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http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20060206&s=vidal

Gore Vidal savages Bush, in his own highly learned way. Of course, he’s preaching to the converted – anyone who reads Gore Vidal is unlikely to be voting for Bush in the first place. This, then, is another piece to make thinking Americans or the rest of the world shake their heads in disbelief at the rapidly sinking American ship of state.

When the admirable Tiberius (he has had an undeserved bad press), upon becoming emperor, received a message from the Senate in which the conscript fathers assured him that whatever legislation he wanted would be automatically passed by them, he sent back word that this was outrageous. “Suppose the emperor is ill or mad or incompetent?” He returned their message. They sent it again. His response: “How eager you are to be slaves.” I often think of that wise emperor when I hear Republican members of Congress extolling the wisdom of Bush. Now that he has been caught illegally wiretapping fellow citizens he has taken to snarling about his powers as “a wartime president,” and so, in his own mind, he is above each and every law of the land.

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