Paging Jack La Lanne!

Opportunities for elected Democrats to indulge in spine-building exercises are already springing up like mushrooms after the Autumn rains. Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern continues his exceptional work in cheering on the good guys here with An Open Letter to Carl Levin: No Free Pass to Gates:

Dear Senator Levin:

The humiliation you felt was palpable when, as the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, you were unceremoniously diddled by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputies Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, chief architects of the fiasco in Iraq. They all but thumbed their noses at you, and you often complained about their "lack of candor." In two short months, you will chair Armed Services and will no longer have to tolerate such behavior. Indeed, you can start practicing now by not letting the nomination of Robert Gates be a "slam dunk."

One need not be politically astute to see that the White House is again using its cat's paw Senator, patrician gentleman from Virginia John Warner, who now chairs the committee, to force through the nomination of Gates this year, while the lame-duck Republicans still hold the majority. That, of course, is par for the course. What is far more disturbing is press reporting that you intend to acquiesce in that maneuver. You don't have to do that any more.

I am having a hard time believing that you would give Gates a pass, since I have so much admired your courage in the past. But I fear that the many recent years in minority exile may have dulled your edge and that you have gotten too used to unsavory compromises. I have in mind the deal you worked out with South Carolina Republican senator Lindsay Graham curtailing some of the rights of "detainees." Not to mention your sudden cave-in, in the aftermath of 9/11, on funding for the National Missile Defense program, which you earlier recognized as obscenely expensive, of unproven reliability, and of dubious utility given the changing nature of the threats to our security.

A lot is riding on whether you step up to the plate on the Gates nomination. Your decision will be one of the earliest tangible signs of whether the November 7 election has injected some spine into Democrats - whether they still have it in them to act like winners. You have had a running dispute with the Bush administration over the way its representatives have misrepresented so much on Iraq in testimony before your committee. If you bow to Republican pressure to allow the Gates nomination to sail through without a thorough investigation of his record, you will be giving a fresh nihil obstat to the practice of no-fault dissembling before Congress.

In 1991, you joined 30 other senators in voting against Gates's confirmation as CIA director because Gates was a good deal less than candid about his role in Iran-Contra and unconvincing in his denials that he had politicized intelligence. A few days ago you said that you wanted to give Gates a "fair and fresh look; a lot of time has passed."

Fair enough. If you want to know what has happened in the interim, you can start with the fresh, documentary evidence adduced in award-winning investigative reporter Robert Parry's recent article, "The Secret World of Robert Gates". Parry's article contains unique and highly damaging information on Gates's role in the original "October Surprise" - the unconscionable but successful Republican effort to prevent the release of the 52 American hostages imprisoned for 14 months in the US embassy in Tehran until Ronald Reagan had won the election in 1980. Parry also provides fresh detail on Gates's involvement in the illegal sale of weapons, including cluster bombs, to Iraq in the early eighties.

Another excellent source on Gates's involvement in the secret arming of Saddam Hussein (yes, the same Saddam) and the Iran-Contra scandal is Amy Goodman's interview of Parry and former CIA analyst Mel Goodman on Democracy Now, November 9th.

As you suspected when you voted against his nomination in 1991, Gates knew about many of Oliver North's illegal activities but, under oath, he just couldn't remember. Gates has been able to escape close scrutiny of his own involvement in extralegal and illegal activities largely because there are far too few journalists with the enterprise, talent, and courage of Robert Parry.

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George's Warhawk Boogie

Following up on one motif of recent posts (Grieg's "Morning" came to mind in off-line posts), how could I have missed U2's "It's a Beautiful Day"? A terrific mix of euphoria and darkness. Try it on.

But here and now I am assembling works by the dutiful deconstructors of the tremendous events of this week.

From the terrific Jane Hamsher:

We can only thank Jeebus that George Bush is so arrogant and thick-witted that he believes his own bully boy Iraq slogans and decided to drag his war drums out and beat them in the week running up to the election. Ned Lamont's candidacy may have initially dislodged the Rahm/Chuck ballgag from the mouths of Democratic candidates who were suddenly free to talk about Iraq, but had not the President decided to launch the Mighty Wurlitzer in a phyrric battle against John Kerry just prior to election day the overwhelming Democratic victory might never have reached "wave" proportions. Even members of his own party are now giving voice to the cringing horror they felt when Junior broke into the warhawk boogie before the cameras at the most colossally ill-timed moment imaginable, wondering why he was doing the work of their opponents for them.

And there's no telling what would have happened had he decided to make the Rumsfeld sacrifice play at a time when the GOP could have capitalized on it, but when he made his post-election speech and announced that he didn't want to influence the election by replacing Rummy in advance, I'm sure I wasn't the only one thanking him for perhaps the first and only time of his presidency.

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And, an aside for 43:

You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment and now you can't get out of it
Don't say that later will be better now
You're stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it
(U2: Stuck In a Moment You Can't Get Out Of)

From Down With Tyranny:

I'm sure many DWT readers were extra overjoyed to see Opus Dei numbskull Rick Man-on-dog Santorum (still #1 on the google search page) get trounced. I doubt we'll be hearing about his presidential aspirations again. Nor the presidential aspirations of another blight on the Senate's good name, George Felix Macacawitz Allen, although I, for one, will sure miss laughing at him.

Pennsylvanians in the northeast corner of the state are entitled to a double celebration, having lost not just Santorum but also their own Congressman Choker, an embarrassment not unlike the embarrassment residents in the southeast part of the state can also celebrate seeing the last of, uber-corrupt and somewhat zany in a Moonie kind of way, Curt Weldon. Weldon was trounced 147,347 to 114,056, quite the send-off for a soon-to-be-jailed congressman of 20 years.

Conservationists and environmentalists were popping the champagne corks over the political demise of the hated Dirty Dick Pombo. And the extra bonus there is that, unlike Santorum's and Macacawitz's replacements, the man who beat Pombo is a genuine grassroots progressive. I'm sure the departure of reactionary Arizona bigot and anti-Semite, J.D. Hayworth is being much cheered in many quarters and none of the 3 Indiana wingnuts, Chocola, Sodrel and Hostettler, will be missed by anyone who doesn't happen to be an active member of a KKK Klavern. Similarly, Kansas' fanatic loon Jim Ryun, the congressman with the worst voting record of any defeated House member, is a general boon to humanity.

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"Peace on earth" Bono is now singing in my ear. What a concept. As compared to, say, "how can I find an excuse for a big enough war to make me look heroic enough to be able to out-brag Dad and mute those inner demons always talking about what a dismal failure I've been."

Those internal dialogues can probably be hell.

I hope.

And, the capper, the redoubtable Mr. Krugman, briefly out from behind the Times' pay-per-view. There's at least a hint of the love of words and play here that has always endeared me to songmeister John Hiatt:

I’m not feeling giddy as much as greatly relieved. O.K., maybe a little giddy. Give ’em hell, Harry and Nancy!

Here’s what I wrote more than three years ago, in the introduction to my column collection “The Great Unraveling”: “I have a vision — maybe just a hope — of a great revulsion: a moment in which the American people look at what is happening, realize how their good will and patriotism have been abused, and put a stop to this drive to destroy much of what is best in our country.”

At the time, the right was still celebrating the illusion of victory in Iraq, and the bizarre Bush personality cult was still in full flower. But now the great revulsion has arrived.

Tuesday’s election was a truly stunning victory for the Democrats. Candidates planning to caucus with the Democrats took 24 of the 33 Senate seats at stake this year, winning seven million more votes than Republicans. In House races, Democrats received about 53 percent of the two-party vote, giving them a margin more than twice as large as the 2.5-percentage-point lead that Mr. Bush claimed as a “mandate” two years ago — and the margin would have been even bigger if many Democrats hadn’t been running unopposed.

The election wasn’t just the end of the road for Mr. Bush’s reign of error. It was also the end of the 12-year Republican dominance of Congress. The Democrats will now hold a majority in the House that is about as big as the Republicans ever achieved during that era of dominance.

Moreover, the new Democratic majority may well be much more effective than the majority the party lost in 1994. Thanks to a great regional realignment, in which a solid Northeast has replaced the solid South, Democratic control no longer depends on a bloc of Dixiecrats whose ideological sympathies were often with the other side of the aisle.

Now, I don’t expect or want a permanent Democratic lock on power. But I do hope and believe that this election marks the beginning of the end for the conservative movement that has taken over the Republican Party.

In saying that, I’m not calling for or predicting the end of conservatism. There always have been and always will be conservatives on the American political scene. And that’s as it should be: a diversity of views is part of what makes democracy vital.

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The President Who Betrayed Us

I had another more ebullient morning-themed post well under way sometime past my bedtime last night, but when I clicked on "Save Draft" Blogger bailed out on me. That has happened before, but mercifully not often. To say it made me very unhappy would be an understatement.

