With respect to the loud and unabashedly vile lies that emanate from the White House, the Senate majority, the House minority, and Fox News et al., they are hard for me, as a moderate liberal, to disentangle from the concept of corrupt intent. Having worked on Capitol Hill, close to leadership, and then in the Executive Branch, again, close to leadership, it would be fair to say I’ve heard lies roll off the lips of men and women of power sometimes defensively, sometimes to divert attention from, or disassociate themselves from, inconvenient truths related to personal behavior, inappropriate practices, or poorly executed federal policies.
I’ve seen press secretaries, their thin-lipped smiles set in stone, coldly dissemble in attempts to shield their bosses from media or Congressional scrutiny. And we’ve all heard presidents of both parties spin yarns and outright lie either out of vanity or purposeful evasion to cover up wrongdoings large and small. Even if you think your favorite Chief Executive led a lie-free public life, just wait for Doris Kearns Goodwin’s or David McCullough’s or Douglas Brinkley’s definitive biography of your hero to discover his or her deceptions. History and the truth always will out. That is a lesson the current family-based administration and its enablers will learn sooner or later. Sooner would be better—for them and the country—in my humble opinion.
Having gotten the matter of eye-rolling prevarication out of the way, let’s look at the matter of lies coupled with corrupt intent. Did Nixon lie with corrupt intent. Yes. Did Ronald Reagan, in the quicksand of Iran-Contra, lie with corrupt intent? Alleged, but, ultimately, no (what his staff did is another matter). Did George H.W. Bush lie with corrupt intent with respect to “Read my lips, no new taxes?” It was, in the end, a lie. But corrupt? No. Did Bill Clinton lie with corrupt intent? Yes. Did George W. Bush lie with corrupt intent with respect to weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq? In my opinion, Yes, and my opinion is supported, in part, by an analysis of the WMD issue as reported in the Washington Post’s Fact Checker column of March 22, 2019. That column concluded with:
“The intelligence community’s assessments on Iraq’s WMD stockpiles and programs turned out to be woefully wrong, largely because analysts believed that Iraq had kept on a path of building its programs rather than largely abandoning them after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Thus the stockpiles theoretically got larger as time went on.Note the italicized portion-- The intelligence was used for political purposes, to build public support. This has the ring of familiarity, the kind of familiarity that breeds corrupt contempt, the kind of contemptuous familiarity with which we are now dealing. It is a pig-in-a-blanket kind of contempt with the pig wrapped in protective layers of nepotism, cronyism, favoritism, implausible deniability, and nose-thumbing disrespect for the institution of a government of laws.
But at the same time, the Senate report shows Bush administration officials often hyped the intelligence that supported their policy goals — while ignoring or playing down dissents or caveats from within the intelligence community. The intelligence was used for political purposes, to build public support [italics mine] for a war that might have been launched no matter what intelligence analysts had said about the prospect of finding WMDs in Iraq.”
It is that institution of a government of laws that Dr. Fiona Hill was urging the members of the House Intelligence Committee to defend in her opening statement, a portion of which I quote [All italics are mine]:
“I believe that those who have information that the Congress deems relevant have a legal and a moral obligation to provide it. I take great pride in the fact that I’m a nonpartisan foreign policy expert who was served under three Republican and Democratic presidents. I have no interest in advancing the outcome of your inquiry in any particular direction except toward the truth. I will not provide a long narrative statement because I believe that the interest of Congress and the American people is best served by allowing you to ask me your questions. I’m happy to expand upon my October 14th deposition testimony and respond to your questions today.Dr. Hill’s assertion that “These fictions are harmful even if they’re deployed for purely domestic political purposes,” closely tracks with the Post’s Fact Checker statement regarding the rationale for the Iraq War: “The intelligence was used for political purposes, to build public support.”
“Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its Security Services did not conduct a campaign against our country and that perhaps, somehow for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian Security Services themselves. The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies confirmed in bipartisan congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified.
