Censoring Censure

editorial posted March 23, 2006 (April 10, 2006 issue)
John Nichols

If there remained any doubt about whether US Senator Russ Feingold did the right thing when he moved to censure President Bush for illegally ordering warrantless wiretapping of Americans, it should have been removed by the news that the Wisconsin Democrat's call for accountability immediately earned the wrath of Vice President Dick Cheney, Washington's pre-eminent advocate of executive excess. Rejecting the suggestion that citizens might be concerned about the Administration's disregard for laws written to protect the constitutionally defined right of Americans to be secure from secret searches and seizures, Cheney said, "The American people have already made their decision. They agree with the President."
Cheney knows that's not the case. The warrantless wiretapping was kept strictly secret before the 2004 presidential election--by the White House and by the New York Times, which apparently had the story--so voters never had an opportunity to decide whether they wanted to re-elect a President who first lied to them about the spying and then, when caught, brazenly declared that he would continue to authorize eavesdropping on the phone conversations of US citizens.
If Cheney was deliberately disingenuous, so too were Republican political operatives who churned up the spin machine to suggest that the censure move would mark the Democrats as vindictive Bush haters and doom their prospects in November's Congressional elections. That fantasy was dispelled by an American Research Group poll that showed a slight plurality of Americans supporting censure, with Democrats backing it overwhelmingly, independents split and a remarkable 29 percent of GOP loyalists in favor of making Bush the first President since Andrew Jackson to be called to account by the Senate.