Under Junior, they no longer even paid lip service to pretense. They did so many flagrantly wrong and illegal things in the open, or nearly so, in part undoubtedly because of arrogant utter contempt for We The People and those who are supposed to serve us (and that contempt was warranted, in a way, because they were never seriously called on their behavior by anybody). Politicians have always been dishonest (many, anyway) and self-serving, have long been owned by corporate interests in countries like this, and have done a lot of questionable and outright illegal things behind closed doors -- Nixon was one of the first to be caught, or at least reported on, and his actions and failings were child's play compared to those of today's neocons.

War crimes are pretty much inevitable to some degree in war, torture has long been performed by agencies of this country and most others, and unwarranted wars far outnumber those with real cause. But during the Bush II maladministration we saw levels of such excess perhaps rise even higher than they likely were before and, more to the point, do so in plain view. Clinton was impeached over something that should never have been an issue and Bush, Cheney et al. get away with murder, literally, in a Bizarro USA where torture has become official policy and talked about in the open by politicians. Big difference. And, I suspect, although lots of this bad stuff's been happening forever even when it was officially illegal, okaying it on any level will only make it more widespread, more entrenched, and far worse in its extent.