For a mercifully fleeting moment, Ed Schultz was considered a possible candidate for Senate.
It came in the wake of Sen. Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, announcing in January 2010 that he would not seek re-election. Speculation briefly centered on Schultz running to succeed Dorgan until Schultz adamantly denied he had any intention of doing so.
On Friday, Schultz demonstrated why he is unfit for public office or anything resembling genuine power over other people. It came during a conversation with a caller to Schultz's radio show after the caller complained that "war criminals" in the Bush administration were "not held accountable" for their crimes (audio) --
SCHULTZ: So you think that as soon as Barack Obama got in he should have pivoted right on back to the Bush administration and gone after them for war crimes?
CALLER: Without a doubt. That's what everybody wanted. That's what we do to other, you know, we're talking about Libya now. Immediately he said Gadhafi was going to be held for wars against, I mean, crimes against humanity. So what can we do with our own war criminals?
SCHULTZ: Yeah.
CALLER: I mean, why be so hypocritical about it?
SCHULTZ: Well, you know, the answer to it all was that impeachment was off the table. That's what Nancy Pelosi said. That was of course before the 2008 election. The president trying to lift the country's spirits and accomplish something, ran into one filibuster after another. If I had been president, having run into one filibuster after another, I'd have given them about a year. And then I would have turned and gone after the Bush administration -- all right, look, you don't want to work, I've tried to work with you, you've filibustered everything, I can play this game too. And President Obama just didn't want to do that.
Obama, to his credit, just didn't want to do that -- "that" being a thuggish abuse of power. Not surprisingly, no such qualms from Schultz.
By his own admission, Schultz would have "gone after the Bush administration" not based on evidence of illegality by its officials, but because of entirely legal legislative maneuvering by congressional Republicans in a separate branch of government. In other words, Schultz would break the law by pursuing politically-motivated prosecutions against those not breaking the law.
I'm not the only conservative who has compared Schultz to the roly-poly doofus Sgt. Schultz of the old "Hogan's Heroes" sit-com. But the more I think of it, the comparison is unfair. Unlike Ed Schultz, Sgt. Schultz, even on his worst day, was a half-hearted national socialist.
