Reagan, Bush and How Presidents Got To Be Above the Law

[babylonsister]

Will Bunch
Author, "Tear Down This Myth"
Posted February 18, 2009 | 10:20 PM (EST)

Reagan, Bush and How Presidents Got To Be Above the Law


Are you frustrated that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their minions plotted torture tactics, illegal wiretapping,, political manipulation of the Justice Department and other alledgedly unlawful acts inside the White House - and seem to have gotten away with it? You should be. Are you looking for someone to blame? How about Ronald Reagan? Or more accurately, the politicians and members of the media who let Reagan and some key aides - not to mention Reagan's long-term reputation -- largely get away with one of the worst scandals in White House history.

Because make no mistake, there is a straight line from the great political escape of Ronald Reagan - who went from failed president to near Mt. Rushmore status with the help of a well-oiled myth machine and a national case of amnesia - to the wanton and largely unchallenged lawbreaking at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue under G.W. Bush. The Iran-Contra experience began to solidify the notion that national unity and presidential strength are more important than making sure that presidents or even their key staffers followed the law, and that serious offenses that don't involve petty matters like sex are merely non-prosecutable "policy differences."

As someone who graduated college and launched a career in journalism during Reagan's presidency, I was a little surprised to learn last year - as I researched my book "Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future" - the extent to which everyday Americans don't remember much about the Iran-Contra affair. I should not have been - after all, there's a whole generation of American voters who was watching "The Smurfs" in Saturday morning when the Gipper was in the White House. But the Iran-contra affair was nothing less than a major subversion of the U.S. Constitution. Democrats in Congress had passed a measure called the Boland Amendment that barred military aid to right-wing rebels in Central America, a lethal pet project of Team Reagan. To undermine that ban, administration aides secretly traded weapons to our supposed adversaries in Iran, seeking to free Middle Eastern hostages, reaped illegal profits from the deals and used those to fund the anti-Communist rebels, in defiance of Congress.

When the scheme unraveled, there were televised hearings, and there was expressed outraged - and one-third of Americans told pollsters that Reagan should resign as Richard Nixon had done a decade earlier. But the '70s were a very different time - members of Congress in both parties took very seriously their job in investigating and then holding impeachment hearings over the Watergate break-in, the cover-up and related offenses. But the aftermath frightened many Americans, who linked the bad news of the later 1970s, from Arab oil embargoes to stagflation to the fall of Saigon and the Iran hostages, to a weakened presidency.

more...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/will-bunch/reagan-bush-and-how-presi_b_168098.html

[bemildred]

1. Right, and they got away with it.

And future Presidents will be tempted to keep doing it as long as they can expect to get away with it. And that is the rule of men, not the rule of law.

[indepat]

2. But, but, but the historians rank the Gipper as number ten among the greatest presidents whereas

somewhere around next to worst would seem to me more accurate when considering the vast harm created by the Gipper's imv wildly irresponsible fiscal policy, patently unfair tax-policy, that mentioned in this article and all else: to wit, the Gipper unleashed what followed during the term of GHWB and junior's two terms. :P

[FiveGoodMen]

5. Shows you how little real insight it takes to be considered a historian

[grannie4peace]

3. k&r

[Rainbowreflect]

4. Sounds like a book I want to read.

[hootinholler]

6. Don't forget teh CIA was dealing crack in LA during this period also.

:grr:

-Hoot