This will not be that post, but it will be this self-referential post (Douglas Hofstadter: you rock). And I may salvage a few scraps, depending on recall available from increasingly fallible gray matter.

Yesterday morn was stupendous, this morn was outstanding, and there is every indication tomorrow morn will be at the very least terrific. A while back I would not have been willing to take on such a giddily Delphic role. At best I might have offered "well it is Friday!."

Back in the early '70's there was a period when Saturday morn (and other times) more or less required that I plunk this Dylan into the stereo:

Can't you hear that rooster crowin'?
Rabbit runnin' down across the road
Underneath the bridge where the water flowed through
So happy just to see you smile
Underneath this sky of blue
On this new morning, new morning
On this new morning with you
(Dylan, New Morning)

Lost post had me carrying on with this theme, including Cat Stevens' "Morning Has Broken" and the Rascals' "It's a Beautiful Morning." I was allowing for the likelihood that others might have their own "start me up" euphoria tunes. Take away the "morning" theme and Katy-bar-the-door when it comes to euphoria-inducers. Another post, some other time. ("Street-fighting Man" I hear off in the distance!) Anyway, the point is that we have every reason to be giddy over the election results. Keeping focus narrowly on the voting outcome, we should be dancing in the streets over the possibilities.

Along the same lines, for those with mellower tastes, there is this classic snippet:

What a difference a day makes
Twenty-four little hours

However. Keep that euphoria near and well-nourished, we'll definitely need it. No actual gloating, mind you. Hopefully we got our feelings of schadenfreude out and behind us on Wednesday. The point is that the would-be dynasts have already done so much damage on so many levels that what should be a New Deal or Camelot period has much more of an Augean Stable aspect to it. There is a tremendous amount of neglected O&M and actual infrastructure repair that is urgent. I'm thinking the basics of our society here: adhering to the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights, and International Treaties we subscribe to such as Geneva Protocols, preservation of habeas corpus, and assuring that the rights of actual people take precedence over corporations, etc., etc. Our dreaming at least in the short term is going to have to have a more pragmatic down-to-earth Reclaim Democracy quality to it.

Entertainingly, trial balloons by the administration and their mainstream media mouthpieces were so rampant the last couple days that I expect the FAA could document a pattern of delayed takeoffs and landings. One of the more obvious has to do with the call for a new spirit of bipartisanship and possibly even collegialism (the word must make folks like Rush run for the Pepto - or whatever falls out of their meds cabinet). Of course the timing is interesting here. Until just recently contrary opinions had been found (in papal fashion) to constitute treason. Any position other than the one dictated by the white house involved endorsing terrorism. The minority party was not allowed to even participate in the actual writing of bills, nor were they consulted on appointments.

From today's White House Briefing:

What a difference this election has made. It was, in some ways, a whole new President Bush who appeared before the assembled press corps for a post-election news conference yesterday afternoon.

Meet the New Bush: Owning up to all sorts of unpleasant realities; Speaking well of Democrats; Vowing to act in a bipartisan fashion while acknowledging voter skepticism on that point and pledging to overcome it with deeds; Self-deprecating, rather than bullying.

And -- oh yes -- jettisoning Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the quintessential symbol of his administration's obstinate refusal to acknowledge that the current strategy in Iraq is failing.

So is this New Bush to be taken at his word?

It probably depends on whether you think the president's badly eroded credibility has been restored by his admission that he lied during the campaign -- or whether that just adds to the damage.

Because possibly the most startling aspect of a consequential press conference on a incredibly tumultuous day was Bush's repeated acknowledgment that things he said when he was campaigning were either no longer operative -- or were outright deceptions.

Most notably, it was just one week earlier that Bush had told wire-service reporters in an interview that he wanted Rumsfeld (and Vice President Cheney) to remain with him until the end of his presidency.

Here's how Bush tried to explain that yesterday:

"[Associated Press reporter Terence] Hunt asked me the question one week before the campaign, and basically it was, are you going to do something about Rumsfeld and the Vice President? And my answer was, they're going to stay on. And the reason why is I didn't want to inject a major decision about this war in the final days of a campaign. And so the only way to answer that question and to get you on to another question was to give you that answer."

It is quite telling that rather than duck the question -- which Bush is more than capable of doing -- Bush chose to lie instead.

