LOSING AMERICA

“I do not want to remember my country as being on the side of evil”: the distinguished gentleman from West Virginia—whose service and tenure in the Senate are legendary—pulls tight his toga and renders withering scorn unto Caesar.

September 11 was not just about terrorist attacks on a sorely unprepared US, urges Senator Byrd. It was also “a day which would turn the life of our nation upside down and transform a lackluster, inarticulate, visionless President into a national and international leader, nearly unquestioned by the media or by members of either party.” As the ashes settled on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, this seemingly inept president, the soi-disant uniter, had forced legislation through that effectively gave him extra-constitutional powers: a line-item veto that hid billions of dollars from Congressional oversight; a shadow government that “has been described as an ‘indefinite precaution,’ which can mean anything”; overstuffed discretionary funds for the likes of Rumsfeld and Cheney; spending streams directed to Bush buddies and the Halliburtons of the world. Couple this newfound financial independence of the executive branch with the administration’s combative, thoroughly politicized stance—and no administration, writes Byrd, has been so driven by ideology—and you have the recipe for imperium. Thoroughly schooled in the classics, Byrd needs no rhetorical stretches to make that analogy, but his condemnation of Dubya as a kind of bush-league Tiberius rises to Ciceronian heights all the same: “Bush’s power has been wielded with arrogance, calculation, and disdain for dissenting views. . . . There is virtually no attempt to build consensus by the hard work of reaching across the aisle to find common ground.” The self-proclaimed uniter is in fact a divider, and a corrupt one at that.

“Many early symptoms that heralded the Roman decline may be seen in our own nation today,” writes Byrd. Few students and practitioners of politics are better equipped to make such assessments. An outstanding broadside from a true patriot.