Andrew Sullivan: Restoration of the imperial presidency

[Thom Little]

Call it Nixon's revenge. The combination of Watergate and Vietnam created an environment in which executive power was deemed too dangerous to be trusted. Gerald Ford, for whom Rumsfeld also worked, inherited a crippled presidency. Jimmy Carter brandished his constitutional crutches as a matter of pride. But many conservatives seethed and waited a long time for a chance to reverse what they saw as a dangerous concession to the legislative branch.

It's clear now that 9/11 was seen by Cheney and Rumsfeld not simply as a catastrophe but as an opportunity. Just as Karl Rove exploited the war to divide and defeat the Democrats, so Cheney and Rummy saw a chance to reverse decades of post-Vietnam executive branch erosion.

The war against terror, they argued, was an opportunity to insist the President was answerable to no court and no legislature in war-making. If he found laws that inhibited his range of action, he could simply ignore them. As commander-in-chief he wasn't so much above the law as he was the law. The brightest legal stars in the conservative intelligentsia were drafted to write legal memos justifying an extraordinary expansion of presidential power. He could ignore any treaties; he could violate any US law; he could upend decades of military justice; he could tell the UN to stuff it. And he did.

If you wonder how the US military got away with violating American law and torturing detainees at secret sites, wonder no longer. In wartime, Bush's lawyer John Yoo argued, the President could authorise the torture of anyone. In a recent debate at Notre Dame University, Yoo even claimed no treaty or law could definitively prevent the President from authorising the torture of a terrorist's child if he thought it was necessary for national security. If the President could legally and constitutionally do that, wire-tapping American citizens is a no-brainer.



http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17722595%255E7583,00.html

[ixion]

1. of course, the flaw in that premise is that we're NOT at war

there is no Declaration of War, because there is no real adversary. The abstract concept of terror does not qualify as a nation-state against which one may declare war.

[adriennui]

2. the tragedy in the premise

is that although these powers have been restored, they've gone to the most intellectually deficient president the US has ever had.

the idiot chimp rules the world.....scary.

[BlueEyedSon]

3. He's not an idiot, he's a figurehead for a corporatist/fascist movement.

[Thom Little]

4. His premise is spot-on

Presidents routinely behaved like kings in the first century and a half of our history, even though the Constitution never gave them the power to do it. I think Sullivan is right. Dubya has restored the old American tradition of Presidents exercising imperial power illegitimately.

[BlueManDude]

5. Look in the mirror Sully. n/t

[orwell]

6. The Constitution...

...is clear. It gives the President no such authority. The branches of government are designed as co-equal with each branch acting as a check on the power of the other branches.

It was particularly important to the framers not to endow the presidency with "royal power." This is exactly why they fled from England, an out of control, despotic king. Not only was this reality foremost in their minds, but also the clear separation of church and state.

If anything, it could be argued that the legislature was designed as the most powerful body of the three branches. They control the declaration of war, the purse, including the coining of money, and the enactment of legislation. The president has none of these powers.

This is also probably why it is the legislative branch is "empowered" by the document before the executive. Think of it. It is the legislature that most directly represents the public, not the executive. It is the executive's responsibility to oversee the "execution" of the law. not to rule as monarch.

The reason the NeoCons (who are modified Trotskyites) wish to imbue the executive with extra-constituional authority is that it smashes the consticted-by-design Constitutional framework to bits. It allows them to rule by fiat, which enables their perverse brand of utopianism by military force.

If the framers were alive today, they would lead the charge to Boston Harbor to toss the tea (and guns of war) overboard. As Benjamin Franklin said when asked what kind of government they had created, "It is a Republic, if you can keep it."

[bemildred]

7. And the legislature can remove (impeach) anyone. nt

[orwell]

8. Great point...n/t