In a pretty spectacular peroration tonight, MSNBC’s Keith
Olbermann delivered a ten-minute indictment of the president and vice president
and asked Bush to perform one last act of patriotism: resign. Saying “Even
Richard Nixon knew it was time to resign” and adding that Nixon’s resignation,
belated though it was, ranked as one final action of nonpartisanship, Olbermann
urged George W. Bush to emulate Nixon, “not for self, not for party” but for
the country.
Olbermann also prefaced his speech, in one of several
promotional moments, with the comment that “No one is holding their breath on
this, but frankly, were Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush true patriots, they would
resign.”
Olbermann’s “Special Comment on Resignation” followed his
five-part Countdown of the day’s events, mostly focused on Bush’s commuting the
sentence of Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby. Quoting John Wayne on JFK after the election
of 1960 – “I didn’t vote for him, but I hope he does a good job” – Olbermann apostrophized
Bush, “that is what you threw away,” in commuting Libby’s sentence – “an
implicit trust, a sacred trust” that at some times a president, always head of
a political party, can “suspend his political self.”
The entire speech, most of which went by too fast for any
transcription not in shorthand to catch, was strong. Olbermann referred to Bush
as “president of a rabid and irresponsible corner of the Republican party” –
the high-priced neocon faction in the pro-war media. Referring to the fact that
the commutation occurred without the courtesy of consulting with the DOJ, etc,
Olbermann suggested accurately that it raises the suspicion that someone told
Libby, “Break the law however you choose, you will not go to prison!”
In a long and serious string of j’accuse statements,
Olbermann began with, “I accuse you, Mr. President, of lying this country into
war,” and ended with the appearance of a “carte blanche” given regarding Libby
and Cheney’s treatment of Joseph Wilson – culminating with the commutation of
Libby’s sentence, thus “you [the president] becoming an accessory to the
obstruction of justice.”
The Countdown, including informed commentary by David
Shuster and constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley, was useful in itself; several
of the perpetual ‘talking points’ – i.e. falsehoods – put around by the noise
machine to downplay the CIA leak were rebutted again, not that rebuttal will
stop the GOP, which to this day insists that “no crime was committed – meaning that
obstruction of justice is not a crime in their view.
Stumble It!