Back to Your Day Job You Sorry Candidates!

I think TRex is really onto something important here at Firedoglake tonight. Are we or are we not convinced that the power-usurping and law-defying behavior of the bushies is a threat to our form of government?

Well, for those of you in the "yes" category (paper ballots only, please), does it make any sense that actual elected officials, with a paid job that involves lawmaking and OVERSIGHT are currently out with the Barnum & Bailey sorts kissing asses and patting babies (or something like that):

A friend asked me last night if I was going to submit a question to the Presidential debate at Yearly Kos. I had to think about it for a minute, then I realized that my question isn’t so much for the whole group of candidates, but rather for the four who are currently U.S. Senators.

So, here’s my question:

Senator Biden, Senator Clinton, Senator Dodd, and Senator Obama, why the hell are you here and not in Washington doing your job? I understand that campaigning is important, but the election is nearly a year and a half away. The primaries are still six months away. Is all this glad-handing really necessary?

If you really want to prove to me that you should be the next U.S. President, then cool it with this pas de deux you’re locked into with the media and act like you actually care about your current job. The people who elected you are still counting on you to be their Senator, and the people of the U.S. are counting on you to help do something about the current, miserable state of affairs in our nation’s capital.

It’s like Jane said yesterday:

The events of recent weeks have freaked a lot of people out. We have a President who has devolved into utter lawlessness and nobody with the power to stand up to him is doing so.

She quotes Jack Balkin, who says:

If the NSA program and the Torture Memos were examples of the second round of constitutional hardball, the Libby commutation and Harriet Meiers’ refusal to testify before Congress are examples of the third round. Although his Presidency now seems to be a failure, Bush’s third round of constitutional hardball may be every bit as important as the first two. That is because if Bush is never held accountable for what he did in office, future presidents will be greatly tempted to adopt features of his practices.

Jane:

I don’t know if this thought scares the daylights out of anybody else, but it has plagued me of late — that if nothing is done to stop Bush, if he pays no price, we’re looking at the future of the United States because there is nothing or any President to fear. And that’s a pretty bleak picture.

This is crucially important. With a flash and a bang, George Bush has disappeared up his own asshole to dispassionately muse about what his “legacy” will be with regards to history. The people of the United States and our elected representatives need to be thinking just as long and hard about how history will see us, the Americans who sat on our hands and enabled the most criminal regime in the history of our Republic to loot the treasury, savage a nation who never attacked us, and lard our national political structure down with a bunch of Regent Law School deadbeats and other partisan hacks.

The president is openly flouting the law now. He’s daring us to do something about it, counting on the fact that the American public doesn’t have the stomach for real, bare-knuckles accountability, and that the elected Democrats are too scared of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to openly defy a Chief Executive who has openly defied them, the American People, and the Constitution.

Senators, we need you to attend to your duty, all hands on deck. If you want to make passionate speeches, make them on the Senate floor. If you want to show us that you have the gumption to lead this country and turn things around, don’t tell me about it. Show me. Roll up your sleeves and get to work. There will be plenty of time to kiss babies and shake hands with strangers this winter in the run-up to the primaries.

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