“The impacts of the successful 2016 Russian campaign remains evident today. Our nation is being turned apart. Truth is questioned. Our highly professional and expert career Foreign Service is being undermined. US support for Ukraine, which continues to face armed Russian aggression has been politicized. The Russian government’s goal is to weaken our country, to diminish America’s global role and to neutralize a perceived US threat to Russian interests. President Putin and the Russian Security Services aim to counter US foreign policy objectives in Europe, including in Ukraine, where Moscow wishes to reassert political economic dominance.
“I say this not as an alarmist, but as a realist. I do not think long-term conflict with Russia is either desirable or inevitable. I continue to believe that we need to seek ways of stabilizing our relationship with Moscow even as we come to their efforts to harm us. Right now, Russia’s Security Services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election. We’re running out of time to stop them. In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interest.
“As Republicans and Democrats have agreed for decades, Ukraine is a valued partner of the United States. It plays an important role in our national security. As I told the committee last month, I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a US adversary and that Ukraine, not Russia, attacked us in 2016. These fictions are harmful even if they’re deployed for purely domestic political purposes.”
Again, to reprise Dr. Hill’s opening paragraph: “I believe that those who have information that the Congress deems relevant have a legal and a moral obligation to provide it. I take great pride in the fact that I’m a nonpartisan foreign policy expert who was served under three Republican and Democratic presidents. I have no interest in advancing the outcome of your inquiry in any particular direction except toward the truth.”
Which brings me to the matter of “narrative” as it applies to the ideal state of open and fair conversations between and among all Americans with respect to our current social and political crises. I do not look back with narrow-angled longing for some halcyon days where all Americans got along in an imagined care-free world. Those days never were, and to suggest, as some history-denying leaders do, that if only we returned to the fantasized America First of yesteryear, all would be peachy keen, is to hang a veil of deception between what we once were and what we are today. We are a work in progress, constantly carving out a path toward a better future, a more perfect future.
Consider the Preamble to the Constitution:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”It is right there—“…to form a more perfect Union....” The drafters of the Constitution knew they lived in an imperfect world, that they themselves were imperfect people. But they believed that if the citizens of the new nation accepted the challenges of maintaining the Republic, over time the Union would become more perfect with every new generation.
The narrative of those 18th century Americans was bent toward success for all; maybe not immediately, maybe it would be fraught with inequities to be addressed by a better-informed citizenry.
The only way to maintain progress toward that distant horizon is by dedicating ourselves to keeping the lines of honest communication open, when to shut them down seems the easier action. It is hard sometimes to speak truth to power when all you want is to turn away and put distance between yourself and the problem, to turn away from your neighbor at disagreeable moments. That is when the national narrative becomes toxic and divisive, and that is what the abusers of power hope for. That is what the current administration sees as its crowning achievement—a nation so divided that absolute power will have a chance to corrupt absolutely.
We cannot afford to accept that corrupting narrative. We must strive for a constructive narrative, an open and fair narrative. In terms that legislators understand, an open and fair narrative is created by simply listening to those voices on the other side of the aisle and responding thoughtfully, reasonably, constructively, and without rancor or hidden agendas.
In all places, a positive narrative is achieved when neighbors discuss their differences without prejudging outcomes and shutting down social debate. It is recognizing and respecting the passions that motivate us to vote for one person over another, but not stifling those opposing passions with sneers or cold shoulders or dismissive, divisive personal attacks.
If Fiona Hill's testimony, and the testimony of her foreign service colleagues and other professionals who spoke truth to corruption, cannot move the political dialogue away from Trump and toward a more balanced national conversation--at the dinner table, over the backyard fence, in the communities, in the districts, in the states--we are at a hopeless stalemate, and that is just what the Trump machine wants.
Trump and his proxies are going to be relentless drum-beaters in their effort to misdirect the public's attention from the core issues the Democrats must push if they have any chance in 2020. Trump doesn't care about facts, the truth, or the impeachment process, doesn't care a whit about what the Senate will or won't do (and it most assuredly won't vote to remove him). He certainly doesn't care about the rule of law, the United States as a force for good, or our Constitution. All he cares about...all he has ever cared about...is revenge and punishment for real and imagined insults. And Trump's behavior has already infected the rest of his party right down to its very marrow. They will follow his course of action up and down every ballot in every district, state, and national polling booth.
