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November 17, 1999 | The journalists-lite of nightly news and talk TV giggle
when they say George W. might continue the Bush dynasty, as if they think a
political dynasty is a cute idea, and a really corrupt dynasty is even more
adorable. President George Bush's legacy is one of excessive secrecy, of
clandestine wars and black budgets, though TV news commentators seldom
mention it.

George Bush's misdeeds were about constitutional issues, not about sexual
conduct, but the mainstream media (especially media-lite, i.e.: television
news and most TV news talk shows) hammered away at Clinton/Lewinsky and never
made the Reagan-Bush scandals clear. If the public understood the extent of
President Bush's wrongdoing and cover-up, a second Bush presidency probably
wouldn't be high on their priorities' list.

In 1997's "Firewall," Lawrence Walsh says Reagan and Bush got away with
Iran-Contra in part because they participated in a cover-up. He writes that
Reagan and Bush delayed releasing crucial government records and concealed
personal notes that were necessary to Walsh's investigation. Bush also
misused the pardon power, according to Walsh and others.

George Bush claimed that his misconduct in Iran-Contra was just a matter of
partisan politics, a mere difference of opinion. Bush said Iran-Contra was
about a criminalization of policy differences. Walsh quotes one New York
Times editorial regarding Bush's "criminalization of differences" excuse:
"That's a bogus complaint... When Congress calls the highest executive
officials to testify, as it did in probing Iran-Contra, it is entitled to
truthful testimony under pain of prosecution for telling falsehoods."

Walsh also offers this from CNN political analyst William Schneider: "It's
hard to see how pardoning your former enemy justifies pardoning your former
colleagues -- and possible co-conspirators... Not only did he [Bush] pardon
his political allies, he pardoned them for illegal activities in which he
himself may have been implicated."

Carl Bernstein wrote in the January 10 Los Angeles Times:  "The escalating
criminality of the Bush-Reagan era... refused to go away, like some dark
stain on the national conscience. In pardoning Caspar W. Weinberger and some
old friends from CIA days, Bush ensured that the stain will not be removed.
With the stroke of his pen and the disingenuousness of his words, Bush forced
the issue of his own culpability."

Lawrence Walsh concludes:  "What set Iran-Contra apart from previous
political scandals was the fact that a cover-up engineered in the White House
of one president and completed by his successor prevented the rule of law
from being applied to the perpetrators of criminal activity of constitutional
dimension."

Tim Weiner in "Blank Check" (the book based on Weiner's Putlizer Prize
winning newspaper series), says that no one ever stood trial for the real
Iran-contra crimes, because "at each turn in the legal process, the
government tried to scuttle the central charges against North, Poindexter and
their co-conspirators."

The Reagan-Bush CIA claimed that volumes of information that had already been
printed in the press -- facts already known to the public -- were sensitive
secrets that couldn't be divulged at North's trial. Attorney General Richard
Thornberg also declared key evidence (names and locations that had already
been made public) to be sensitive secrets. Weiner says "the Justice
Department drove a stake into the heart of the criminal cases" and prevented
independent prosecutor Walsh from functioning independently.

Weiner adds that all that remained was a litany of lies, and that the whole
truth about Iran-contra will never be known. Tim Weiner quotes William
Richardson, an attorney turned insurance claims examiner, who once challenged
the U. S. government in court about the black budget: "It's natural for an
army to have secrets, but what is natural for an army is not necessarily
what's best for a democracy."

A big part of the George H. W. Bush legacy is excessive government secrecy
and cover-up related to serious constitutional issues. Only a political party
with amnesia regarding recent history would want a political dynasty with
that kind of foundation.