Frank Rich: Bush's "Quiet Coup" Worse Than Musharraf's Blatant One
Frank Rich's latest Sunday column, "http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/opinion/11rich.html " target="_self">The http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/opinion/11rich.html ">Coup at Home," was for a couple of days the 1# most emailed Times story, and one can easily see why it would be catnip to the Times' liberal readership. 
Rich made unhinged comparisons of Pakistan dictator Pervez Musharraf to President George W. Bush and accused Republican presidential candidates of "running for dictator."
"But there's another moral to draw from the Musharraf story, and it has to do with domestic policy, not foreign. The Pakistan mess, as The New York Times editorial page aptly named it, is not just another blot on our image abroad and another instance of our mismanagement of the war on Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It also casts a harsh light on the mess we have at home in America, a stain that will not be so easily eradicated.
"In the six years of compromising our principles since 9/11, our democracy has so steadily been defined down that it now can resemble the supposedly aspiring democracies we've propped up in places like Islamabad. Time has taken its toll. We've become inured to democracy-lite. That's why a Mukasey can be elevated to power with bipartisan support and we barely shrug.
"This is a signal difference from the Vietnam era, and not necessarily for the better. During that unpopular war, disaffected Americans took to the streets and sometimes broke laws in an angry assault on American governmental institutions. The Bush years have brought an even more effective assault on those institutions from within. While the public has not erupted in riots, the executive branch has subverted the rule of law in often secretive increments. The results amount to a quiet coup, ultimately more insidious than a blatant putsch like General Musharraf's."
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"This is most apparent in the Republican presidential race, where most of the candidates seem to be running for dictator and make no apologies for it. They're falling over each other to expand Gitmo, see who can promise the most torture and abridge the largest number of constitutional rights. The front-runner, Rudy Giuliani, boasts a proven record in extralegal executive power grabs, Musharraf-style: After 9/11 he tried to mount a coup, floating the idea that he stay on as mayor in defiance of New York's term-limits law."
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"Wrong track is a euphemism. We are a people in clinical depression. Americans know that the ideals that once set our nation apart from the world have been vandalized, and no matter which party they belong to, they do not see a restoration anytime soon."
"Curious how, in one of the greatest examples of how our system works exactly as it is supposed to, the people have spoken in congressional elections and declared themselves divided, a sorely tested balance of powers has shown itself still in balance, with a free and lively election to replace this controversial and allegedly dictatorial president underway, this is when the call for revolution is raised."
