Democrats should pay attention to what Carl Bernstein wrote about subpoenas

Think about it this way: what if the Democrats are ultimately wrong in their conclusion that President Bush knowingly mislead the American people about Iraq?  What if the Administration could not have responded any better than they did in the wake of hurricane Katrina?  What if neither Bush nor Cheney had anything to do with the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame?  Or, what if many of the angry former Administration officials were incorrect about the charge that the Vice President's office was at the center of the disinformation effort in the lead-up to Iraq?  What if?

As Carl Bernstein, one of the two reporters that broke open the Watergate scandal, wrote in his latest column in Vanity Fair Magazine, the American people will never know what led to the missteps by this Administration until the Legislative Branch acts as a genuine check on the Executive by using its subpoena power:

Perhaps there are facts or mitigating circumstances, given theextraordinary nature of conceiving and fighting a war on terror, thatjustify some of the more questionable policies and conduct of thispresidency, even those that turned a natural disaster in New Orleansinto a catastrophe of incompetence and neglect. But the truth is wehave no trustworthy official record of what has occurred in almost anyaspect of this administration, how decisions were reached, and evenwhat the actual policies promulgated and approved by the president are.Nor will we, until the subpoena powers of the Congress are used (as inWatergate) to find out the facts—not just about the war in Iraq, almostevery aspect of it, beginning with the road to war, but other essentialelements of Bush's presidency, particularly the routine disregard fortruthfulness in the dissemination of information to the American peopleand Congress.

The first fundamental question that needs to beanswered by and about the president, the vice president, and theirpolitical and national-security aides, from Donald Rumsfeld toCondoleezza Rice, to Karl Rove, to Michael Chertoff, to Colin Powell,to George Tenet, to Paul Wolfowitz, to Andrew Card (and a dozenothers), is whether lying, disinformation, misinformation, andmanipulation of information have been a basic matter of policy—used tooverwhelm dissent; to hide troublesome truths and inconvenient datafrom the press, public, and Congress; and to defend the president andhis actions when he and they have gone awry or utterly failed.

Mostof what we have learned about the reality of this administration—andthe disconcerting mind-set and decision-making process of PresidentBush himself—has come not from the White House or the Pentagon or theDepartment of Homeland Security or the Treasury Department, but frominsider accounts by disaffected members of the administration aftertheir departure, and from distinguished journalists, and, in the caseof a skeletal but hugely significant body of information, from aspecial prosecutor. And also, of late, from an aide-de-camp to theBritish prime minister. Almost invariably, their accounts have revealedwhat the president and those serving him have deliberatelyconcealed—torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, and its apparentauthorization by presidential fiat; wholesale N.S.A. domesticwiretapping in contravention of specific prohibitive law; brutalinterrogations of prisoners shipped secretly by the C.I.A. and U.S.military to Third World gulags; the nonexistence of W.M.D. in Iraq; therole of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney's chief of staff in divulging thename of an undercover C.I.A. employee; the non-role of Saddam Husseinand Iraq in the events of 9/11; the death by friendly fire of PatTillman (whose mother, Mary Tillman, told journalist Robert Scheer,"The administration tried to attach themselves to his virtue and thenthey wiped their feet with him"); the lack of a coherent post-invasionstrategy for Iraq, with all its consequent tragedy and loss anddestabilizing global implications; the failure to coordinate economicpolicies for America's long-term financial health (including themisguided tax cuts) with funding a war that will drive the nationaldebt above a trillion dollars; the assurance of Wolfowitz (sincerewarded by Bush with the presidency of the World Bank) that Iraq's oilreserves would pay for the war within two to three years after theinvasion; and Bush's like-minded confidence, expressed to Blair, thatserious internecine strife in Iraq would be unlikely after the invasion. (read full column here)

This right here is the best theme the Democrats can use to convince the public that we need a new Congress.  Instead of threatening to censure or impeach Bush, the Democrats ought to remind the American people that all they want is to uncover the the truth about this trillion-dollar war.  Therefore, the Democrats will propose to do in January of 2007 what the Republicans have yet to do since the very beginning of this Administration: exercise their legislative subpoena power to call in witnesses and get real answers.  They can say the following:

"Isn't it insulting that the only reason why the American people now know the failures of this Administration is because a few of its members defected and told reporters, and because one prosecutor by the name of Patrick Fitzgerald is conducting an investigation?  Imagine how misinformed we would be if none of those people came forward?  How much less would the American people know today?  Even more thought-provoking, how much more information is there that all of us still don't know yet?  Do we have to wait for more members to of Bush's cabinet to defect before finding the truth?  Or instead, should we not wait and start investigating this today by electing lawmakers that will promise to exercise their subpoena power?  We owe it to the taxpayers and the many generations of Americans that will help pay down the cost of this war to uncover the truth."

That is exactly how Democrats ought to approach the 2006 elections.  Their theme ought to be "full disclosure, because a great nation deserves the truth" (borrowing part of a slogan from AmericaBlog.org).  My view is analogous to what Franklin Roosevelt said in his first inaugural address: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."  In this case, the only thing the Administration has to fear after this November is truth itself.