Last week Bush took time off from explaining his plan to “save” Social Security long enough to focus on the nomination of John Bolton, a unique choice of a perennial UN baiter and “go it alone” zealot to serve as ambassador to the international body. Needless to say, such a choice is meant to send a message to the world about Bushie attitudes toward the UN specifically and the world community in general.

It troubled Bush that Republican senators like George Voinovich of Ohio and Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island would experience conscience pangs about voting for Bolton. Naturally Bush saw opposition to Bolton’s nomination as political partisanship and urged steering clear of politics in addressing the “people’s business.” This is the same Bush who supports the so-called “nuclear option” to eliminate any debate concerning any federal judicial nominee he sends up to Capitol Hill.

The blunt reality is that there has been considerably less opposition to Bush nominees than the stone wall resistance with which Bill Clinton was greeted when he sent up considerably better qualified nominees than the right wing zealots, frequently religious extremists, that Bush sends up for confirmation. The lesson is clear: To support Bush without reservation is patriotic and in the people’s interest and to do the opposite is unpatriotic.

The message had a familiar ring. When Richard Nixon was on the ropes, his administration imploding over the ravages of Watergate, he finally after a long hiatus held a presidential news conference on a sunny summer day in 1973 at the Summer White House in San Clemente, California. When reporters finally had a chance to question the beleaguered chief executive then drowning in Watergate quicksand, questions naturally emphasized that egregious scandal, which would ultimately destroy his presidency.

Nixon responded in a pseudo patriotic note so reminiscent of Bush and Cheney. “So far all the questions have dealt with Watergate,” Nixon noted. “What about discussing the people’s business?” The people’s business is whatever a demagogic politician such as Nixon or Bush defines. The message is clear; Big Brother will do the defining. If Watergate is outside our described ambit we will tell you so. Bush has the same answer for the Bolton nomination, weapons of mass destruction, or anything else that can potentially injure his cause.

Consider another parallel between Nixon and Bush. In Nixon’s case it was learned years later through the Freedom of Information Act and the potential for declassifying documents and rendering them public, that during the 1968 presidential race Nixon, through the intercession of his foreign policy adviser Henry Kissinger and prominent international Republican operative Anna Chenault, used a diplomatic back channel to reach South Vietnam’s leadership and destroy peace talks between the Johnson Administration, South Vietnam, North Vietnam, and the Viet Cong.

It was later learned that the same basic terms were being offered in the fall of 1968 that would be ultimately accepted by Nixon after his 1972 reelection victory. This came after roughly half of the close to sixty thousand U.S. lives that were lost in the Vietnam War occurred, not to mention the widespread defoliation of North Vietnam.

In the case of Bush a war was launched in defiance of international accords that we advocated and achieved following World War Two and that were then adopted as part of U.S. law. Intelligence was skewed with Dick Cheney supplying unprecedented direct pressure as vice president with special trips to Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters. The bombs were dropped despite pleas from UN weapons inspector Hans Blix to provide additional time to determine if the alleged weapons of mass destruction said to be possessed by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein actually existed. Fearing that the report would come back negative, which it ultimately did, the Cheney-Bush Junta chose instead to immediately attack.

One operational pattern distinguishes Nixon from Bush, and it is disturbing. In the case of Nixon he sought to keep his chicanery under wraps. He would do one thing and say another when political circumstances dictated. We now see in George Bush a chief executive drowning in hubris, arrogantly telling us that the law is whatever the king deems it to be, whether the issue is weapons of mass destruction or judicial appointments.

Let us remember that in the seventies we actually had a Democratic Party serving in opposition. Articles of impeachment were introduced and Nixon ultimately resigned when Republicans like Senator Barry Goldwater were astute enough to see the handwriting on the wall for their party and the nation if Nixon continued in office. They joined vigilant Democrats who were also concerned about the nation’s future.

Now we have an arrogant Bush, after it was clearly established that there were no weapons of mass destruction, responding, “What’s the difference?” Indeed, there is a wide expanse of difference. How nice it would be if some vigilant congressman or congressmen would frame those differences within articles of impeachment.