lessons from john yoo

Glenn Greenwald has a terrific (in both senses of the word) post today about John Yoo's recent Wall Street Journal Op-Ed.

Here's Yoo's psychotic contribution to the political discourse.

I say psychotic not just for the obvious reasons, but because Yoo is no stranger to the WSJ Op-Ed page, and looking back on a 1998 appearance on the page is disconcerting, to say the least. In his earlier Op-Ed, Yoo is criticizing President Clinton's invocation of Executive Privilege. Clearly, it's nothing new to approve of the President you like and disprove of the one you don't, but it's alarming to see the exact same reasoning used for totally opposite conclusions.

Anyway, Glenn Greenwald picks this apart very nicely.

But this all brings up an important point that no one seems interested in discussing, and that is how Clinton's conduct in office laid so much of the groundwork for the unfortunate Constitutional crisis in which we are currently embroiled. Glenn Greenwald's post makes mention of the distinction between person and office in a democratic government. Follow that trail: Clinton's likeable politics, persona, whathaveyou, does not recuse him of at the very least criticism over his own actions in office, and the degree to which they expanded presidential power and routine abuse of the justice system. These issues seem to be Democrats' new mantle against Bush (justifiably so), but we won't get very far with people who disliked Clinton (there are a lot of them, and we need at least a few of their votes to ever win national elections again) unless we are honest about the role he played in getting us to this place.