“I happen to miss the constitution. I thought it was a good document.” Samantha Power.
The 2008 election has kicked off a snowstorm of books, op-eds and blog posts highlighting Where Exactly Bush Went Wrong. From the imperial presidency, to the use of torture, to the general enshrinement of unilateralism, there appears to be no end to the number of bloggers and opinion writers willing to muse about “The Terror Presidency,” and “Executive Power Gone Wild.“
It’s all very well to hypothesize. But there’s a fatal flaw. No one seems to be asking the candidates what they think, or what they might actually like to do about it.
Naturally, the fact that no one seems to be asking the candidates what they plan to do about it has provoked a torrent of bloggers bemoaning the fact that no one seems to be asking the candidates what they plan to do about it. And still no one asks the candidates. Well, some people do, but they’re in the minority. And they don’t generally get answers.
One of the best (and only) blogs entirely dedicated to the cause of “pruning back the power of the executive branch” is Pruning Shears, set up in July 2007 by Mark Allender and Dan Fejes. Their “about” statement reads:
“Since 2001, there has been a nearly unprecedented expansion of executive power in the United States government. Our constitution was crafted deliberately to maintain a system of checks and balances on all three branches of government. This blog serves to make the issue of executive power the main issue in the forthcoming 2008 presidential debates.”
Bingo. The posts are even better. “I would like to see the conversation change for this election,” says Fejes in his first post. “The real issue- the issue that undermines all other issues- is the issue of executive power.”
Rightly said. Fejes, who calls himself “a liberal in just about every respect,” appeals not just to his fellow liberals, but to those on the right. “We need you,” he writes. “We need your voices to join the chorus of outrage over the power grabs of President Bush for the last eight years. If a Conservative really is someone “disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc, or to restore traditional ones and to limit change,” then ask yourselves what change you’ve attempted to limit.”
Power is a bipartisan issue. Surely allowing the President to morph himself into an omnipotent, unstoppable, unaccountable force serves neither side well, and is exactly what the constitution is supposed to prevent? Radley Balko from “Reason” Magazine writes,
“As a libertarian, it will at least be entertaining to watch the left squirm while defending Hillary Clinton’s “right” to employ the same executive powers and engage in the same foreign policy blunders they now argue that President Bush has superceded his authority in claiming. And it’ll be equally fun to watch the right cry foul when President Hillary claims the same powers they have so vigorously fought to claim for President Bush. The problem, of course, is that entertaining as all that might be, an increasingly imperial presidency isn’t good for our republic.”
So how did all this happen? And how can we make it stop? In 2006, John Yoo wrote an op-ed in the New York Times entitled, “How The Presidency Regained Its Balance.” He writes:
“The president has broader goals than even fighting terrorism — he has long intended to make reinvigorating the presidency a priority. Vice President Dick Cheney has rightly deplored the “erosion of the powers and the ability of the president of the United States to do his job” and noted that “we are weaker today as an institution because of the unwise compromises that have been made over the last 30 to 35 years.”
It always comes back to Cheney in the end. Yoo continues:
“To his critics, Mr. Bush is a “King George” bent on an “imperial presidency.” But the inescapable fact is that war shifts power to the branch most responsible for its waging: the executive.”
Not everyone is as willing as Yoo to swallow the old “national security” chestnut. According to this post in the Daily Kos, “That national security trope is the last refuge of Cheney and Bush; one that they have relied upon time and time again to justify the executive power grab, and who knows what illegal activities.”
Bush hasn’t just agitated the bleeding heart liberals with his, ahem, undemocratic presidential stance. His “go it alone” style has alienated many of his Republican contemporaries. There’s Jack Goldsmith, whose book, “The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration” was excerpted in Slate. Goldsmith explains how he became rapidly disillusioned with his role as US Assistant Attorney General, and resigned after nine months.
