What we have to look forward to

It's grim, but I think Atrios is exactly right:

We need a Democratic president so that the Republicans and their Blue Dog allies in Congress are finally inspired to take back the executive power grabs that they temporarily thought were necessary for the survival of the nation.

What this will mean in practice is that Democratic president will face a firestorm of "scandal" which will make Monica Madness pale in comparison. The powers that Bush claimed will be turned against a Democratic president and will likely be their undoing.

And this scenario is much better than the alternative.

I wish I thought that was too cynical, but I don't. Digby elaborates:

A Democratic president, no matter who it is, is going to pay for the Republicans' sins. But it won't be just because the Republicans and Blue Dogs in congress suddenly "realize" they have co-equal power. I predict that the right wing noise machine will shout far and wide that the election was stolen (probably with the help of "illegal aliens.") The new president will not be allowed to weed out even one right wing plant anywhere in the executive branch without being accused of politicizing it. There will be no executive privilege as the courts rediscover their "responsibilities." Scientists and experts will all be accused of being shills for the liberal special interests. The president will be accused of violating Americans' civil liberties and destroying the constitution. There will be widespread accusations of fraud and corruption and non-stop investigations.

In other words the Republicans are going to accuse the Democratic president of everything we know the Bush administration did. And because it was never fully investigated or even fully discussed, people will lay the sins at the feet of the Democratic president and feel a sense of relief that the balance of power is being restored and Washington is finally being cleaned up.

I have only one thing to add to all of this: any time any one of us objects to all of this, any time we complain that Bush was allowed to spit on the constitution, spend the country into the poorhouse, appoint his corrupt and incompetent friends to important jobs, and lie any time he wanted to, whereas the new Democratic president is being tarred and feathered for any imagined offense some Republican operative can feed the media with a straight face, what we're going to hear is this:

"You hypocrite. You claimed for eight years that you wanted more government accountability. Now that you've got it, all you can do is complain! Clearly you are a partisan hack."

It's been a long eight years, and it's gonna be a long next eight, let's face it.