Editorials

The now distinctly unstylish 19th-century Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins once wrote a poem based on the lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah which could have served as a mantra for disappointed progressives in the last six years or so: 

Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must / Disappointment all I endeavor end? 

It’s been a long dry spell for many of us; we can echo the poet’s plea in his last line, “send my roots rain.” But now, in November, just as California is experiencing our annual re-greening, albeit not that much rain and none too early, we’re beginning to see some signs of hope in the national and state political picture.  

First, of course, is the indictment of Irving Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Jr. It’s not just that he seems to be a perjurer, which puts him at odds with the whole basis of the Anglo-American legal system. As a lawyer himself, he certainly knows that giving false testimony to a grand jury is a very serious offense, really a moral lapse, independent of liberal or conservative political positions.  

But Lewis is also the scuzziest of the notoriously scuzzy neo-con crowd, a student and disciple of the disgusting Paul Wolfowitz, shown by Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 911 combing his hair with saliva. The Center for American Progress’s website says Scooter was the main architect and pusher of Colin Powell’s phony testimony at the United Nations in February of 2003. According to CAP staffer John Lyman, “It was Libby—along with Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, and a handful of other top aides at the Pentagon and White House—who convinced the president that the U.S. should go to war in Iraq. It was Libby who pushed Cheney to publicly argue that Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda and 9/11. It was also Libby who prodded former Secretary of State Colin Powell to include specious reports about an alleged meeting between 9/11 terrorist Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence official in Powell’s February 2003 speech.” 

Listening to Patrick Fitzgerald’s measured, precise press conference delineation of why he went after Libby was a deeply satisfying experience, after all the double-talk we’ve had to listen to in the recent past. Some women commentators, notably Arianna Huffington on KALW’s “Left, Right and Center,” went a bit overboard, casting him as the country’s latest sex symbol. One of her male fellow panelists wondered why that should be, since Fitzgerald’s pectorals didn’t seem to be much to boast about. But an honest, straightforward and smart man will be more admired by most women (and men) than a big-body guy like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Fitzgerald is a rugby player—there’s a bumper sticker that says “Rugby Players Have Leather Balls,” and in this case the metaphor describes his performance so far.  

And then there’s the news about Ugly Arnie himself. Again, deeply satisfying. He went out on a limb with his special election, and then he sawed it off. Has he learned that even big boys get in trouble when they talk back to nurses and school teachers? Probably not, because unlike Fitzgerald, Schwarzenegger’s not very smart. 

Finally, we can savor the results of the governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia. Perhaps the depth beneath which negative campaigning cannot sink was reached in New Jersey, with Corzine’s ex-wife calling him a rotter in paid political ads: “Jon did let his family down, and he’ll probably let New Jersey down, too.” There are a lot of exes, both husbands and wives, among the voters these days, and they were all probably thinking “there but for the grace of God go I.” Then there’s Tim Kaine’s win in Virginia, despite his acknowledgment that he opposes capital punishment on religious grounds. Voters seem to have been paying attention for once—maybe it could become a trend. 

Californians do know that you can have a good shower or two in the fall and still end up with a drought year if the rains don’t keep up. Knocking off Libby doesn’t mean that Rove will go. The neo-con ideologues are running from Bush lately like rats deserting a sinking ship, but they might find another ship to jump on. Hapless and pathetic Harriet Miers seems to have been replaced by a more formidable candidate, but Senate Democrats might pull themselves together and stall his confirmation, at least for a while. It is even conceivable, though not guaranteed, that Democrats could take advantage of what appears to be the country’s new mood and come up with a viable candidate for president. We can always hope (or pray) that they’ve finally come alive again, after a long dead spell. 

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