Friday, January 16, 2009
Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. Paul Krugman's column today argues forcefully against Obama's recent signals that he would not seek an investigation into criminal actions by the Bush administration. Krugman makes a number of strong points, but in the end, I have to admit that I am completely exhausted with and viscerally sick of Bush, and I just want that smirking fratboy pinhead to get the fuck out of here and go back to real Merka.
I of course realize that such a reaction is exactly what every scandal-ridden administration hopes for, what every miscreant hopes for, that cataloguing and punishing their bad behavior will eventually seem like just too big a pain in the ass. The sad fact is that it is easier to smear shit on the walls than it is to clean it up. Sometimes, you just want to move out of the goddamn shit-smeared house and start over somewhere else. I just can't get my head around the idea of spending the next four years rummaging around in the fetid trash heap of the Bush administration's executive record.
That's my reason, and it's a bad one. Equally bad is the oft-cited argument that such a measure would worsen partisan divisions. I don't buy this because I don't really give a shit what pisses off Republicans at this point. Fuck 'em.
But that's just an emotional reaction. Krugman's takedown of the same argument is much sharper, and kind of unassailable:
One answer you hear [in defense of letting it go] is that pursuing the truth would be divisive, that it would exacerbate partisanship. But if partisanship is so terrible, shouldn’t there be some penalty for the Bush administration’s politicization of every aspect of government?
He's right, of course, but still...investigations, subpoenas, grinding minutia of dozens of aging scandals competing for attention with each other and sucking the juice out of the Obama agenda, and, as Kevin Drum said on a similar topic, what if they get off? I know, I know, my position is in many ways cowardly, but I can't deny that, like Tom Tomorrow said in 2003...2003!...outrage fatigue has set in, and I just want to turn the goddamn page already. And I don't think I'm the only one.
1/16/2009
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