On Power and Privilege

On the eve of the inauguration:

Many of you may have been bemused by the president’s “legacy tour” of the past couple of months. Can we re-write history as it’s unfolding? Is this man capable of thinking?

I watched a fascinating movie last night called, The Other Boleyn Girl. It explores the Anne Boleyn story through the eyes of her sister, Mary.

I watched Anne of the Thousand Days decades ago and found it a riveting story, as well as Anne a compelling and tragic character. But “Girl” conveyed a completely different image of the aspiring queen. In this movie Anne and her sister are used as assets by their conniving family to pursue power and status. Mary is the innocent, but Anne is anything but. Anne trumps the family, using the arrangement to achieve ultimate power, the throne. Initially she is swept along with the fantasy, but the king is lured by Mary’s innocence. Anne’s wiles land her in the French court, where she learns the skills to parlay her charms into a power play.

Finally, the king is smitten by Anne and she holds him on a string, using his affair with her sister as pretense.

Much of the portrayal strains at the “official” biography and omits the political backwash that undermined her status. But clearly Henry lost interest in Anne after a couple of years of marriage and failed attempts to bear a male child.

The connection with our current political state is interesting. Anne used feminine wiles to further her political ambition. She brought the king to the status of a supplicant---to herself---the king, who was omnipotent. Was she so naïve as to think that in success she wouldn’t find disaster? When the king’s infatuation was sated, she would ultimately find herself in an untenable position. Though well educated and highly sophisticated, she was a little girl playing with fire; and she got burned.

In the end (of the movie), in desperation, Anne realizes that her only salvation lies in birthing a son and resorts to adultery, bringing ruin to all.

Our president’s desperate overtures of the past few months are the culmination of his dalliance with power. Like Anne, the president has power without privilege. Though emasculated by successive empirical presidencies and appearing to be no more than courtiers, Congress retains the power, if not the will, to bring a president to heel. This president used every source of power he could wrest from Congress and the Constitution to force his vision upon the nation and the world. He flagrantly violated any Constitutional constraint, waged illegal war, violated national as well as international law using torture to subjugate anyone he cared to, and brought the nation to its knees with misbegotten environmental and economic policies. But at this stage of his presidency, he is left with no more power than to summons reporters to a press conference. They come much as looky-loos to witness a pathetic spectacle. He’s long past the point where he can “undo” his transgressions, and is left only to try to whitewash the results of his policies.

Mr. Bush and his advisors believed they could indefinitely use the Republican technique of artfully “framing the argument” to define their way to their ambitious goals. Torture is ok if you call it “enhanced interrogation technique”. If the pretense for war has been rebuked, validate the adventure in other terms, and declare it a success.

In the heady glow of power, with an indefinite future and ambitious program in mind, the end of the tunnel looks far away. But now as these men squirm out of office, their perspective has reversed to the rear-view mirror. They see the prospect of prosecution from international justice, if not our own constitutional mandates. We can only hope that our new government will have the courage to restore the rule of law. We can move a long way toward restoring international prestige, as well as self-respect, by handling this matter ourselves.

It’s difficult to feel sorry for Mr. Bush, but I do. W has never succeeded at anything on his own, but has been used as a pawn for his name by ambitious nabobs. But our nation needs to heel its wounds and purge the infestation that allows politicians to who think that they rule by privilege to go unchecked. Sarah Palin tells us that we hold Republicans to harsher scrutiny. Yet Gray Davis was recalled because he didn’t balance the budget, and Bill Clinton was impeached because he lied about a personal indiscretion. They are Democrats. The real imbalance in our political system places Democrats under this degree of scrutiny yet allows Arnold Schwarzenegger to triple the deficit that unseated Davis and allowed our Republican president to bring the nation to its knees in disgrace through eight years of crime, lies and arrogance.

Though their constituencies vary dramatically, the Democratic Party operates the same as the GOP. This has been sadly revealed in the last two years. Even after the “mandate” went out, this congress failed to stop the wars and looked on as Harry Reid first tried to block budget reform, then emasculated it. We need first a man of courage, integrity and vision at the helm, secondly a body politic that cares enough about its country to throw its fucking flag pins in the trash and then do the same to its disgusting representatives. We don’t need term limits; we need engaged citizens. Good luck, America.


Post Script: In response to a couple of comments that my point is unclear,

Both Anne and Mr. Bush exercised power as though it came from privilege instead of from the king, in Anne's case, or from the people and our Constitution in Mr. Bush's case. Anne played her hand recklessly, at first with Henry. She used feminine wiles to reverse roles with the king (a very dangerous ploy). Then, rather than sitting quietly on the throne, enjoying the trappings of her position, as an unpopular monarch, she strained relations with senior staff in the court bringing their enmity. When the blush wore off Henry's affection, he would naturally be left with resentment, and she was helpless in the face of court intrigue. Sitting on the throne, there was a price to pay and no place to hide. She had her moment, and was ready when her time came.

Mr. Bush was supposed to rule in the name of the people of this country, but failed to enforce not only the laws of this land, but also of the international community to which we are committed by treaty. Rather, he ruled as though his power came as privilege through “The House of Bush”. In betraying the Constitution, the source of his power, in the name of a specious war of his own contrivance, he undermined his legitimacy. He took an oath to protect the Constitution, yet failed to protect it from his own administration. Mr. Bush had his moment; we’ll see how he fares.