainly will open criminal investigations if there was wrongdoing in the prior administration, ah, and he's gonna make certain that and pledge that he would expect a succeeding administration after his to do the same, if his administration committed any wrongdoing. um, and so he's not gonna hold this administration up to any more immunity than he would grant a predecessor administration.
jane:	i hope we get that president.

post mortem

let us examine the corpse, shall we?

admiralnaismith @ mydd:

lieberman was the goliath candidate. when you're goliath, you win by being as gracious as possible, trying to keep the condescension out of your voice as you welcome the chance for an amicable primary contest and talk about how democracy is so wonderful and your little-known opponent has every right to run, and then you swamp him financially with positive, upbeat ads about your record, mentioning the "david" by name barely if ever. "goliath" wins popularity contests by being a gentle giant, not by being a brutal bully. lieberman didn't do that. he was fred sanford, clutching his chest and yelling "lamont! lamont!" every chance he got. he didn't even bother to hide his contempt for the democratic process as he screeched and raged at how this bloody peasant was daring to besmirch the divine right of incumbents. he publicly insulted not only the "david" but anyone who held "david"s views — which happened to be popular, majority views. and to cap it off, he unveiled his spoiler independent bid, stabbing his own party in the back before he had even had the primary. it was lieberman, and not lamont, who turned this race from nothing into a real contest, and then an upset.

thereisnospoon @ daily kos:

let's face some cold, hard facts, people. we didn't do this, because what we supposedly did was impossible to do — in any politcal climate. in one corner, you had a bunch of unpaid volunteers, internet rabble-rousers, and an inexperienced politician whose highest post had been county selectman. in the other, you had the three-time senator, former vice-presidential candidate, visible party statesman, bill clinton, hillary clinton, harry reid, barbara boxer, the other popular ct senator dodd, most of organized labor, the women's groups and the environmental groups, most of traditional democratic party support, paid lobbyist support, paid armies of gotv staff, the slick ad money, the top dlc consultants, and a 3 to 1 budget gap. i'm sorry. that's not david vs. goliath. this isn't even the nba champions versus a rec league team. that's more like an ant vs. my shoe. and the shoe lost. but then, the dlc is an old shoe — and the most politically incompetent shoe i've ever seen. the truth is that the dlc couldn't beat my dead great-grandmother. or yours. they couldn't beat their own shadow. so why did anyone think they could beat karl rove?

josh marshall @ time:

he's seemed almost militantly indifferent to the disaster iraq has become. and his passion about the war seemed reserved exclusively for those who questioned it rather than those who had so clearly botched the enterprise. his continual embrace of president bush — both literal and figurative — was an insult to democrats, the great majority of whom believe bush has governed as one of the most destructive presidents in modern american history. it's almost as though lieberman has gone out of his way to provoke and offend democrats on every point possible, often, seemingly, purely for the reason of provoking. is it any wonder the guy got whacked in a party primary? lieberman got in trouble because he let himself live in the bubble of d.c. conventional wisdom and a-list punditry. he flattered them; and they loved him back. and as part of that club he was part of the delusion and denial that has sustained our enterprise in iraq for the last three years. in the weeks leading up to tuesday's primary, a-list d.c. pundits were writing columns portraying lieberman's possible defeat as some sort of cataclysmic event that might foreshadow a dark new phase in american politics — as though voters choosing new representation were on a par with abolishing the constitution or condoning political violence. but those breathless plaints only showed how disconnected they are from what's happening in the country at large. they mirrored his disconnection from the politics of the moment.

juan cole:

first of all, the man was brain dead on the iraq issue. ... lieberman had bought into the rove master narrative. bush went to war electively, thus very conveniently making himself a war president and therefore above criticism. he got a second term that way despite having been among the worst presidents in history. lieberman ceded to bush a kind of invulnerability on the most important republican party snafu since its policies contributed to the onset of the great depression. why would a democrat do that? the answer is that on foreign policy issues, lieberman is a neoconservative, and supports the iraq project for the same reasons that douglas feith and paul wolfowitz (then number 3 and 2 respectively at the pentagon) did. ... lieberman may run as an independent, and we cannot know what will happen in that case. but for the reasons given above, it is important that he has been repudiated by democratic voters. the rest of the party now has a shot at taking the house, without risking having their colleague's pro-bush sanctimonies on iraq constantly thrown in their faces.

christy hardin smith @ firedoglake:

at some point, the folks who report on politics and the folks who run for office will wake up and understand that bloggers are merely americans who try to amplify the sentiment of thousands more just like them. and the overwhelming sentiment that i have been hearing for months and months is that people have had enough of the lies, the manipulation, the self-dealing, the egos, the idiocy, the selfishness, and the outright dereliction of duty and lack of accountability from so many in washington, d.c. in this rubber stamp republican congress … we’ve had enough.

i'm just askin'

christy hardin smith (aka "reddhedd") at firedoglake asks one of those little innocuous questions that get frequently lost in all the flash and thunder and smoke and mirrors:

if things in iraq are going so swimmingly, why is it that no us official ever makes an announced visit there? why did condi and rummy sneak into town like thieves in the night if it’s all flowers and candy and good news in the colonies? i mean, honestly, we are a sovereign nation supposedly sending members of our administration into the territory of another soverign nation, right? since when have we sneaked into britain or russia or even trinidad and tobago? why all the tiptoeing into iraq? perhaps because they would rather be alive — since things are not going all that swimmingly? i’m just saying.