Jan
28
The imperial presidency done right
Written by Willy Ritch | Filed Under Uncategorized |
[photopress:bushqueen.jpg,full,pp_image]When it comes to building an imperial presidency, George Bush makes Richard Nixon look like a hack. One of Nixon’s problems was the devotion that a few members of his Administration showed to the Constitution. President Bush, on the other hand, has been smart enough to surround himself with people who don’t even dare question his judgments, let alone challenge him when he flaunts constitutional principles.
A prime example is the handmaiden now running the Justice Department, Alberto Gonzales. We learned late last week that Gonzales is using a little known provision in the Patriot Act (did anybody actually read that bill?) to fill vacant US attorney positions with right wing lawyers who have shown a willingness to do the Administration’s bidding. The appointments are seen as an end run on Congress, since they avoid the Senate confirmation hearings that US attorneys are supposed to face.
On Friday former Nixon lawyer John Dean wrote about the bait and switch deal that Gonzales and the Administration pulled on Sen. Arlen Specter. During negotiations on the renewal of the Patriot Act, Gonzales agreed that the Administration would submit to more vigorous Congressional oversight. But when it came time to sign the bill, Bush added one of his notorious signing statements which said, basically, “just kidding about the oversight thing.”
This kind of practice might be common on used car lots, but should not be common in our government. Gonzales missed the bottom line: The President had rendered Gonzales’s word worthless, and since a person is only as good as his or her word, he had thus dishonored Gonzales. Therefore, Gonzales ought to have resigned - as I believe many Attorneys General before him would have done.
Dean certainly knows what he’s talking about, having been ringside for the Saturday Night Massacre when both AG Elliot Richardson and his number 2, William Ruckelshaus resigned instead of following orders to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. It seems that Bush has learned from Nixon’s mistakes, and made sure to install a willing supplicant in the Justice Department.
In an op-ed piece called “At Ease, Mr. President” in yesterday’s New York Times, Gary Wills points out that then chief of staff Alexander Haig invoked the “Commander in Chief” line in ordering Richardson to fire Cox. Haig was playing fast and loose with the Constitution–unless you’re a member of the military, the President is most definitely not your Commander in Chief. Still, that hasn’t stopped Bush and Cheney from acting like they really are some sort of supreme rulers and they are the only ones who really know what is best for us little people.
There has never been an executive branch more fetishistic about secrecy than the Bush-Cheney one. The secrecy has been used to throw a veil over detentions, “renditions,” suspension of the Geneva Conventions and of habeas corpus, torture and warrantless wiretaps. We hear again the refrain so common in the other wars — If you knew what we know, you would see how justified all our actions are.
But we can never know what they know. We do not have sufficient clearance.
(Gene Healy of the Cato Institute was onto the same idea a week ago, writing that President Bush is “only commander of the U.S. armed forces, not commander of the nation as a whole.”)
The Administration would like us to believe that their robust interpretation of presidential authority is a necessary side effect of the war on terror. But that, of course, is looking at it backwards. The war is really a manifestation of their vision of an imperial presidency. And when Cheney responds to Congressional resolutions on the war by saying “it won’t stop us,” it’s pretty clear the Administration feels that vision has been fulfilled.
Seen through the “unitary executive” prism, issues like the legal maneuvering around detainees at Guantanamo in general and Jose Padilla in particular are seen for what they really are–battles in the war on checks and balances. Dhalia Lithwick is a legal affairs correspondent for Slate:
I once believed that the common thread here is presidential blindness — an extreme executive-branch myopia that leads the chief executive to believe that these futile measures are integral to combating terrorism; a self-delusion that precludes Bush and his advisers from recognizing that Padilla is a chump and Guantanamo Bay is just a holding pen for a jumble of innocent or half-guilty wretches.
But it has finally become clear that the goal of these efforts isn’t to win the war against terrorism. Indeed, nothing about Padilla, Guantanamo Bay or signing statements moves the country an inch closer to eradicating terrorism. The object is a larger one: expanding executive power, for its own sake.
The president is as much a prisoner of Guantanamo Bay as the detainees are. Having gone nose to nose with Congress over his authority to craft stripped-down courts, guaranteed to produce guilty verdicts, Bush cannot call off the trials. The endgame in the war against terrorism isn’t holding the line against terrorists. It’s holding the line on hard-fought claims to limitless presidential authority.
Nixon would have been proud. Actually, jealous would have been more likely.
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I just wrote to congress about impeaching Alberto Gonzales. I agree that he should be the first to be impeached, and that it will definitely help prepare the stage for Cheney and Bush impeachments:
Impeach Alberto Gonzales, a lawyer who does not comprehend, let alone uphold or defend, our Constitution, the law of our land. Impeach this “lawyer for torture” — impeach him for war crimes, crimes against our Constitution, We the People, and even more grievously, Iraq and humanity.
There is nothing new that is happening in America, or the rest of the world for that matter, that has not gone on since man became sentient. There will always be those among us who believe that the only legitimate right is power and the ruthless exercise of that power. Go to any schoolyard and you will see this being played out. The American collapse is already an historical fact. A great many citizens in this country, high and low, identify with the right of power as articulated by the neocons. Witness the fact that true Christian belief has ceased to be a check on this tendency and has instead become an enabler.
Had a birthday party this weekend. An aunt of my wife’s gave her a piece of straw from a nativity scene and told my wife that as long as she kept it safe that she would never be without money. Words fail me. Ian Anderson was right: If Jesus saves, he’d better save himself.