Goose, Gander and Murder

Trey Smith

But this is one of the towering, unanswerable hypocrisies of Democratic Party politics. The very same faction that pretended for years to be so distraught by Bush’s mere eavesdropping on and detention of accused Terrorists without due process is now perfectly content to have their own President kill accused Terrorists without due process, even when those targeted are their fellow citizens: obviously a far more Draconian and permanent abuse than eavesdropping or detention (identically, the very same faction that objected to Bush’s radical whole-world-is-a-Battlefield theory now must embrace exactly that theory to justify how someone riding in a car, or sitting at home, or sleeping in his bed, in a country where no war is declared, is “on a battlefield” at the time the CIA ends his life).
~ from Leon Panetta’s Explicitly Authoritarian Decree by Glenn Greenwald ~

In posts throughout the years, I often have referenced the English idiom, "What's good for the goose is (should be) good for the gander." Of course, the meaning of this idiom seems lost on those who participate in the realm of politics, particularly in the US!

One of the themes of Republicans for the last two decades or so has been all bout cutting the national deficit. They have harped on this one notion like it's the ONLY national issue that matters. It is such a vitally important issue that they have sought to batter the Obama administration with it and, before that, they wielded it like a giant club against the Clinton administration.

However, between these two Democratic presidencies, the nation was led by a Republican, one George W. Bush. During his eight year reign, the all important issue of reducing the national deficit all but disappeared from Republican lips. It no longer was THAT important anymore. It's a good thing for the GOP that it evaporated since Bush ran up staggering deficits!

But it's simply not Republicans who engage in this silly game. As Greenwald points out, Democrats play it just as deftly too and Barack Obama has turned out to be one of the worst offenders. On issue after issue, what he said he opposed when a Republican sat in the White House, he now embraces as he sits in the White House.

I think this offers one of the chief reasons why so many Americans are turned off by politics. With rare exceptions -- Ron Paul being one -- few politicians seem to have ANY ironclad principles anymore. What they stand for -- or what they SAY they stand for -- is calculated solely on which party holds the balance of power.

If the opposition party says all grandmothers should be thrown off of moving trains, it is morally wrong...until our party comes into power and then not only will we happily throw grandmothers off of moving trains, we'll giddily throw off grandfathers too!