The Kingness of Mad George - Common Place Jan 2006

[applegrove]

The Kingness of Mad George
The roots of the current debate over presidential power

Public Occurrences
Jeffrey L. Pasley


"The recent conflict over President Bush’s domestic surveillance program reflects one of the oldest recurring divisions in American politics, dating all the way to the 1790s. Bush’s Democratic critics have taken a stance that traces back to the Jeffersonian (or Democratic) Republicans, arguing that the U.S. government is rather flexibly bound, but still bound, by the values and rules embedded in our founding documents and, as such, is a government whose power is essentially limited. The Bush administration and its modern (anti-Democratic) Republican defenders have staked out a position that traces back to Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists, reasoning from the inherent nature of government and the overwhelming fearsomeness of the challenges the United States faces that the powers of its government must be essentially unlimited. The GOP-Federalist position applies especially to times of foreign crisis, a state that Federalists saw as virtually perpetual in the early Republic and the Republicans have likewise been warning about ever since the outbreak of the cold war in 1946.

This recurring argument has often turned on the question of whether the norms and procedures of democracy and republicanism are adequate to national survival in a dangerous world of terrorists, Commies, and Frenchmen. Federalists and modern Republicans alike have often indicated their belief, expressed with varying degrees of regret, that the methods of democratic, accountable, transparent government are not strong enough to meet these challenges. Jeffersonian Republicans and modern Democrats, in turn, have tended to respond that they are. The essence of the frequently heard rightist refrain that America cannot fight the evildoers of the moment with democracy tying its hands or with one arm tied behind its back (fill in your Goldwaterish/Cheneyesque metaphor) can be found in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed column about the Pentagon paying Iraqi journalists for favorable coverage. If the U.S. military had elected to "play by Marquess of Queensberry rules," argued the WSJ, we would have had to "wait decades" for some good Arab press, and we would have created "a heady propaganda win for the terrorist/insurgents, a prolonged conflict, and more unnecessary violence and death"—as opposed to the speedy triumph the writer apparently believes we are experiencing in Iraq right now.

The key difference in the recurring party debate is not so much the government’s or military’s mere use of extraconstitutional powers and undemocratic methods. Those things have happened under many presidents of most of the major U.S. parties, especially during the cold war. The key is the further act of justifying such powers and methods in principle. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have repeatedly gone out of their way to do this, asserting and exercising an alleged independent presidential authority to do things (like eavesdropping on suspected terrorists) the government was able to do just as swiftly and effectively under existing legal procedures. (A secret court was created in the 1970s with no other purpose than legally authorizing government eavesdropping when national security requires it.) In other cases, they have ordered up briefs to self-legalize obviously unconstitutional powers to have people tortured and to hold American citizens without charge or trial.

...SNIP"

http://www.common-place.org/publick/200601.shtml

[GetTheRightVote]

1. The pres and VP must be answerable to someone, FISA was created

for this reason alone but they ingore even these judges, a secret court which has very rarely said no.

:kick:

[applegrove]

2. My guess is they hold the whole system in such contempt and wanted

to set precedent for going it alone re: internet. So they would have total access internationally just as they do "outside the country".