I believe we can find our way out of this thicket of abusive brambles and barbs that obscures the path we have been on since 1776. I believe we can reestablish a national conversation noted for its comity, passion, bold ideas, and a willingness to compromise. I do not believe impeachment will provide the light we need to see our way forward, though it may be sufficient to illuminate the treachery that has entangled us in our current predicament. What we need more than impeachment is confidence in the fundamental levers of our democracy—the levers we pull, or the buttons we push when we enter the voting booth.
We need to turn away from the pollsters and pundits who tell us what we are, what we think, and what we want, and reacquaint ourselves with our own moral and ethical compasses—each one a check on the other, but both pointing inexorably to a Pole Star of reason.
I leave you with this passage from Thomas Paine’s The Crisis, written on December 23, 1776, and I suggest you replace the description of the tyrannical monarch of whom Paine wrote in the 18th century with the name of a present leader who represents an existential threat--a new crisis--to our domestic tranquility 243 years later:
We cannot afford to accept that corrupting narrative. We must strive for a constructive narrative, an open and fair narrative. In terms that legislators understand, an open and fair narrative is created by simply listening to those voices on the other side of the aisle and responding thoughtfully, reasonably, constructively, and without rancor or hidden agendas.
In all places, a positive narrative is achieved when neighbors discuss their differences without prejudging outcomes and shutting down social debate. It is recognizing and respecting the passions that motivate us to vote for one person over another, but not stifling those opposing passions with sneers or cold shoulders or dismissive, divisive personal attacks.
If Fiona Hill's testimony, and the testimony of her foreign service colleagues and other professionals who spoke truth to corruption, cannot move the political dialogue away from Trump and toward a more balanced national conversation--at the dinner table, over the backyard fence, in the communities, in the districts, in the states--we are at a hopeless stalemate, and that is just what the Trump machine wants.
Trump and his proxies are going to be relentless drum-beaters in their effort to misdirect the public's attention from the core issues the Democrats must push if they have any chance in 2020. Trump doesn't care about facts, the truth, or the impeachment process, doesn't care a whit about what the Senate will or won't do (and it most assuredly won't vote to remove him). He certainly doesn't care about the rule of law, the United States as a force for good, or our Constitution. All he cares about...all he has ever cared about...is revenge and punishment for real and imagined insults. And Trump's behavior has already infected the rest of his party right down to its very marrow. They will follow his course of action up and down every ballot in every district, state, and national polling booth.
I believe we can find our way out of this thicket of abusive brambles and barbs that obscures the path we have been on since 1776. I believe we can reestablish a national conversation noted for its comity, passion, bold ideas, and a willingness to compromise. I do not believe impeachment will provide the light we need to see our way forward, though it may be sufficient to illuminate the treachery that has entangled us in our current predicament. What we need more than impeachment is confidence in the fundamental levers of our democracy—the levers we pull, or the buttons we push when we enter the voting booth.
We need to turn away from the pollsters and pundits who tell us what we are, what we think, and what we want, and reacquaint ourselves with our own moral and ethical compasses—each one a check on the other, but both pointing inexorably to a Pole Star of reason.
I leave you with this passage from Thomas Paine’s The Crisis, written on December 23, 1776, and I suggest you replace the description of the tyrannical monarch of whom Paine wrote in the 18th century with the name of a present leader who represents an existential threat--a new crisis--to our domestic tranquility 243 years later:
“The heart that feels not now is dead; the blood of his children will curse his cowardice, who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole, and made them happy. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.
My own line of reasoning is to myself as straight and clear as a ray of light. Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to "bind me in all cases whatsoever" to his absolute will, am I to suffer it?
What signifies it to me, whether he who does it is a king or a common man; my countryman or not my countryman; whether it be done by an individual villain, or an army of them? If we reason to the root of things we shall find no difference; neither can any just cause be assigned why we should punish in the one case and pardon in the other.
Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man. I conceive likewise a horrid idea in receiving mercy from a being, who at the last day shall be shrieking to the rocks and mountains to cover him, and fleeing with terror from the orphan, the widow, and the slain of America.”
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