What does it mean to be a conservative?
According to that fountain of knowledge, Wikipedia, “the “true” conservative ought never support a contrived social state, be that on the left (communism), or on the right (fascism). There is an independent justification of the attitude of conservatism, which tends to favor what is organic and has been shaped by history, against the planned and artificial.”
Are Bush and Cheney actually “conservatives,” in the true sense of the word? Social conservatives, maybe. But fiscal conservatives? Economic conservatives?
If you consider the notion of executive power for example, it’s hard to reconcile the concept of unlimited presidential power with traditional conservative ideology. It’s also hard to reconcile the Bush administration with the confines of the constitution, but that’s another story. Conservatism in its most basic form espouses limited government, limited taxation and a prevailing respect for the wisdom of our forefathers. If it aint broke, don’t fix it.
As a result the right-wing press finds itself in a quandary over what is increasingly being labeled an “Imperial Presidency.” Is it conservative to wiretap US citizens? Issue signing statements? Torture? It’s an enormously difficult question to answer. Understandably, libertarian publications like Reason and Cato are up in arms about the Bush administration’s attack on civil liberties. But what about The Weekly Standard? The National Review? American Spectator et al? How do they go about confronting the gossamer-thin line between democracy (as we currently know it) and dictatorship?
Luckily, the “uninhibited, robust and wide-open” press remains exactly that: wide open. There’s currently almost more disagreement between conservatives over executive power than any other issue. Look at Human Events. On the same site you can read David Limbaugh decrying “the left’s orchestrated effort to paint President Bush as a power-hungry, would-be dictator,” and Pat Buchanan declaring:
“There’s a reason the Founding Fathers separated the power to conduct war from the power to declare it. That reason is just such a ruler as George W. Bush, a man possessed of an ideology and a sense of mission that are not necessarily coterminous with what is best for his country. Under our constitution it is Congress, not the president, who decides on war.”
Sorry, Limbaugh. Who’s calling the president a “power-hungry, would-be dictator”? The left? Not so. On the same website you can find Paul Craig Roberts give one of the most scathing denunciations of the Bush administration in the English language. Roberts compares Bush to everyone from Julius Caesar to Stalin; not withstanding that other great dismisser of civil liberties and conservative ideology, Adolf Hitler.
“The Enabling Act (March 23, 1933),” writes Roberts, “transferred legislative power to Hitler, permitting him to decree laws — laws, moreover, that “may deviate from the Constitution. “” Sound familiar? That isn’t the half of it. Roberts concludes:
“In this first decade of the 21st century, the United States regards itself as a land of democracy and civil liberty — but, in fact, is an incipient dictatorship. Ideology plays only a limited role in the emerging dictatorship.”
Yikes. What about the best of the rest? Surely someone apart from Cheney thinks that unlimited executive power is a good idea? Well, there’s always The Weekly Standard. In a blog post by Terry Eastland, Hillary Clinton’s now celebrated interview with Michael Tomasky of the London Guardian about executive power, in which she talked smack about the “power grab” by the Bush-Cheney administration, is analyzed. Eastland doesn’t mince words:
“To the extent that the administration’s “power grab” has prevented another 9/11, those most supportive of Clinton’s willingness to “relinquish” some of that power – besides the hard left in the Democratic party – can be found in certain caves, camps, and cells.”
This might be true. But it’s pushing it to say that all people who reject the concept of checks and balances on the executive are terrorists. I wouldn’t call Pat Buchanan a terrorist. Or Richard Dreyfuss. Eastland isn’t averse to a debate on executive power though. As long as it’s one-sided:
“Clinton’s comments suggest the possibility that the 2008 presidential election will include a debate over presidential power in wartime. Actually, that could prove an important, clarifying debate, provided the Republican nominee is up to it. Among the issues: Is the Bush-Cheney “power grab” really that, and has it exceeded that by any other president (Nixon, even)? What does “the executive power” encompass? And why do we have presidents anyway?”