But, amazingly enough, that wasn't the only example of Bush saying he didn't really mean what he was saying in the run-up to the election. Bush repeatedly -- and casually -- asserted that many of the major elements of his stump speech were, in fact, not to be taken seriously any longer.

Consider this passage in his introductory remarks:

"Amid this time of change, I have a message for those on the front lines. To our enemies: Do not be joyful. Do not confuse the workings of our democracy with a lack of will. Our nation is committed to bringing you to justice. Liberty and democracy are the source of America's strength, and liberty and democracy will lift up the hopes and desires of those you are trying to destroy.

"To the people of Iraq: Do not be fearful. As you take the difficult steps toward democracy and peace, America is going to stand with you. We know you want a better way of life, and now is the time to seize it.

"To our brave men and women in uniform: Don't be doubtful. America will always support you. Our nation is blessed to have men and women who volunteer to serve, and are willing to risk their own lives for the safety of our fellow citizens."

On the one hand, a noble and gracious and important assurance to the world of America's enduring values and determination. On other hand -- given the ferocious way that Campaigner Bush attacked Democrats as troop-hating terrorist-appeasing cowards -- an astonishing admission that he was just making that stuff up.

Said New Bush: "I truly believe that Congresswoman Pelosi and Harry Reid care just about as much -- they care about the security of this country, like I do. They see -- no leader in Washington is going to walk away from protecting the country. We have different views on how to do that, but their spirit is such that they want to protect America. That's what I believe."

Q. "Just a few days before this election, in Texas, you said that Democrats, no matter how they put it, their approach to Iraq comes down to terrorists win, America loses. What has changed today?"

Bush: "What's changed today is the election is over, and the Democrats won."

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Me personally? I would not be putting any big chips down on any squares that include words like "Benefit of a Doubt."

This is a person with a long history of habitual lying and refusal to be accountable. These seem to be some of the most basic and characteristic components of his character. I would speculate that there are in this country right now hundreds of thousands of addicts in one or another form of treatment who are no less troubled by addictive anti-social behavior than george bush. Not to mention the millions imprisoned for petty drug violations.

Until repeatedly demonstrated otherwise, we must assume that george will say and do damn near anything that might benefit him. And it should be taken as a certainty that he will violate the basic precepts of honesty and trust, lying, cheating, and committing any crime he thinks he can get away with if it is necessary to keep him from being proven to be in the wrong. And of course his rap-sheet already includes probable AWOL and violations of the Geneva Convention and the FESA prohibition against warrantless wiretaps, so he has many demons and lies he is already mentally obsessing over. We're not talking presidential kleptomania here. Our president is already from where I sit an unindicted felon, and cornered criminals with a lot of power should be considered dangerous.

We must not forget that.

Treatment, maybe. Absolution, not so fast.

Dog-piphany

It was Very Long, that Election Day, one where many of us were probably tuned into at least three time zones much of the time. Holding breath for too long, then remembering to force ourselves to exhale.

The evening hours were too early yet to be celebrating, making plans, or drawing sweeping conclusions. But we eventually passed that chronological threshold of pain experienced two years ago when, after being cheered by exit polls, we suddenly found clueless and useless mainstream media types trying to sell us on and make excuses for a shocking turnaround. That didn't happen last night - perhaps partly because this was no one-candidate event.

It's interesting to contemplate that aside from the expected and therefore relatively low-impact event of the Hussein sentence there was no really major Oct/Nov surprise. No Iran invasion. No trumped-up or wholly faked thwartings of terrorist chewing-gum attacks or such. No Bin-laden head on a pike. No code fluorescents.

Instead, it seems to have been the case that caring people, at least dubious of the administration's claims that thousands, never mind hundreds of thousands of deaths are necessary to save little george's face and pride have made a statement at the voting booths. We have comparatively generous control of the House, and late today marginal takeover of the Senate seemed almost certain as well. This is a dream most of us committed to facing reality as straight-on as we can stand on a daily basis would not previously have admitted to.

Late yesterday, after hours of growing tension punctuated with gotv calling, no actual feedback, and predictable internal turmoil, I decided it was time to indulge new running shoes, leading to minor bit of kismet that in hindsight briefly evoked that butterfly action in Beijing that mythically triggers major events in Mississippi or something. Well actually sort of the reverse of that. This wonderfully joggled my gray matter into a state quite different from the dulled condition caused by phone-slavery into one much more receptive to the flashflood of election reporting I'd be experiencing in the next few hours.

