Bush Worse Than Nixon, Says Bernstein

[Doug]

Carl Bernstein: Bush Administraton Has Done 'Far Greater Damage' Than Nixon
January 24, 2007

NEW YORK In an online chat at washingtonpost.com on Wednesday afternoon, Carl Bernstein, the famed Watergate reporter at that paper and now writing articles for Vanity Fair, took several hard shots at the current Bush administration -- almost every time he was asked about the Nixon era. It came just as news of the death of former Watergate ringleader E. Howard Hunt was circulating widely.

After a long explanation of how the American system "worked," eventually, with Watergate, Bernstein said:

"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 ensure 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."

Later, asked if the Nixon administration was unique in hiring disreputable characters, he replied: "Until the Bush-43 administration, I had believed that the Nixon presidency was sui generis in modern American history in terms of your question...

"In terms of small-bore (but dangerous) characters like Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy with their schemes, I doubt that any presidency approaches the criminality of the Nixon White House. But the Watergate conspiracy--to undermine the constitution and use illegal methods to hurt Nixon's political opponents and even undermine the electoral system--was supervised by those at the very top.

"In the current administration we have seen from the President down -- especially Vice President Cheney, Attorney General Gonzales, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld -- a willingness to ignore the great constitutional history of the United States -- to suspend, really, many of the constitutional guarantees that have made us a nation apart, with real freedoms unknown elsewhere, unrestricted by short-term political objectives of our leaders.

"Then there are the Geneva conventions: Who would have dreamed that, in our lifetime, our leaders would permit their flagrant abuse, would authorize torture, 'renditions' to foreign-torture chambers, suspension of habeus corpus, illegal surveillance of our own citizens....

"But perhaps worst, has been the lying and mendacity of the president and his men and women--in the reasons they cited for going to war, their conduct of the war, their attempts to smear their political opponents...

"The Bush Administration -- especially its top officials named above and others familiar to most Americans -- was not stopped, and has done far greater damage. As a (Republican) bumper-sticker of the day proclaimed, 'Nobody died at Watergate...'"

The rest ishere.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Absolutely. Nixon was stopped before he could complete his power grab. W hasn't been. Nixon was slammed on wiretaps, "burglary", and cover-up alone. The R-controlled congresses not only didn't slam W, they covered for him in passing laws to give him "unitary executive" power. W now has the laws in place to basically stop the next presidential election and stage a military coup - legally. We can only hope the courts overturn these very unconstitutional laws - the ACLU, among others have already started filing suits - because so far the attempts by the 110th congress to repeal them have been shot down in committee by a combination of Rs and blue dogs apparently too lazy to read the laws and see just what powers they've handed off.