Condemned to Repeat History

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

This quotation from George Santayana seems apt given the travails of another George. The president's prep-school insouciant contempt for the lessons of history must surely be taking it toil. For those who read history, today's headlines is a story twice-told, an exercise in déjà vu, tragedy, and farce. A quagmire abroad with no end in sight, an administration with eroding credability, and a president hurtling towards a constitutional crisis is merely a replay of the the stupidity and dishonesty from the LBJ-Nixon era and other eras before that as well.

At present, the only hope that I see for the Republicans-- and this is a long shot-- is to collude with the Democrats to immediately impeach Bush and Cheney, hoping that the continuing downward spiral in Democratic hands will be sufficient to throw the election back into the hands of the Republicans. But the polls show that the current administration continues to hold a strong albeit weakening base, so I don't view impeachment as likely. The more likely scenerio will be a Democratic sweep of the executive branch and Congress in 2008, cynically facilitated by the Democrats allowing the president to continue to dig his way to disaster while Americans continue to die in Iraq for nothing. And this may prepare the way for possibly eight years of Democratic governance and the ascendency of as many as five liberal Supreme Court justices.