1 Boring Old Man

Six months ago today, we got our first look at Matt Cooper’s article in Time Magazine about his Grand Jury testimony, naming Karl Rove as his source in the outing of Valerie Plame. While Bush and Rove are still in the White House, it’s been a rather fine six months for the cause of – well, you know which cause.

We now know that the Iraq war was trumped up by the Administration, that the Downing Street Memo is true. We now know that the White House outed Plame to discredit her husband for daring to question the Administration’s integrity. We now know that former New York Times reporter, Judith Miller, was a willing conduit for the White House W.H.I.G. campaign to make the P.N.A.C. dream of war into a reality. We now know that the President of the United States is a law-breaker who ignores Congress and spies on American citizens. We now know that there has been a level of corruption unequalled in our history in the current Republican Congress. And we know that those are just a few highlights of the kind of insanity that has gripped us for the last five years.

What we don’t know, is how to end it. Harry Reid and John Murtha, two unlikely candidates for Sir Galahad have started the ball rolling, but it hasn’t rolled very far yet. Yesterday, Al Gore gave the speech of his life. It was clear and systematic. He proved his case that our Administration is making an assault on our country and its form of government unlike any other. After that speech, the Administration is going to have to argue their case for changing our government and our Constitution directly, rather than sliding those changes in disguised as something else.

So, where are we now? We are at a place where we can directly challenge what this Administration has done in the courts, in congressional hearings, in the media, and on the streets. But that battle has only begun, seems to me. I’m not too worried that it will continue to proceed. There’s a pretty good momentum. What worries me is that who "we" are is without a definition. While most of us are people who might be called Democrats, or Liberals, we are not generally people who are part of the heirarchy of either establishment.

Yesterday’s speech by Al Gore sounded to me like "the best of bloglines.com" [or at least the sites I follow]. As he spoke, I could hear the DailyKOS, the Left Coaster, the Washington Note, Crooks and Liars, some muted Atrios and Firedoglake, and lots of others. It was a bit like suddenly it wasn’t the Huffington Post following the news, it was the news following the Huffington Post. He reads his blogs well.

Pretty soon, Rove and company is going to figure out where the real lever that’s monkeying with the works is located and define "we" as the enemy. Frankly, it sounds like fun, but I think the big sites that are part of "we" ought to think about how this next six months is going to go when that happens. It won’t be "swift boating" exactly, it will be "Michael Moore-ing" – caricaturing the blogs as something contemptible like Rove did with Move On or they all did with Cindy Sheehan.