Fugitive Narrative in the world wide web

You may not come across it all that much in your daily paper, but the subject of executive power is all over the web, and has been for a while. Even before Charlie Savage came along with his questionnaire, people like Andrew Sullivan were writing about The Dark Forces Driving Bush’s Executive Power.

Granted, this article was in the London Times. And a lot of articles touching on executive power have curiously been in the foreign press, like this interview with Hillary Clinton in the London Guardian, and this one with John McCain in Der Spiegel. But this isn’t to say that American pundits haven’t been paying attention. In the opinionated press (Slate, Salon etc) there have been posts a-plenty about Bush and the Imperial Presidency, ranging from the pragmatic (Bruce Fein offers a solution) to the extreme (Paul Craig Roberts likens Bush to Adolf Hitler, Julius Caesar and a Sith Lord).

Some of the best writers on the issue are Aziz Huq in the Nation, Bruce Reed and Jack Shafer (and pretty much everyone) at Slate, and Gene Healy at Reason. Huq wrote an excellent piece entitled, Undoing the Bush Legacy. According to Huq,

“Acting largely in secret, the Administration is moving to tie down the next White House–Republican or Democratic–in ways that will prove hard to unravel. Whether or not it succeeds depends on the vigilance of Congress and the public.”

Bloggers too have been key in spreading the fugitive narrative across the web. Unconstrained (and often appalled) by the blinkers of the horse race press, bloggers like John Perr, Timothy Burke and Dan Fejes have been individually commenting on the Bush administration’s flagrant abuse of executive power. Fejes has the illustrious claim of being the only blogger (that I’ve found) to focus solely on the issue. His blog, Pruning Shears, is dedicated to raising awareness, and putting the issue of executive power at the forefront of the 2008 election.

“The candidates are going to have new powers left to them and it’s human nature to hang on to power, precedents and prerogatives where possible,” says Fejes. “That’s why it’s so important to get them on record right now.”