How Character Corrodes

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/opinion/03dowd.html?_r=1

Recently there’s been a lot of concern expressed by Republicans in Congress over the lack of real checks and balances between the legislative and executive branches of government. This concern has been evident since the 2008 election cycle, when Democrats captured the White House and expanded their majority in Congress. Now, with the recent defecting of Arlen Specter from the the Republican to the Democratic Party, the Democrats have 59 of 100 Senate seats. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, writes about this ever-growing Republican concern in her May 6, 2009 opinion piece. In her piece, she points out that Republicans are concerned about President Obama acting with unfettered power to push his own agenda. Ms. Dowd feels that its absurd for Republicans to complain about Democrat President Obama potentially abusing his office in the same way that so many people feel that Republican President Bush did. Upon further examination, it’s hypocritical, but not necessarily absurd.

For Republicans, after years as the party in power, establishing a precedent for executive abuses, they lost that power with those bad precedents firmly in place. Now they’re worried that the Democrats will follow that same attitude of abusive power. Human nature tells us that this is possible – even likely. Happily, so far President Obama’s rhetoric and his actions haven’t proven this out. The previous administration redefined torture to include practices that it deemed necessary for extracting information from terror suspects. This administration has done the opposite. The President has called waterboarding and similar techniques torture. He has publicly spoken out against torture, not because it’s ineffective, but because it’s a shortcut that betrays our ideals as Americans. In citing Winston Churchill during WWII, he spoke of how resorting to such tactics corrodes our character as Americans. By implication, those who have already given themselves over to these shortcuts have started to rust a little.