For various reasons I don’t think the comparison is fair. For one, Watergate didn’t result in anyone being killed. But I also don’t think the political implications are likely to be as dire for a couple of reasons. For one, the media isn’t that interested in the story. Sure, they are willing to write about it, but no one in the main stream media is really digging. Two, we’re pretty close to an election year, and I think the GOP will be looking for embarrassment, and to make this a campaign issue. Watergate hinged on the threat of impeachment, and Nixon knew the Democratically controlled Senate had the votes for it. Trying to unsuccessfully impeach Clinton hurt the GOP, and I doubt they’ll want to repeat it. Watergate also hinged on key administration officials failing to protect the President. That is unusual, since it’s commonly accepted administration officials fall on their swords to protect the big guy if necessary.
In order to up the ante in Fast and Furious, there needs to be a criminal investigation. There really needs to be a special prosecutor, if this is going to go to the next level. Administration officials will be willing to lose their jobs to protect the Administration. Going to jail for it is another thing entirely.
“Going to jail for it is another thing entirely.”
Especially if that means being extradited to Mexico, however unlikely that is.
I think the key to gaining public support for proceedings against Holder and Napalitano, let alone Obama, is to stay focused on the single issue: laws that Fast & Furious broke and the ensuing conspiracy to hide the crimes. That might include related dealings by the FBI, DEA, DHS and other agencies, but investigations need to stay focused on the laws that were broken, not a broad political effort simply aimed at discrediting the administration for anything they can find.
The Whitewater investigation perhaps provides a text-book case on how the public will lose interest and turn against the investigators when they go too far afield from their initial investigative mandate. (And hopefully the birthers and other fringe conspiracy movements haven’t cried wolf too many times to make Obama scandal-proof at this point.) Personally, I think the circumstantial evidence so far points to an anti-2nd Amendment conspiracy to manufacture “proof” that American guns are the main source of woe in Mexico and therefore to provide political cover to impose new restrictions on gun sales. But proving that will probably be impossible. Proving that laws were broken and that at the minimum Holder has lied to Congress about his involvement should be a manageable goal–and one more likely to be reached if that goal is stated factually and concisely when put before the general public, and especially if we don’t end up with a Ken Starr-style “kitchen sink” investigation.
Running guns to criminals and getting people killed is vastly worse than bungling the bugging of DNC offices. Although, just as with Watergate, it’s the cover-up that’s more significant, since it’s not about specific errors in judgment, but more importantly, the basic integrity of the administration with regard to their honesty. Can Obama be trusted? That’s the core issue. The answer from the MSM is a knee-jerk “yes“, but they’re doing as much as they can to avoid the facts.
Truth is, neither the Obama administration, nor the MSM can be trusted. Both are going out of their way to bury the story. In light of Gunwalker, it really does look like Watergate was mostly about the political left taking down Nixon any way they could, with the issues raised, not motivated by principle, but merely used as weapons designed to accomplish that end. What are the modern day Woodward’s and Bernstein’s doing at the Washington Post? Flakking for the administration. Watergate really was all about politics. If it had been, oh, say, Bobby Kennedy who had been President, and who had done that cover-up, the media would have looked the other way, just as they are doing now for their man, Obama.
However, the Internet is in the mix now. The MSM doesn’t have a monopoly anymore, so their ability to cover for their favored politicians is limited. It’s going to be interesting to see how this works out.
I’m not so sure Obama is impeachment-proof. I strongly suspect that he’s managed to piss-off a great many Democrat senators with his end-runs around Congress, and I also suspect that the DNC sees Obama increasingly as un-relelectable, and so would love to see him out-of-the-way so someone else could run in 2012. Letting him fall for this would allow the Senate to get revenge, and open up the field.
I think we’re overlooking one important part of Watergate, that is the mainstream media broke the story, the Washington Post to be specific. They put the story on the front page, and kept it there for some time. Then all of its television, radio and other print competitors also put the story front and center, for weeks in fact.
No one is treating “Fast and Furious” like this, not even Fox News. The story is receiving a negligible amount of coverage, even as it gets more and more sordid, even though unlike “Watergate” it involves deaths of Americans. The Daily Show coverage made everything funny while neglecting to mention the murder of a Border Patrol Agent. The New York Times skewed coverage to push for more gun control, which the administration gleefully followed as the new executive order describes.
This should result in the firing, with cause, of the Attorney General, this should result in the President losing hard next year, but if it continues to not be covered other than in the blogosphere nothing will happen.