Here's my worry about this whole mess.... [View All]

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Fitzgerald could bring indictments to many bush administration officials and what I'm afraid would happen is:

30% of the population who are highly informed politically charged liberals/democrats will cheer and be able to discuss every aspect of thsi case. We will all take it as justification and vindication of our feelings from the past 6+ years.

30% of the population who are politically charged rabid conservatives/republicans will lap up every single fabricated talking point and will decry this as the liberals/democrats playing sour grapes again. No amount of evidence or argument presented will convince any of the people in this group that Bush or anyone in his administration did anything wrong or that they are anything less than great, true, patriotic americans trying to keep us all safe.

The 40% of people in the middle who may lean one way or another but ultimately don't have the time or the desire to follow the nuances of such a specific, fairly complicated case will at first not know what to make of any of it. But all they will hear are the snapshot soundbites of talking heads since inevitably the media will present "both sides". These people will then fall back on their age old excuse that "it seems like both sides are just playing politics here" and as a result shut it out because there is nothing particularly glamorous about the case. They will go back to their day to day lives and wonder why the media and politicans are spending so much time talking about this case when they should be focusing on "my high taxes.....high gas prices.....illegal immigrants...." or any other number of "if it's not in front of my face then I don't care about it" issues. These people, unfortunately the same ones who swing elections won't even have this in the list of the top 100 most important things they care about or think about come election day 2006 or 2008 and instead will be falling for whatever spin the republicans are dishing out through the media around that time.

We can all sit here all day and yap about this endlessly but I would bet any amount of money that this is going to be the end result of all of this. I hope I'm wrong and this isn't a "sky is falling" post because if there are indictments and convictions then justice will be served and that is the most important thing. But if people are expecting a political tide change from this I'm afraid we'll be very dissapointed.