I'd already salved conscience by walking dogs. Both walk and run had to be closely scheduled around meteorology that had me seeking analogy for move to Chicago (a la Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks") appropriate to Seattle area. To be complete, my mythical destination had to involve not only avoiding deluge conditions (most rivers here projected to flood over the next several days - hard to fathom when tidewater is rarely more than 50 miles away), but also, per my take on song, better economic conditions. That latter is high standard if one is to stay in the NW. For purpose of exercise, we designated Spokane as high dry ground.

In short, dry windows for walks and runs yesterday were few.

Run started with me clumbering (as in spaniel of the same name) up a few hundred feet of elevation from our house and striking out for neighborhood that abuts a park. This was a bit of a stretch as last few runs have never exceeded 2-3 miles. I connected up with woodland trail inside park, seeking more leisurely saunter back to pavement with inspection for fungi as chance to catch breath. Suddenly I was overtaken by a wonderfully cute and energetic puppie, more or less the size of our small spaniels, but quite short-haired. He was not over-friendly but was conspicuously glad to meet up with me. I was able to make tactile by stopping, squatting, and calling. We made friends. Troublingly, no sign of other humans.

Dog headed on, looking back over shoulder. What was I to do but suspend walk and jog to keep up? So much for mushrooms. We did that for a bit, occasionally together, mostly with dog a ways ahead. When we reached pavement and my new friend felt need to shame me by picking up pace I began to worry about whether I was to be accompanied (ok, preceded) all the way home. Luckily, just as desperattion was setting in, with nary a human in sight, a resident pulled into driveway and agreed to tend pup while I returned to trail. Not too far back I encountered walker of two other dogs, out of breath and a little desperate after having chased up trail wondering where third had gone. Happy reunion ensued.

Now maybe if I'd not been there (or that butterfly had kept wings still) the dog would not have vamoosed. But I'm happier with the way it worked out - although it took several of us to put the pieces back together. My new friend was only a few months old, despite the confident swagger and run-ahead style he displayed. I can't really imagine that given how curious and mobile he was that it would have been easy to track him down as the light dwindled. Neighborhood resident certainly was a critical part of this. I was not comfortable abandoning pup even if he would have allowed it.

Euphoria from getting this little puzzle solved gave me a great kick-start for aerobic end to project that no longer really fit in category of "run."

Just a premonition of how things were going to be getting better with other parts of the universe as events last night unfolded. Connections and collaboration. The Ecology, you know. Taking care of each other.

Good Mornin' America, How Are Ya?

Well here we go. You buys your ticket and you takes your chances. A musical-themed carnival on the night before one of what I perceive as the most important elections my life has intersected. I hope you are as pumped and tuned-in as I am.

Well I'm out here on my own
Followin' a star
Askin' on my knees, for some direction, please
And God, you know that's hard

Cause I'm such a stubborn man
Stubborn as a mule
Even though I struggle some, I believe a change will come
And I hear you love a fool
(John Hiatt: Is Anybody There?)

I'm wired into Hiatt's "Pirate Radio" while contemplating Dar Williams' "Are You Out There":

Are you out there can you hear this
Jimmy Olson, Johnny Memphis
I was out there listening all the time
And though the static walls surround me
You were out there and you found me
I was out there listening all the time

What's the future, who will choose it
Politics of love and music
Underdogs who turn the table
Indie versus major labels
There's so much to see through
Like our parents do more drugs than we do

The reality is we are all "Sitting Here in Limbo." They're certainly putting up resistance but I know our faith will lead us on (that's Jimmy Cliff I've put in your ear there - from The Harder They Come soundtrack of course). "Like a bird without a song"? - no way! I'm "Waiting for the tide to flow"!!

While I find the image of Pete Townshend on his knees to pray (sounds familiar, ehh?) a bit jarring, it's worth a grapple. I prefer to envision a classic windmill or a wild Mods versus Rockers conflict, but what the hey. (In the spirit of whatever it takes.) And Mr. Lightfoot tells us We Are Beautiful, just to put a bow on it.

God is great, God is good
He guards your neighborhood
Though it's generally understood
Not quite the way you would
You try to take the slack
Stay away and watch his back
But something happens every now and then
And someone breaks into the promised land

Ah boy boy
This world is not your toy
This world is long on hunger
This world is short on joy
(J. Browne: Soldier of Plenty)

As for me, I knew I would not be a decent value-added consultant to my clients tomorrow. I may not be an ace at GOTV calls either, based on chronic "phone-phobia" and insights from some hours of volunteer time with MoveOn in the past few weeks. But we'll see about that. Out Here in the Fields, as they say. It's Only Teenage Wasteland.