“The Bush administration has operated on an entirely different concept of power that relies on minimal deliberation, unilateral action, and legalistic defense. This approach largely eschews politics: the need to explain, to justify, to convince, to get people on board, to compromise.”
Then there’s everyone’s favorite Watergate scapegoat, John Dean. In an interview with John Weiner in The Atlantic, Dean asserts that Bush’s abuse of power is “much, much worse than Watergate.”
“Look at the so-called Watergate abuses of power,” he said. “Nobody died. Nobody was tortured. Millions of Americans were not subject to electronic surveillance of their communications. We’re playing now in a whole different league.”
There are countless well-written, well-argued articles about the Bush regime, and how it became so scary and monolithic: this one, by Garrett Epps in Salon, bemoans the growth of “our uniquely powerful, politically unaccountable executive.” Then there’s Bruce Reed and Jack Shafer from Slate. Reed writes about how the go-it-alone presidency evolved out of Bush and Cheney’s “fetish for asserting power, despite inheriting the strongest presidency of anyone since FDR.” Shafer analyzes Bush’s secretive style, and how it’ll “prove to be his undoing.”
So people have noticed. To misquote Obama, “Yes they have.” The next logical step is asking the presidential candidates what they intend to do about it. And then, when they answer obliquely or don’t answer at all, trying to figure out what they’ll do by looking at their advisers and/or voting records.
Hillary Clinton seems to be the most widely debated candidate, so I’ll start with her. In this interview with Michael Tomasky in the London Guardian (ironically, the mainstream media in Europe seems to have an abiding concern for getting the candidates to address the question of executive power), Clinton declares her intent to “review” policy, with an eye to giving up some of the executive powers accumulated by her predecessor.
“I think it is clear that the power grab undertaken by the Bush-Cheney administration has gone much further than any other president and has been sustained for longer. Other presidents, like Lincoln, have had to take on extraordinary powers but would later go to the Congress for either ratification or rejection…We’re in a new territory here. And I think that I’m gonna have to review everything they’ve done because I’ve been on the receiving end of that.”
It sounds good, but does she mean it? Matthew Yglesias in the Atlantic isn’t convinced:
“Basically, she’s telling liberals she’ll roll back executive power but she’s not committing herself to doing anything in particular. Basically, as Charlie Savage wrote for our October issue, I wouldn’t count on any future administration voluntarily relinquishing the powers Bush has seized. Maybe some future congress will take power back, but people don’t do that kind of thing voluntarily.”
Radley Balko agrees. In an article for “Reason” entitled, “Tomorrow’s Neocon Today: Why Clinton II wouldn’t offer much change from Bush II,” he writes:
“For seven years, the left has been up in arms about President Bush’s aggressive foreign policy, his secrecy, his partisanship, and his expansive claims on executive power. It’s odd, then, that they’re prepared to nominate Hillary Clinton to carry the party into the 2008 elections. The problem with Hillary Clinton is two-fold: First, she’s likely to be as bad or worse than Bush on all of those issues, and second, she’s the one Democrat the Republicans still have a chance to beat.”
There’s one ray of hope for Hillary fans: she has Sidney Blumenthal on her campaign as a senior adviser. He wrote this article for Salon about Bush’s consistent abuses of presidential power, which, according to Blumenthal, are still seen by Republicans “as his great asset rather than understood as his enduring weakness. ” Blumenthal continues:
“Despite the obvious shortcomings of his policies, he has startlingly succeeded in reshaping the executive into an unaccountable imperial presidency. And Bush’s presidency is now accepted as the only acceptable version for major Republican candidates who aspire to succeed him.”
Is this true of McCain? He is, after all, the only candidate absolutely opposed to signing statements. Michael Abramowitz writes in an article for the Washington Post:
“Asked by my colleague Glenn Kessler whether he would ever consider issuing a signing statement as president, Sen. McCain was emphatic: “Never, never, never, never. If I disagree with a law that passed, I’ll veto it.”
