He was here for a book signing. His new book is called Broken Government.
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/09/11/dean/index_np.htmlHe had some very interesting comments about our government and how it has been destroyed by bush and cheney. He compared the corruption today to Watergate and said no one was killed during Watergate and no one spied electronically on Americans after Watergate. He said Nixon was trying to get out of Vietnam while bush was trying to get into Iraq. Nixon tried to make the presidency a dominant power but he failed. bush has succeeded. His Unitary Executive Theory is basically "an imperial presidency on stilts and steroids". He said that the executive branch lost a lot of power because of Nixon and Watergate but by the second or third year of the Reagan term, those powers had been regained.
Dean also thought the secrecy practices by the bush administration are one of their worst offenses. He said cheney claimed the presidency was weak and used that as justification for the secrecy and draconian policies implemented by the White House under bush. He also said this goes against conservative principles, as most conservatives don't want the president to have too much power.
Dean talked about Kerry's campaign and said he thought the secrecy issue would be raised in the 2004 campaign. He said he called the Kerry campaign after the election and asked why they never brought up this issue and they said it was a process issue and in campaigns, it is an unwritten rule that you debate policies, but not processes. He said process is very important to most Americans and he thought it is a mistake to leave this debate out of campaigns. Dean said process is the name of the game and you only get good policy if you have good process. In his book, Dean discusses processes and goes into greater detail on this point. (I looked that part up last night in the book and read it first.)
Dean said all the problems we see in the executive branch today point back to dick cheney. He called him a "very talented man". Dean talked about how cheney manipulated and pressured Gonzales and has solicited opinions from the dept of justice that are the most dishonest legal opinions Dean has ever seen. He said this is "really bogus stuff that will never hold up in a court of law".
Regarding Congress, Dean said the republicans bragged about bills being written on K Street and then brought to the House floor. They were stunned that the Dems won Congress back last year. He also said Pelosi is trying hard to reduce the incivility and get Congress working again. He said Newt Gingrich won the House by tearing it down and the Democrats are now hard at work repairing that damage. Pelosi immediately upset the republicans by restoring the 5 day work week. So now the republican strategy is obstructionism to win back the House in 2008. They don't want people to believe that Congress is working under the Democrats. And they are being successful at keeping the Democrats from running Congress. It is not a given that the Dems will retain Congress in 2008, not in the least.
Three out of four Americans believe our government is broken.
Dean said the worst damage is to the Supreme Court. Nixon politicized the justice selection process. The era of the true liberal on the Supreme Court is over. We now have four fundamentalists on the SC and they are "far beyond traditional conservative radicals". They want to change the law and they fully embrace the unitary executive theory. These fundamentalist justices reject the idea that the Bill of Rights applies to the states. And with only one more SC fundamentalist, the court will re-write federal law. Dean said if another opening comes up on the SC before bush is out of office, it is imperative that he be prevented from nominating another justice.
Of the candidates running for the republican nomination for president, Dean thinks Rudy is the most likely to appoint a fundamentalist and Ron Paul is the least likely. But he said Ron Paul has no chance to win, and the next least likely to appoint a fundamentalist would be Fred Thompson, as he is the least authoritarian.
When it came time for questions, my friend asked Dean about the likelihood of impeachment. He said there is not much time. He pointed out that the special prosecutor helped further impeachment against both Nixon and Clinton. And we have no special prosecutor today, who really should have started investigations a year or so ago. Dean also pointed out that Pelosi took impeachment of bush off the table, but not cheney.
Dean said that Clinton was brilliant, probably one of the smartest men ever to serve as president, that his brilliance and the fact that he was a good president offended the republicans so much that they were determined to pull the rug out from under him. He said Clinton's impeachment was personal, not political, and the republicans knew all along that it wouldn't be effective but didn't care.
Dean said the best evidence for impeachment is that bush violated the initial war resolution. He was supposed to submit a report stating that no diplomatic efforts had been successful. But instead, he submitted false documents to justify the invasion of Iraq. That's what he should be impeached for. The signing statements are bad too but presidents have been issuing signing statements for 200 years and they are perfectly legal.
Then Dean said impeachment can occur AFTER bush is out of office and we should be going after the underlings to depose them and curtail their political careers. He mentioned a few in particular when we asked him privately after his talk. So impeachment activists - we got some research to do. PM me for more info. :)
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