Carl Bernstein, that super-sleuth reporter who is best known for happily allowing himself to be played like a piano in the Watergate investigation, has joined the liberal throng calling for George Bush’s head. After reading an article he wrote for Vanity Fair calling for a Senate investigation of the entire Bush tenure, a couple of points came to mind.
The hallmark of the sad goofballs that comprise the liberal left in this country is the almost manic righteous indignation they generate over every perceived threat. The unemployed loser who torches an American flag in a crowd is described as selfless, sincere and courageous while the cop who arrests him is a Nazi.
The single most conspicuous trait of the leftists is their unyielding belief that they are of pristine character and anyone who disagrees is naturally evil and vile. And the watchword that exposes this attitude are the various forms of the word “hypocrite.” Yet liberals will excuse all types of hypocrisy from other like-minded folks believing that the ends justify the means.
Enter Carl Bernstein venting his silly hyperbole on behalf of the Bush-haters of the far left. Here’s just one example:
“The first fundamental question that needs to be answered by and about the president (sic), the vice president (sic), and their political and national-security aides, from Donald Rumsfeld to Condoleezza Rice, to Karl Rove, to Michael Chertoff, to Colin Powell, to George Tenet, to Paul Wolfowitz, to Andrew Card (and a dozen others), is whether lying, disinformation, misinformation, and manipulation of information have been a basic matter of policyâ€â€used to overwhelm dissent; to hide troublesome truths and inconvenient data from the press, public, and Congress; and to defend the president and his actions when he and they have gone awry or utterly failed.”
Besides the fact that this tirade could just as well apply to the Clinton administration, it is an absolutely vacuous statement. Do these people really expect that everything that goes on in any President’s administration should be completely and openly shared with the general public? Or are they making these demands only of the Bush administration because they personally despise him? The answer is very obviously the latter.
Then there’s the issue of Berstein’s own little bit of hypocrisy. The man identified only as Deep Throat by Bernstein and Bob Woodward in their famous investigation of the Watergate break-in, turned out to be none other than former F.B.I. hotshot W. Mark Felt.
Felt’s motive for using the young reporters had nothing to do with morality – he and others at the F.B.I. wanted to prevent Nixon from seizing power at the bureau following the death of J. Edgar Hoover and what better way to accomplish that than to destroy Nixon politically.
At the time Bernstein and Woodward were meeting Felt in parking garages, it was well known that Felt was accomplished at breaking and entering as well as gathering information on American citizens illegally. You see, Felt had a criminal conviction on his record for failing to secure search warrants in his investigative efforts of the Weather Underground.
Today Bernstein points an accusatory finger at Bush for “spying on American citizens” (a bogus claim) but he was all too happy way back when to collaborate with an F.B.I. man who had actually been convicted of spying on Americans illegally. It doesn’t get any more hypocritical than that.