In the months before the 2004 election, my wife and partner Julie Bergman Sender and I decided to interview a number of leading conservatives about what they thought of the Bush administration. All of the interviews were with men who had played prominent roles in previous Republican administrations. All wanted to reclaim the mantle of ‘conservative’ and all agreed that the radical policies of the Bush Administration were doing horrible damage to our economy, our environment and our democracy.
They included: Pete Peterson, Nixon’s Commerce Secretary who called Bush’s tax cuts immoral; Russell Train, Nixon’s EPA director who also served as an advisor to Bush I but was opposing the reelection of George W; and former White House Counsel and Watergate Figure John Dean.
Dean had infuriated the White House when he released a book during last year’s election campaign with the title, “Worse Than Watergate.” But Dean’s book title was more than hyperbole. In “Worse Than Watergate”, Dean rightly points out that the cancer on the Presidency that became Watergate was not about a series of lies that took the country to war, it wasn’t about the deaths of thousands of young Americans sent abroad to fight that war, and it wasn’t about outing a CIA agent which Dean calls “every bit as stupid” as the Watergate break in. And he goes on to point out that revealing Valerie Plame’s identity was farm more damaging to our national security than the Watergate burglary. And Dean goes on to link the war policy with Bush/Cheney energy policy and financial interests. (And Dean reminds us that it was Nixon who created the Environmental Protection Agency, while the Bush administration and their environmental policies and denial of global warming may lead to more devastation than any terrorist could hope to accomplish.)
With the Scooter Libby indictment, George W. Bush and his administration have entered the pantheon of government scandal. If they hadn’t wrought so much death and destruction along the way, we might actually be able to enjoy their comeuppance... Just ask John Dean... It can make you nostalgic for Nixon.
You can watch our John Dean interview which was part of the Mother Jones Magazine “State of the Union” series at: http://ia300110.us.archive.org/3/items/dean/dean.mp4