Ah get born, keep warm
Short pants, romance, learn to dance
Get dressed, get blessed
Try to be a success
Please her, please him, buy gifts
Don't steal, don't lift
Twenty years of schoolin'
And they put you on the day shift
(Dylan: Subterranean Homesick Blues)

But I am filled with hope. I was moved by the YouTube link I found at FireDog a while back to Kermit's endearing "Rainbow Connection." That tune gets me misty every time, much like "Over the Rainbow." Maybe there's a pattern here?

"Oh they tell me of an uncloudy day!" That's Willie stopping by. But then where would we find a rainbow? No problemo - he does that number too.

I've been waiting for something to happen
For a week or a month or a year
With the blood in the ink of the headlines
And the sound of the crowd in my ear
You might ask what it takes to remember
When you know that you've seen it before
Where a government lies to a people
And a country is drifting to war
(J. Browne: Lives in the Balance)

I know you are all conscientious voters and doubtless the sort to assure that the community around you are likewise. I.e. the sorts of folks who have the consternation meter pegged by this time, wondering how in the hell we got here. When did we get to as Steve Earle calls it talking about "ashes to ashes and dust to dust"? On the same disk he does get around to this:

I woke up this mornin' and none of the news was good
Death machines were rumblin' 'cross the ground where Jesus stood
And the man on my TV told me that it had always been that way
And there was nothin' anyone could do or say

And I almost listened to him
Yeah I almost lost my mind
Then I regained my senses again
And looked into my heart to find

That I believe that one fine day all the children of Abraham
Will lay down their swords forever in Jerusalem.
(S. Earle: Jerusalem)

It was bittersweet today to find that the New York Times has for a week relaxed their "select" barbwire around the most interesting of their editorial writers and hence be reminded what we have been (mostly) missing. Courtesy of that wire-clipping, here's Mr. Krugman:

President Bush isn’t on the ballot tomorrow. But this election is, nonetheless, all about him. The question is whether voters will pry his fingers loose from at least some of the levers of power, thereby limiting the damage he can inflict in his two remaining years in office.

There are still some people urging Mr. Bush to change course. For example, a scathing editorial published today by The Military Times, which calls on Mr. Bush to fire Donald Rumsfeld, declares that “this is not about the midterm elections.” But the editorial’s authors surely know better than that. Mr. Bush won’t fire Mr. Rumsfeld; he won’t change strategy in Iraq; he won’t change course at all, unless Congress forces him to.

At this point, nobody should have any illusions about Mr. Bush’s character. To put it bluntly, he’s an insecure bully who believes that owning up to a mistake, any mistake, would undermine his manhood — and who therefore lives in a dream world in which all of his policies are succeeding and all of his officials are doing a heckuva job. Just last week he declared himself “pleased with the progress we’re making” in Iraq.

In other words, he’s the sort of man who should never have been put in a position of authority, let alone been given the kind of unquestioned power, free from normal checks and balances, that he was granted after 9/11. But he was, alas, given that power, as well as a prolonged free ride from much of the news media.

The results have been predictably disastrous. The nightmare in Iraq is only part of the story. In time, the degradation of the federal government by rampant cronyism — almost every part of the executive branch I know anything about, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been FEMAfied — may come to be seen as an equally serious blow to America’s future.

And it should be a matter of intense national shame that Mr. Bush has quietly abandoned his fine promises to New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast.

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Just imagine, then, what he’ll do if faced with demands for information from, say, Congressional Democrats investigating war profiteering, which seems to have been rampant. Actually, we don’t have to imagine: a White House strategist has already told Time magazine that the administration plans a “cataclysmic fight to the death” if Democrats in Congress try to exercise their right to issue subpoenas — which is one heck of a metaphor, given Mr. Bush’s history of getting American service members trapped in cataclysmic fights where the deaths are anything but metaphors.

But here’s the thing: no matter how hard the Bush administration may try to ignore the constitutional division of power, Mr. Bush’s ability to make deadly mistakes has rested in part on G.O.P. control of Congress. That’s why many Americans, myself included, will breathe a lot easier if one-party rule ends tomorrow.

Just remember: you can get it if you really want. And let's get together before we get much older.

We don't get fooled again.