Loyalty is a Vice

Back in the Brownie and Harriet Miers days, I questioned whether loyalty to friends and cronies was the worst of George W. Bush's "virtues".

Now, with his statement yesterday, Mr. Bush -- never known to coddle criminals or consider even the most excessive sentence "excessive" -- shows that loyalty is now a vice, maybe Dubya's key vice.

I respect the jury's verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.
[...]The Constitution gives the President the power of clemency to be used when he deems it to be warranted. It is my judgment that a commutation of the prison term in Mr. Libby's case is an appropriate exercise of this power.

--G.W. Bush (from whitehouse.gov, 2 July 2007)

The simplistic code of loyalty that drives him can be seen on every level. He knows his family is nice, and good. He knows his friends are nice, and good. He knows his America is nice, and good, and blessed by God. If he doesn't know you? Watch out. You may very well be mean, and evil. And it may be his duty to ignore your pleas for gubernatorial clemency from death row. It may be his Presidential duty to lock you up on a island prison camp with no recourse to the American legal system, or to bomb you and your family and your godforsaken desert home.

I have nothing against Lewis Libby. He's a stooge. He was only following Dick Cheney's orders, and of course George knows that. But don't commute Lewis Libby's sentence unless you're willing to throw the real criminals behind bars, or until you're willing to give the same compassionate consideration to the MILLIONS of Americans who are behind bars -- many with longer sentences for lesser crimes than Scooter's.

Is loyalty the worst of George W. Bush's Seven Deadly Virtues? Is this really the right time to appoint another crony?

The New York Times website this morning was rerunning a profile that Elisabeth Bumiller wrote about Harriet Miers on November 20, 2004 when this unknown aide was appointed White House Counsel, "A Woman Of Low Profile In a Job High-Powered":

[...]''She's the kind of person you want in your corner when all the chips are being played,'' said one friend [and longtime crony and current war profiteer], Joseph M. Allbaugh, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. ''She will give the president advice unvarnished, and that's exactly what he wants.''
Ms. Miers, 59, currently serves as deputy chief of staff for policy and assistant to the president. She has rarely, if ever, talked to reporters since arriving in Washington in 2001, and she declined a request for an interview on Friday.
But her history, and comments from friends, suggest that she is the kind of woman, like Karen P. Hughes [crony & WHIG member] and Condoleezza Rice [WHIG & war criminal], whom Mr. Bush likes on his staff: tough, direct and intensely loyal. Her appointment reflects the president's determination to promote longtime members of his inner circle to critical positions for his second term. [...]

She may be a very nice person. The Washington Post is even reporting that she gave money to Al Gore's Presidential campaign in 1988, so maybe she's even [gasp] some sort of moderate. But can it really be that hard among all the legal talent in this country to find someone for our Supreme Court who has actual judicial experience? Isn't her experience as Governor Bush's Chairwoman of the Texas Lottery Commission the perfect example of cronyism? If there were a National Lottery Commission, wouldn't the job of Chairman be a perfect fit for Mike "Brownie" Brown or some other political hack? Weren't Lottery Commissions (and the ambassadorships to the Vatican and Monaco) created just to provide safe harmless havens for hacks and cronies and college roommates?
If the Senate doesn't turn around and say, "Give us a real candidate!" If it actually progresses to the point where there are hearings about Harriet Miers' qualifications for one of the most important positions in our government, I hope they ask about her official Presidential nickname and secret West Wing handshake. Bill Maher may have been joking when he asked if the president only knows three people, but does he know more than three dozen? And how about friends from Yale and Harvard rather than Texas and Oklahoma? Is he allowed, by Mister Cheney and his mother, to appoint anyone to an important position who hasn't sworn a blood oath to Barbara Bush's Bouncing Baby Billionaire Boyz club?

Loyalty will be finally be a sin (or at least a crime)
when this crowd finally leaves office,
True Blue Liberal