Truth - Al Franken [121]
Bush was finally forced to use his veto. After first vetoing the Waxman-Castle Universal Prenatal Care Act, the President soon became so busy vetoing worthwhile legislation that he was forced to borrow Donald Rumsfeld’s Autopen. But because Bush neglected to reprogram the Autopen, the first ten bills were “vetoed” by Donald Rumsfeld and, thus, became law.
Bush tried to take credit for the precipitous drop in infant mortality, the expansion of rural broadband Internet access, and the increase in the minimum wage. But because of the liberal infrastructure’s new ability to rapidly expose the President’s flip-floppery, the credit went instead to Democrats in Congress and, to a lesser extent, to the secretary of defense.
Unfortunately for Donald Rumsfeld, all the undeserved popularity in the world couldn’t protect him from the subpoena power of Henry Waxman’s Committee on Government Reform. As investigation after investigation uncovered ever deeper layers of corruption, fourteen fifteenths of the president’s cabinet was forced to resign, leaving Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta pretty much in charge.
The stage was set for the 2008 presidential elections.
Our party was fortunate to be blessed with a field of outstanding candidates. But thanks to your granddad’s early and vocal support, we selected the perfect nominee without a long and bruising primary campaign. Some criticized me for getting behind the President so early, but my gutsy move put me on the cover of Newsweek with the headline: “The Kingmaker?” Your Uncle Howard Fineman and I still fight about that question mark, but he points out that it certainly didn’t hurt me in my victorious 2008 Senate race.
The President won in a landslide, defeating Republican nominee Bill Frist, whom Karl Rove had been advising from prison. (Not because of Plame. He punched a cop.) And not only did we gain an additional forty seats in the House, but we took the Senate. It was the happiest day of my life, except for the day I married Grandma, the days your parents were born, the days each of you were born, and the day I’m about to tell you about.
Can you guess which day that is? That’s right, Barack. The quickie impeachment of George W. Bush.
Yes, kids, it was an actual historical event before it became a popular Saturday morning cartoon show. As you no doubt have learned from the cartoon, each new Congress is sworn in a few weeks before the presidential inauguration. The old president, in this case, George W. Bush, becomes a lame duck.
The quickie impeachment was your grandfather’s idea. Everyone in our caucus said, “Why bother? He’ll be out of power on January 20 whether we impeach him or not. Why do it?”
My answer, “Because we can,” led to my second Newsweek cover.
Besides, I wanted to usher in an era of personal responsibility. And what better way of kicking it off?
But it wasn’t until I proposed my Grand Bargain that the caucus and, it would turn out, virtually the entire House and Senate fell in love with the idea. Here’s how it worked. In exchange for impeaching and voting to convict George W. Bush of the many high crimes and misdemeanors that the House investigations had uncovered, Democrats would agree to share power with their Republican colleagues, giving them a few committee chairmanships in an unprecedented Unity Congress. Unlike the GOP, we were magnanimous in victory, and gave some authority to those Republicans who weren’t crazy or big jerks.
On January 18, 2009, President Bush was impeached, convicted, and began drinking again, all in the space of a single afternoon. America