Who's your Daddy?

One supposes in the current political environment it became okay to lie when Bill Clinton was asked point blank, under oath, if he committed adultery with Monica Lewinsky. However, during 1996 when Bill and Monica were "hot and heavy," someone was giving a helping hand to an upcoming politician we've come to know as Dubya. That secret helper was Alberto Gonzales, now the Attorney General.

Yes, this is old news, but it does raise questions about how sincere GWB was about restoring honour and dignity to the Oval Office. In 1996, as these things are bound to happen, the then Governor of Texas got called for jury duty in a DUI case. As would have been required, Bush would have been required to disclose on the form prospective jurors must fill out that he had been himself busted for DUI twenty years prior -- at his father's "cottage" in Kennebunkport, Maine. Gonzales claimed he accompanied Bush to the trial and both the defense and prosecutor in that instant case agreed to have Bush's name struck out. In reality, though, we know Gonzales met with the judge behind closed doors and said that there could be a conflict of interest situation if at some later point Bush was called upon to pardon the defendant.

Of course, this is specious reasoning. Pardons are given for murder, armed robbery, sexual assault -- all felonies. They are almost never given for misdemeanours which DUI was at the time in the state. The real reason was Bush was starting to work behind the scenes to raise money for President. The news about his DUI came out a few days before the 2000 election by which it was too late to do anything about it.

True, Bush never specifically lied. But the fact is he was never asked because certain people made sure he never was and in my book that's just as bad.

When a favour like that's pulled, you're going to have a friend for life. Which explains why despite Gonzales' evasiveness in the scandal over the mid-term firing of several federal district attorneys Bush is insisting he'll hang on to Gonzales to the bitter end.

Who's your daddy?

And let's not forget Karl Rove and the role he played in the 1996 race for positions on the Alabama Supreme Court. He managed to suppress absentee ballots, effiectively ensuring one of the Republican nominees would be elected -- the first time in over a century that happened. He's also alleged to have spread a misinformation campaign about one of the incumbents -- the son-in-law of George Wallace -- that said incumbent was a pedophile. That guy ended up being re-elected but only by the skin of his teeth. Over a decade later, when GWB was caught misinforming the American people about WMD in Iraq, Rove decides to play the old game and discredit the wife of a top-notch Ambassador -- which wife also happened to be a spy investigating the very real WMD program in Iran that we're so worried about four years later.

She -- Valerie Plame -- could have stopped Tehran from getting the bomb were it not for Rove's cowardice and treachery. They probably already have it by now. Yet despite Iran's membership in the "Axis of Evil" and the inaction or action that made the country's leadership even more so, Bush thinks it's a-okay to keep Rove on his team because of what he did to help him and a whole slate of Republicans get elected into near-impossible offices across the South during the 1990s.

Who's your daddy?

Honour and dignity at the White House? If that's Bush's idea of that, then maybe Slick Willy was justified in cheating on his wife after all. (That last sentence was sarcastic, folks.)

Vote for this post at Progressive Bloggers.