Also in The Weekly Standard: Harvey Mansfield on “The Law and The President.”
“In a national emergency,” Mansfield asks, alarmingly prescient about Hillary Clinton’s 3am campaign ad, “who you gonna call?” He writes:
“It is wrong to accuse President Bush of acting illegally in the surveillance of possible enemies, as if that were a crime and legality is all that matters. This is simplistic, small-r republican thinking of the kind that our Constitution surpassed when it constructed a strong executive.”
Mansfield also goes on to illuminate why power isn’t a partisan issue. Kinda.
“There will be conflict between discretion and the rule of law, each party aware of the other principle but more convinced by its own. That is why the two principles do not coincide with the differences between liberals and conservatives, or Democrats and Republicans.”
Is that why? Isn’t it more about bipartisan conflict on the issue of strong government? There’s a reason why Ron Paul hasn’t given up, even though he gets shushed in debates and largely ignored by the media. He’s representing a part of the Republican party that kind of likes the constitution, and maybe wants to uphold it once in a while.
Tangents aside, TWS seems to think that more executive power is a-ok. So does the National Review on the whole, which defends the appointment of judges like Alito, and pretty much enshrines the presidential right to wiretap. Fine. Understandable, almost. But there are others, like Bruce Fein, who “seek to rein in presidential power.” In an interview with Truthout, Fein talked about his disappointment with democrats in Congress in failing to do exactly that:
“The Democrats in Congress have done absolutely nothing to tell the president he is not a king and we do not live in a monarchy. They are allowing him to trash the Constitution because most of them know nothing about the Constitution and are concerned only with making headlines about minor issues and getting themselves reelected.”
So what else? There’s the American Spectator on McCain, and how he seems no more likely to roll back executive power than his predecessor. “Great,” says Doug Bandow. “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.” There are Newsmax and Cato, both of which suffer from internal contradictions on the issue. Searching the Newsmax archives, you can find another David Limbaugh article defending the president’s divine right, sorry, presidential mandate, right next to a Paul Craig Roberts article asking if Bush is actually a Sith Lord:
“In our day, the Sith masquerade as neoconservatives. Neocons deal in absolutes. They believe the end justifies the means. Republicans have become adept at self-deception. They will believe any argument that justifies Bush and no news report that casts doubt on Bush’s war.”
There’s also an interesting take on the partisan aspect, with a story from the NewsMax Wires about the Clinton pardoning of Marc Rich:
“Seated in the Oval Office, Bush said he considered the executive power to pardon to be “inviolate” and that he wanted to preserve the executive power not only for himself but for future presidents.”
How closely does this tie in with Newt Gingrich, who in the 90s tried to repeal the War Powers Act, even though it would have given powers to President Clinton? “I want to strengthen the current Democratic president,” Gingrich explained, “because he’s the president of the United States.”
Gene Healy, one of the foremost libertarian exponents of reining in presidential power, writes about this very paradox. In this article, he writes how conservatives didn’t always “love the imperial presidency:”
“The conservatives who coalesced around William F. Buckley’s National Review in 1955 associated executive power with liberal activism and viewed Congress as the conservative branch. In 1967 the right-wing intellectuals Russell Kirk and James McClellan praised the late Ohio Sen. Robert Taft, “Mr. Conservative,” for warning that an overly aggressive foreign policy threatened to “make the American President a virtual dictator.” During his 1964 presidential bid, Barry Goldwater called the celebration of presidential power “a philosophy of government totally at war with that of the Founding Fathers.”
So what happened? Nixon, Healy believes. “Prominent conservatives began to see the executive as the conservative branch and set to work developing a conservative case for the imperial presidency.”
So this was when what constituted being “conservative” began to get a little murky. And now not even the press can agree on what the term implies. One thing’s for sure- it might be helpful to ask the candidates what they think: now, before all the executive power they inherit goes to their heads.
