David Broder, August 19, 1998, Echoes of Nixon (Lexis-Nexis):

Seven months too late, President Bill Clinton has offered a semi-honest account of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky in a desperate bid to hold onto his office and avoid legal charges that could lead to impeachment.

He said in that tight-lipped speech Monday night that “it’s nobodys business but ours,” meaning himself and his family. Would that it were so. But he made it the nation’s business – first by showing utter disrespect for the high office he holds and second by refusing all this time to do what he alone could do: Clear up the matter. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who reported the Watergate story for The Washington Post, have been arguing for months that consensual sex between adults is not the same thing as organizing a secret police operation in the White House and involving the FBI and the CIA in the coverup of crimes. But in one respect what Clinton has done is every bit as bad as what Richard Nixon did. Like Nixon, who knew from the moment the Watergate break-in occurred what had really happened, Clinton knew from the first moment he was questioned about the White House intern what had been going on between them. Instead of owning up and taking “complete responsibility,” he lied. The selfishness of that act is staggering. Clinton acted – and still, even in his supposed mea culpa, acts – as if he does not recognize what it means to be president of the United States. Like Nixon, he has done things of importance for the country. But in every important way he has diminished the stature and authority of the presidency. He may hold on, but when he said of the investigation of his activities, “This has gone on too long,” his words could equally well have applied to his own tenure.

David Broder today:

Ten weeks into the new Congress, it is clear that revelation, not legislation, is going to be its real product.

While President Bush threatens to use his veto pen to stop some bills and Senate Republicans block other measures from even reaching his desk, no force in Washington can halt the Democrats’ investigative juggernaut from uncovering the secrets inside this administration.

The Justice Department, the Department of Veterans Affairs and parts of the Pentagon already have undergone investigations by House and Senate committees. Similar excursions are almost certainly in store for the Labor Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Homeland Security — indeed, any part of the federal establishment that affects people’s lives and touches on vital interests.

And in every case, inquiring minds will look for links to the White House and its burgeoning bureaucracy of young Republican activists, some of whom have ridden herd on the agencies and departments with breathtaking arrogance.

The previously anonymous aides in the White House counsel’s office and the political affairs section headed by Karl Rove, whose names appear in the e-mails that led to the now- controversial firing of eight U.S. attorneys, are hardly the only self-important White House employees to order Cabinet officers around.

For the first six years of the Bush administration, these aides were allowed free rein to carry out whatever policy or political assignments they wished — or supposed that the president wanted done. A Congress under firm Republican control was somnolent when it came to oversight of the executive branch. No Republican committee chairman wanted to turn over rocks in a Republican administration.

You have to feel a twinge of sympathy now for the Bush appointees who suddenly find unsympathetic Democratic chairmen such as Henry Waxman, John Conyers, Patrick Leahy and Carl Levin investigating their cases. Even if those appointees are scrupulously careful about their actions now, who knows what subpoenaed memos and e-mails in their files will reveal about the past?

They will pay the price for the temporary breakdown in the system of checks and balances that occurred between 2001 and this year — when the Republican Congress forgot its responsibility to hold the executive branch accountable…

Accountability is certainly important, but Democrats must know that people were really voting for action on Iraq, health care, immigration, energy and a few other problems. Investigations are useful, but only legislation on big issues changes lives.

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