The Equivalency Game

BTC News : We got the government Lanny Davis deserves

Davis plays the equivalency game: for every Republican sin, he has to offer up a counterweight Democratic one. But Republicans have owned the government for five years now; there is no equivalency. There are no powerhouse Democratic lobbyists under indictment, if only because Tom DeLay has been so successful in purging Democratic lobbyists from K Street. There are no powerful Democratic Congressional leaders under indictment, if only because there are no powerful Democratic Congressional leaders. Democrats didn’t out a covert CIA agent; Democrats didn’t drag the nation into an illegal war based on bogus intelligence (although more than a few are complicit in the effort); Democrats didn’t institutionalize torture or strip US citizens of basic constitutional protections.

There is a national security issue here. Republicans are demonstrably more corrupt than Democrats. Hell, this isn’t even the only occasion on which the administration have blown the cover of a secret intelligence asset from purely political motives: in August of last year, the administration infuriated British and Pakistani intelligence services by leaking the name of a highly placed al Qaeda informant in order to justify an increase in the terror alert level, and in the process ruining counterterrorism operations in Britain and Pakistan.

For going on 40 years now, Democrats have gotten their asses kicked when it comes to hardball politics. Lanny Davis and Libby/Rove are emblematic of why. If Davis wants to wish a pox on both parties’ houses, he should probably wait until Democrats get a house.