The sands of time have faded my memory of the Iran-Contra affair, but I do distinctly remember being impressed at the age of seventeen/eighteen that the right-wing was willing to go beyond excusing the illegal behavior of Oliver North and actually make him out to be a hero. The basic argument then as I understood it, was twofold. First, President Reagan was justified in defying the express prohibition of Congress on spending any money on the Contras because Reagan was fighting communists. Second, Ollie North was justified in obeying illegal orders because those orders came from the president. Of course, the Iran side of the scandal tended to get ignored, but the goal of securing the release of hostages was generally acknowledged to be a worthy goal.

I think Democrats took a kind of mischievous pleasure in pointing out the hypocrisy of the Reagan/Bush administration when it came to supplying advanced weaponry to the Iranians after pledging to never negotiate with terrorists and kidnappers. But that was a much more political criticism than a truly substantive one. Everyone seemed to recognize the legitimacy of taking unorthodox approaches to securing the freedom of American captives.

The real outrage was reserved for the secret funding of the Contras, because that was a direct challenge to the authority of Congress and a clear-cut violation of the law. And, even though the question of whether we should help arm and train the Contras was a contentious one, almost no one (except Dick Cheney) thought what the Reagan administration did by funneling money to the Contras was (or should be) legal.

In fact, despite some misdirection by the Republicans, the clear, unambiguous nature of the crime was so clear that the problem for Congress and the Establishment press became less a matter of meting out punishment and more a matter of artfully avoiding doing so. It was very quickly determined that there was no appetite for impeaching and removing Reagan from office. Yet, hearings were held, a congressional investigation was undertaken, and a special prosecutor was appointed who did throw several officials in prison and forced President Bush to pardon others (on Christmas Eve, 1992). In the end, the congressional response was inadequate and must be considered a grave and consequential mistake.

At least three problems resulted from Congress’s inadequate response. First, Congress diminished its power vis-a-vis the executive branch by not standing up for its own rights. Second, many of the Iran-Contra criminals went into dormancy only to reemerge as members of the second Bush administration. Third, from a partisan political point of view, the Democrats lost an opportunity to (rightfully) damage Reagan’s legacy and G.H.W. Bush’s political viability, and gained nothing by refusing to define down the grounds for impeachment. It would be defined down by the Republicans soon enough.

For all of these sins, the Democrats would pay, and the nation would pay double, when the second Bush/Cheney administration came to power.

I don’t want a country where each new administration feels obliged to investigate and humiliate the one they succeeded. But to fail to do so in this case out of some false sense of magnanimity would be to repeat a mistake we made in the 1980’s. And, there is simply no comparison between the criminality involved in defying Congress on a funding matter in foreign affairs and suspending the first and fourth amendments of the Constitution, blowing off the Posse Comitatus Act, violating treaties, torturing people, committing perjury and obstruction of justice and contempt of Congress, destroying records, refusing to abide by the Presidential Records Act, politicizing the Justice Department, fixing intelligence, and destroying whistleblowers.

The reason the nation needs an investigation is to protect the balance of powers and vindicate the rule of law. The Democrats need to do it to prove they can learn from their mistakes.