Meanwhile, His Lordship endeavours to stand up for those spineless Solons of ours who refuse to stand up for themselves:
| [E]ven though this proposed [status-of-forces] agreement [with the International Zone neorégime in the former al-‘Iráq] is a treaty, Senate involvement is not in the cards. The President doesn't want it and NEITHER, apparently, DOES THE SENATE. It hasn't been mentioned in the recent presidential campaign by Senators McCain, Obama or Biden. This is especially curious in the case of Obama, who after all has made an issue of the duration of the US military occupation in Iraq. |
What would Franky Verulam make of that blast, do thee think, O Bones? He could hardly be expected to be familiar with the details of our municipal jurisdiction four hundred years in advance of today, two centuries in advance of our holy Homeland even existin’ institutionally. But then Malurev isn’t strong on heimatländisch municipalities either, I fear. Apart from relying on inspiration, like the bagpipes of Mr. Hobbes, to know what is a treaty and what ain’t, Malurev offers only
| So State is in the lead, supposedly, on an important agreement that deals with a "Long-Term Relationship" including the duration of the US military occupation and the legal status of the US force members. This "strategic framework," again, sounds like a treaty, doesn't it, that involves the vital interests of the US and Iraq including matters such as the duration of the US military occupation and the use of Iraq bases for attacks on other countries. |
One can detect that such stuff is attempted persuasion, but I myself should hesitate to call that "an argument." What do thee think, sir?
High-and-dry Busheviki will take the line that if their Boy can get away with it, it eo ipso cannot be a treaty, no matter how much importance and strategy and frameworkin’ and vitality and interest and sugar and spice and puppy-dog tails went into it. Those of us outside the militant extremist Party of Big Management cannot, of course, assent to Rancho Crawford pragmatism, but nothing prevents us from noticing out loud that it sure beats asking Rear-Colonel Lord Malurev’s intuition to decide every time a jolly litigation comes down the pike.
Well, we are not constitutional shysters either, so let us look rather whereunto His Lordship looketh not: how come the Solons do not complain?
Naturally we must distinguish Senator Biden and Senatorino B. Husáyn from the other ninety-eight before proceeding. Rather amazing that it did not cross the Malurevolutionary scope that in ten weeks those two will inherit everythin’ that George XLIII has managed to usurp. Franky the Bacon woulda thought of that angle right off!
Should BHO happen to resonate at exactly His Lordship's intuition's wavelength, he will toss the damn thing out before dinnertime on 20 January 2009 and then go hat in hand to the Senate for the replacement. Few things are less likely to happen than that thing, but it is not absolutely impossible either logically or physically. There is even precedent for such executive self-mutilation, if John Tyler of Virginia counts.
Still, it can not be an accident that Tyler was associated with America’s Otherparty. Try to imagine General Jackson behaving as Malurev would wish, Mr. Bones! The mutilation is quite as unimaginable with BHO, sir, for consider: every pundatrix and her brother-in-law is now going on about "a new New Deal." Roosevelt Minor was no John Tyler. ’Nuff said about B. Husáyn.
The Flaky Flyboy, whom Malurev also singles out by name, perhaps ought to have protested. By doin’ so, he would have further distanced and distinguished himself from Boy and Dynasty and Party and Ideology.
But let us not be silly, Mr. Bones. That last paragraph sounds plausible only in isolation. In the real world, the Commanderissimo of AEI and GOP and EiB and AIPAC (&c.) attaches a dozen times as much inportance to commanderissimatin’ as B. Husáyn Obáma does. He may not sympathize with the Harvard Victory School MBA classes the way George XLIII does, he is not interested in the theory of Big Management or in the bigmanagement of petty shopkeeperly affairs like Goldman Sachs and American International Group and General Motors, yet when it comes to the bigmanagement of War and Peace, J. Sidney McCain would undoubtedly have grabbed every power goin’ and have relinquished the very least of what he grabbed only after impeachment and conviction or a fatal coronary event, whichever came first.
That leaves the other ninety-seven Solons, give or take Big Party neocomrade Richard Bruce Cheney, should they be equally divided. Why have the Gang of 97 not arisen as one to resist usurpation?
Well, obviously half of ’em haven’t arisen merely because they are militant extremist Republicans. It is not impossible that what little remains of sanity and decency in the Party of Goldwater and Atwater -- Sen. Hagel, perhaps, or somebody from Maine -- may have appealed to their Boy in this matter of the SOFA with ex-‘Iráq. But naturally that happened, if it did happen, behind closed doors and mere citizens can know nothing of it.
So it is really only a Gang of 50, with the late Democrat J. I. Lieberman of Connecticut and Greater Telavívestán definitely excluded, that we require to frame hypotheses about. Perhaps not much framing is required, really. Should exactly half the Senate holler "You usurp, O villainous Dubya!" whilst the other half make plain that the Crawfordite usurpations are perfectly OK by them on a straight Party-line basis, is it not pretty clear in advance that Televisionland and the electorate would fail to be much moved? Indeed, is it not crystal clear that 9,935 eyes in ten thousand would glaze over in less than fifteen seconds?
And thee are to consider, Mr. Bones, those unfavourable polling results that our holy Homeland’s Solons and Congresscreatures have been ‘garnering’ for years and years. In the unlikely event that an individual wombscholar or couch potato agreed in theory about Crawfordite usurpation of Senatorial and Congressional prerogatives , would she actually arise on behalf of a Fedguv institution that she has decided she despises?
I put it to you, sir, that the Gang of Fifty have calculated that she would NOT rise on their behalf, on their Fedguv institution's behalf, and have, accordingly, given up the idea of resistance to usurpation as hopeless without any attempt to implement it. They do not, after all, have either a moral or a Madisonian duty to perform what cannot be performed. (Do they?)
"Politics is the art of the possible." [1]
(( That analysis is perhaps a bit too much like the Republic of Plato to be completely satisfactory. Down in the Sewer of Romulus, I daresay some, at least, of the Gang of Fifty must make the same sort of calculations as Biden and B. Husáyn, only a bit more impersonally: let the Bushevik usurpations stand, because on balance we good guys will do more good with them than the militant extremist GOP will do damage. That seems a precarious and risky speculation to me, Mr. Bones, especially as relying heavily on predictions about the future. ))
I suppose that if I were in the Senate myself, I would holler about it regardless of what colleagues or couch potatos or wombscholars or even Mr. E. J. Dionne, Jr. think of the holleration. On the other hand, not caring what such folks think is obviously one important part of why thee and I are not in the Senate.
Lord Malurev's intuition is not in the Senate either, which I take on the whole to be a good thing.
His Lordship's practical position does not altogether appear, but I betcha he is gonna forget about the whole fuss fast as soon as ThatOne™ actually marches into the Promised Land.
But God knows best. Happy days.
___
[1] Golly, Mr. Bones, did thee know that that chestnut is from Chancellor General Prince von Bismarck?
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