Justice, In This Instance

This morning, the President-Elect told George Stephanopolos that he was "leaving the door open" on the possibility of investigating the Bush administration for "potential crimes." Here's the full story.

The implications stemming from such an investigation deserve careful, public consideration.

On the one hand, we have the obvious list of potentially criminal things the Bush administration did, repeated so frequently even in this blog that I will not subject you to a printed retelling of it, allowing you to stop the list in your head when it has reached sufficient size to make the point.

On the other hand, in jobs where almost any mistake you make probably violates a law, this sort of after-the-fact prosecution is precisely why Dick Cheney is trying to withhold his records. That and he's a sneaky git, but this is a credible reason. The term "corrupt politician" can sometimes seem like a redundancy, and in general individuals who break the law while holding office should be held accountable for their actions. But the last eight years have seen a systematic, methodical effort to undermine the structure of the US government carried on not just at the highest levels, but across large areas of entire departments. Prosecuting the handful of individuals who might eventually be held to account for this seems inadequate to the scale of what has occurred.

In a nation ruled by laws, no person or office should be allowed to rise above them, but shouldn't our effort be focused on mapping out the degree to which Bush et al have violated the public trust, and then trying to ensure that their legion transgressions can't be repeated? I for one would take no solace in seeing an Alberto Gonzalez behind bars. I would be greatly heartened to learn that an oversight mechanism that would actually do its job had been created to keep someone else in his position from filling the justice department with lawyers who had passed an ideological litmus test. The President Elect is probably correct when he says, "We must avoid any temptation simply to move on." But we must equally avoid any temptation simply to punish for the sake of vengeance. I believe that justice, in this instance, is better served by the pursuit of improved government in the future than by an exact accounting for past crimes.