The Long Hard Slog

Glenn Greenwald rallies the troups after indications that some are discouraged "as a result of yesterday’s unilateral obstruction by the incomparable White House shill Sen. Pat Roberts of the long-planned and long-promised investigation into the operational aspects of the NSA program by the Senate Intelligence Committee". He compares the current scandal to the Watergate scandal and he reminds us that...

The Watergate scandal took 2 1/2 years from the time it began until the time Nixon left office because of it in disgrace. The NSA scandal has been with us for 2 months. Watergate resulted in Nixon’s downfall not due to one large smoking gun revelation, nor was it because the country heard about the break-in and then stormed the streets demanding Nixon’s impeachment.

Nixon began that scandal as an immensely popular President - infinitely more popular than the unpopular Bush is now. And when the Watergate scandal began, the mere notion that it could lead to Nixon’s downfall was fantasy. And the scandal unfolded as a slow, grinding process which was the result of tenacious, relentless investigative work and a slow transformation of public opinion. And the Administration fought the investigation every step of the way, doing what they could to obstruct it at every turn.

He explains that...

...this scandal was never going to be the downfall of the Administration after a few weeks, and anyone who expected this was operating with wildly unrealistic expectations. It is going to take hard, focused, patient work to bring about a just resolution to this scandal. It is an uphill battle that will have to overcome substantial and formidable efforts on the part of the Administration to block investigations and they will do everything in their considerable power to ensure that they will be immunized from consequences. All of that has to be expected. None of it should come as a surprise.

There is nothing surprising – and nothing even remotely fatal – about the fact that someone like Pat Roberts engaged in slimy maneuvering in order to comply with Dick Cheney’s decree that there be no investigation by that Committee into this scandal. If that little stunt is enough to make people say that the whole thing is over and the Administration won, then it means that we weren’t prepared to fight very hard over this matter.

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The Bush Administration isn’t going to just roll over at the first whiff of a scandal. But enormous strides have been made in public opinion. And there are already multiple Congressional investigations, lawsuits, raging and growing disputes within the President’s own party, and at least some important journalists who have shown a rare journalistic hunger over this story.

And most important of all, there has been no real campaign to convince Americans of what is truly at stake with this scandal. Most Democrats can barely get themselves to utter the fact that the President broke the law, and yet half of all Americans have already reached that conclusion on their own.

There is enormous potential for this scandal to grow, but that will only happen if people who believe that Presidential law-breaking is a serious threat remain resolute about making it grow and believe that they can contribute to its growth. Dick Cheney lobbied so hard to prevent the Intelligence Committee from investigating precisely because they want to create the appearance that this scandal is dying. That will happen only if people allow it to die, only if Bush opponents internalize the notion that they will inevitably lose because everything is against them and there is no way to change that.