This “sharp break in ideological practice” for McCain puts him at odds with Senators Clinton and Obama, both of whom reserve the right to use signing statements in extreme circumstances. The Post article was noted across the blogosphere, with Perrspectives noting that McCain’s distaste for signing statements has grown out of a “betrayal” by George Bush on McCain’s amendment to the Detainee Treatment Act. It’s politics getting personal.
In another European interview about executive power, McCain told Der Spiegel that he hopes “America will be multilateral again in the future.” He affirms:
“I would announce that we are not ever going to torture anyone held in American custody. I would announce that we were closing Guantanamo Bay and moving those prisoners to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and I would announce a commitment to addressing climate change and my dedication to a global agreement — but it has to include India and China.”
Sounds kind of a like a revolution? Don’t be fooled. According to this article in the American Spectator, McCain is just another Bush Mark II:
“If there is a consistent thread to McCain’s positions, it is, says Welch, “an increase in the power of the federal government, particularly in the executive branch.” Great. We are suffering through eight years of increasing executive power in the name of conservatism under George W. Bush. All we need is another eight years of increasing executive power in the name of conservatism under John McCain.”
But what about Obama? Like Hillary, he has a big defender of civil liberties helping him out: Samantha Power. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard professor is an expert on human rights policy, and gave this interview to Salon where she bemoaned the state of the US government’s “credibility” among its own citizens. Power says:
“I happen to miss the Constitution; I thought it was a good document. That’s a huge component of being a president when you’re combating terrorism and you’re trying to restore American values.”
Power emphasizes Obama’s background as a constitutional law professor to convey his commitment to constitutional guidelines. Writing for CQ.com, David Nather agrees that Obama “might be expected to have strong views about executive power and congressional oversight.” Nather writes:
“In general, Obama talks about himself as the presidential candidate who would do the most to restore open government and constitutional checks and balances. But voters would pretty much have to take his word for it. Of all the front-running candidates, Obama has left the thinnest paper trail to allow them to make their own judgments.”
Without concrete evidence of Obama’s record, Nather looks for the next best thing- the record of some of his mentors and advisers on legal issues:
“Both Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard who had Obama as a student, and Cass R. Sunstein, a law professor who worked with Obama teaching at the University of Chicago, have taken positions that do not entirely reject the prerogatives Bush has claimed for the presidency.”
So what hope do we have? The questions may not be being asked explicitly, but they’re certainly building up steam in the blogosphere, and in the opinion media. We can only hope that the issue of executive power becomes more widely debated before it’s too late. Azi Huq at the Nation has a bleak view of things:
“The next President will thus inherit a done deal of dubious constitutionality, crafted in the backrooms of the Bush White House, that ensures Iraq is ours for the foreseeable future.”
Matthew Yglesias noted this week that the Bush administration is doing its best to entrench the executive power grab for as long as possible, namely by gutting the Intelligence Oversight Board. Yglesias writes:
“Bush waited pretty late into his lame duck period to pull this particular stunt, so it seems this is mostly a favor to his successor. He wants John McCain, Clinton, or Obama to be in a position to commit widespread abuses and not just hog all the glory for himself.”
Finally, an unhappy prediction from Arianna Huffington about a way out of this mess:
“True, a lot of the harm Bush has done can be rolled-back or repaired. But the way he wielded executive power greatly increased the ability of the executive branch to do damage. And the problem is, even well intentioned executives don’t like to give up power.”
On the other side of the spectrum, Gene Healy at Reason has a similar understanding.
“Trying to strengthen the powers of the presidency when the office is occupied by a political enemy shows principle of a sort. But it’s not a recognizably conservative principle. Conservatism as its best has recognized man’s weakness for power. As Kirk put it in 1993, “The conservative endeavors to so limit and balance political power that anarchy or tyranny may not arise. In every age, nevertheless, men and women are tempted to overthrow the limitations upon power, for the sake of some fancied temporary advantage.”
All we can do then is try and get them on the record before it’s too late.
