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November 3, 2008

Time to make it happen.

Now that's my kind of presidential portrait.

A few miles away, thousands of people streamed into JFK Stadium at Parkview High School on Saturday for a late-night rally. But Mr. Obama stayed on his chartered Boeing 757 as he spoke by conference call to thousands of his team leaders around the country, the volunteers who form the ranks of an army that he hopes will give him an edge in the waning hours of the presidential race.

As he pressed his right hand to his forehead, his sober expression seemed at odds with the confident gleam in the eyes of his advisers. While Mr. Obama smiles less than he once did, gauging his mood simply by looking at him is risky: his baseline cool temperament has seldom spiked along the rocky points of his journey.

Even Keel for Obama in Final Turn to Election (NY Times)

We are now just one day away from what I hope will be a resounding victory for Barack Obama as the next president of the United States.

In that one day, it's incumbent on all us to get our asses out to vote (standing in torturously long lines to do so, if necessary) and to make sure that our friends, neighbors, and families to the same. We've come too far to let up now.

A lot of my favorite bloggers are writing their summing-up to the campaign, outlining their closing arguments on why electing Barack Obama is crucial at this moment in American history.

So here's mine, in the form of a conversation on Bill Moyers Journal a little over a year ago.

Three bland white guys you should watch immediately.

It features Bruce Fein, a former Reagan administration official, conservative activist and Constitutional scholar, making a powerful case that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should be impeached. Fein wrote the first article of impeachment against Bill Clinton in 1998, and early in the conversation he explains why the crimes of Bush and Cheney were worse than Clinton's:

[Bush] is seeking, more institutionally, to cripple the checks and balances and the authority of Congress and the Judiciary to superintend his assertions of power.

He has claimed the authority to tell Congress they don't have any right to know what he's doing with relation to spying on American citizens, using that information any way that he wants, in contradiction to a Federal statute called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He's claimed authority to say that he can kidnap people, throw them into dungeons abroad, dump them out in Siberia, without any political or legal accountability.

These are standards that are totally anathema to a democratic society devoted to the rule of law.

The march of time and a lack of political will may have taken impeachment "off the table" (Nancy Pelosi's words), but this conversation is a valuable reminder of what has happened to our country under the Bush-Cheney administration and a challenge to us as citizens to study our mistakes and repair some egregious damage.

Set aside for a moment John McCain's regressive economic agenda, his recklessly belligerent foreign policy, his campaign rhetoric that sought to exploit his listeners' most fearful and ignorant impulses, his refusal to recant campaign ads filled with outright lies, his cavalier selection of a proudly mediocre and manifestly unqualified vice-presidential candidate, and his general all-around impression as a cranky old bully whose attention to detail and ability to focus seem to be quickly slipping away.

Set aside Barack Obama's well-considered and reality-based proposals regarding the economy, the environment, foreign policy, energy, education, immigration, and health care, his unflappable and informed approach to problem-solving, and his ability to bury a three-point shot under ridiculous pressure.

Consider instead the terrible damage done to our constitutional government over the last eight years. George W. Bush and his enablers have sought (often successfully) to upend the crucial balance of power between the three branches of government in pursuit of an unbridled "unitary executive" with the power to dictate law and suppress dissent. Through secrecy and stonewalling, they've adamantly refused to submit to even the minimal Congressional oversight crucial to a semi-trasparent democracy.

It is a vital and thankless task for the Obama administration to undo the damage done by Bush to the constitutional order of our government before this power grab becomes permanent, as it would under John McCain. Our Constitution establishes a powerful presidency, but we must not let it become a monarchy.

Take a few minutes for a look back at nearly eight years of very fucked-up governance:

Tough Talk on Impeachment (Bill Moyers Journal)

See you at the polls.