I didn’t vote for him but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.-John Wayne, as quoted by Keith Olbermann, on the election of John Kennedy over Richard Nixon in 1960.
He quoted the late actor in a "Special Comment" segment of Countdown on Tuesday night, in which he passionately laid out the case for why the President and Vice-President should resign.
Some highlights...
The crisp matter-of-fact acknowledgement that we have survived, even though for nearly two centuries now, our Commander-in-Chief has also served, simultaneously, as the head of one political party and often the scourge of all others.I absolutely agree with Keith, of course. But this President and his Vice-President won't resign. They don't believe they've done anything wrong, and that's why leaving them in office for the last 18 months of their term would be absolutely dangerous for the United States.
...But just as essential to the seventeen words of John Wayne, is an implicit trust—a sacred trust: That the president for whom so many did not vote, can in turn suspend his political self long enough, and for matters imperative enough, to conduct himself solely for the benefit of the entire Republic.
...We enveloped our President (after September) 2001. And those who did not believe he should have been elected—indeed those who did not believe he had been elected—willingly lowered their voices and assented to the sacred oath of non-partisanship.
And George W. Bush took our assent, and re-configured it, and honed it, and shaped it to a razor-sharp point and stabbed this nation in the back with it.
...When President Nixon ordered the firing of the Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the infamous "Saturday Night Massacre" on October 20th, 1973, Cox initially responded tersely, and ominously.
"Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men, is now for Congress, and ultimately, the American people."
...Watergate instantaneously became a simpler issue: a President overruling the inexorable march of the law of insisting — in a way that resonated viscerally with millions who had not previously understood - that he was the law.
Not the Constitution. Not the Congress. Not the Courts. Just him.
Just - Mr. Bush - as you did, yesterday.
It is nearly July 4th, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a King who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them—or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them—we would force our independence, and regain our sacred freedoms.
We of this time—and our leaders in Congress, of both parties—must now live up to those standards which echo through our history: Pressure, negotiate, impeach—get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our Democracy, away from its helm.
For you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task. You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed. Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed, on August 9th, 1974.
Resign.
And give us someone—anyone—about whom all of us might yet be able to quote John Wayne, and say, "I didn’t vote for him, but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job."
Speaker Pelosi: It is time to set aside your directive not to impeach. Get the wheels rolling, remove these men from office, save our nation.
(Thanks to Scott for the heads-up on the Olbermann piece.)
The full commentary here:
