One of the major problems we have in politics and society is historical amnesia and the desire to sugarcoat the crimes and misdeeds of those who once held power. A prime example is Attorney General William Barr.
It is evident Attorney General Barr is thoroughly corrupt and a toady for Donald Trump. He auditioned for the job by writing a legal memorandum that argued that the President couldn’t be guilty of obstruction of justice and then put forward that conclusion is his misleading “summary” of the Mueller report. He is clearly redacting that report to help lessen the damage it will do to Trump and his allies. He has put forth the accusation that the Trump campaign was spied on, yet acknowledges that he has no proof of that assertion. It would seem that he is willing to say or do almost anything to please the president and forward his agenda.
Except for Fox News, most political pundits have now come to this conclusion. However, early on, I heard many say that they thought that Barr was “an institutionalist” and would behave appropriately. I never believed this and unfortunately I was correct. It was obvious to me that William Barr is a hack and has always been a hack.
When he was Attorney General under George H.W. Bush, Barr was instrumental in the pardons of key figures in the Iran-Contra scandal. The late conservative columnist William Safire described him as "Cover-up General Barr". He behaved badly and corruptly then, so why is it any surprise he would do so now?
Some pundits described Barr has having a very successful career and they are now surprised he would jeopardize his reputation. I don’t know enough about his career to argue what the word “success” means, other than he made a lot of money. But I tend to doubt that he did a lot of pro bono work for the poor or wrongfully accused. The notion he had a great deal of respect despite his participation in covering up the Iran-Contra scandal speaks to the vacuous moral center of the Washington pundit class. It almost doesn’t matter what one does in office as long as you have reached a certain level.
So now people are starting to look fondly back on George W. Bush despite that fact he lied to get us into the Iraq War and sanctioned torture. We glorify his father, George H.W. Bush, in death forgetting his long legacy of bad policies and corruption.
The desire to find “common ground” with your political opponents requires that both sides want the same thing. It also requires that we don’t forget the past. When William Barr was first nominated the Democrats should have been screaming from the rafters, “Barr is going to cover up for Trump like he did for Bush!” They should have been screaming that he has relatives working for Trump. Instead, initially, he was given the imprimatur of respectability, which was obviously unwarranted from the beginning and makes it more difficult to attack him now.
I wrote this in a previous essay, but it bears repeating:
“Pundits and many Democrats frequently search for ‘reasonable’ Republicans who they pray and hope will demonstrate some principles and courage. They are almost always disappointed. They’re like Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football. But it’s more than that. Because they have to work with Republicans in order to allow the government to function, and because Democrats, for the most part, abide by norms, there is a desperate desire to find the good in their colleagues who haven’t earned it. I call this Battered Democrat Syndrome.”
Amnesia and this syndrome go hand in hand. It’s time that we stop giving the right-wing the benefit of the doubt because we wish it were so. As the late Maya Angelou said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”