After the Scooter Libby commutation, Keith Olbermann interviewed two people this evening--former Ambassador Joe Wilson, husband of Valerie Plame, the object of Libby’s lying and obstruction of justice, and John Dean, Nixon’s White House counsel in his new career as the Bush Administration’s harshest critic.
For someone who lived through and reported on the Watergate years, Dean’s resurrection is a little hard to take. It’s like listening to sermons from a whore. For those too young to remember, this from Wikipedia’s will serve as a catch-up:
“Dean pled guilty to obstruction of justice before Watergate trial judge John Sirica on November 30, 1973. He admitted supervising payments of ‘hush money’ to the Watergate burglars, notably E. Howard Hunt, and revealed the existence of Nixon's enemies list.
“On August 2, 1974, Sirica handed down a sentence of one to four years in a minimum-security prison. However, when Dean surrendered himself as scheduled on September 3, he was diverted to the custody of U.S. Marshals and kept instead at Fort Holabird (near Baltimore, Maryland) in a special ‘safe house’ holding facility primarily used for witnesses against the Mafia.
“He spent his days in the offices of the Watergate Special Prosecutor and testifying in the trial of Watergate conspirators Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Robert Mardian, and Kenneth Parkinson, which concluded on January 1, 1975. Dean's lawyer moved to have his sentence reduced, and on January 8, Sirica granted the motion, adjusting Dean's sentence to time served.”
Civilized human beings believe in redemption, but does that extend to making the fallen experts and moral arbiters? Dean was a willing White House accomplice to criminal activity until he saved his skin by helping expose the people he worked for and with.
That’s understandable, but more sensitive souls will pardon me for not wanting to hear his opinions on today’s public morality ad nauseam. Olbermann might think about finding instead some of the people who risked their careers opposing Nixon’s criminality while he still had power.
If Alberto Gonzales or any of his cohorts finally spill the beans on Rove and Bush out of fear of going to prison, that will be fine for American democracy. But will it mean having to listen to them as moral exemplars during some scandal decades from now?
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3 comments:
I also remember the Nixon years and Dean was the one who repented and helped bring down the others.
He is also a remarkable legal scholar who has been critical of Bush as being worse than Nixon and the actions of the White House as being "worse than Watergate.
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I'm 40 years old, and although I remember when Nixon resigned (I was 7 or so at the time), I don't have the same kind of reaction against Dean that, understandably, many who lived through the era have. That said, I have read and listened to his commentary in recent years with special skepticism, and I must say that, to judge by the quality and frequency of his criticisms (to say nothing of the timing: if memory serves, he was way out in front of the curve in documenting in a coherent, convincing fashion the many and varied outrages of the Bush junta), I find him to be quite credible as a commentator (albeit one with an asterisk, so to speak). It certainly seems to me that he has learned his lesson and that his comments are as valid as anyone's, if not more so owing to his unique experiences in the realm of government corruption.
I'm 40 years old, and although I remember when Nixon resigned (I was 7 or so at the time), I don't have the same kind of reaction against Dean that, understandably, many who lived through the era have. That said, I have read and listened to his commentary in recent years with special skepticism, and I must say that, to judge by the quality and frequency of his criticisms (to say nothing of the timing: if memory serves, he was way out in front of the curve in documenting in a coherent, convincing fashion the many and varied outrages of the Bush junta), I find him to be quite credible as a commentator (albeit one with an asterisk, so to speak). It certainly seems to me that he has learned his lesson and that his comments are as valid as anyone's, if not more so owing to his unique experiences in the realm of government corruption.
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