The Cost of Executive Arrogance

[rodeodance]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/opinion/16sun1.html

July 16, 2006
Editorial
The Real Agenda

It is only now, nearly five years after Sept. 11, that the full picture of the Bush administration’s response to the terror attacks is becoming clear. Much of it, we can see now, had far less to do with fighting Osama bin Laden than with expanding presidential power.

Over and over again, the same pattern emerges: Given a choice between following the rules or carving out some unprecedented executive power, the White House always shrugged off the legal constraints. Even when the only challenge was to get required approval from an ever-cooperative Congress, the president and his staff preferred to go it alone. While no one questions the determination of the White House to fight terrorism, the methods this administration has used to do it have been shaped by another, perverse determination: never to consult, never to ask and always to fight against any constraint on the executive branch.

One result has been a frayed democratic fabric in a country founded on a constitutional system of checks and balances. Another has been a less effective war on terror.

.......
The Cost of Executive Arrogance

The president’s constant efforts to assert his power to act without consent or consultation has warped the war on terror. The unity and sense of national purpose that followed 9/11 is gone, replaced by suspicion and divisiveness that never needed to emerge. The president had no need to go it alone — everyone wanted to go with him. Both parties in Congress were eager to show they were tough on terrorism. But the obsession with presidential prerogatives created fights where no fights needed to occur and made huge messes out of programs that could have functioned more efficiently within the rules........

[Mojorabbit]

1. Excellent editorial. Thanks! eom

[Erika]

2. We no longer have trust in the presidency.

He usurped the powers and prostituted them to the max.

His GOP government rubberstamped him. W has totally corrupted the office of the presidency.

[Rageneau]

3. For the NYT, it seems the chickenhawks are coming home to roost.

Had it not been for the NYT, Clinton would have never been impeached and Bush by now would have been. It's nice that the princes of journalism on 43rd Street have finally started catching on to what most of us here have known from day one -- that Bush and Co. are corrupt, power-mad, petit tyrants who have nothing but their own selfish interests at heart. But the NYT obviously still doesn't realize what the whole story is.

For example, even in this critical editorial, the Times shows that it still doesn't see how naked this emporer is. The editorial says, "While no one questions the determination of the White House to fight terrorism ..."

Excuse me, but I do question the BFEE's determination to fight terrorism. I really, honestly, truly and firmly do. I believe instead that the BFEE cares much less about fighting terrorism than it does feathering its own nest and covering its own butt.

If Bush really cared about fighting terrorists, he wouldn't have cancelled the hunt for the biggest one of them all.

[teryang]

7. Times complicity in authoritarian rule inextricably interwoven...

...in the events that have lead to a fascist police state.

The existence of post hoc critiques of the currently unacceptable demise of the Constitution, in part, yet exist to convince us that a Constitution, particularly the First Amendment still exists. If it didn't, there would be no fig leaf to serve as cover, when the undisputed tyrant of the western world accuses other sovereign states of being tyrannies. Finally as you point out, they are still afraid to question the bona fides of an illegitimate ruler run amok.

[patricia92243]

4. I had never thought of it exactlly that way. Good eye-opener. I wish we

could get this point of view out to more people.

The thought that a personality traight - arrogence - could do so very much harm is soooo scary.

[rodeodance]

5. yes, yes,

[ixion]

6. "no one questions the determination of the White House to fight terrorism,

I, for one, DO question that determination. BushCo seems far more adamant about CREATING terror, rather than stopping it.

[acmavm]

8. NOTHING that the NYT prints from now until Doomsday will ever begin

to make up for the way they covered up for bush** during the 2000 and 2004 campaigns for the pResidency. NOTHING.

People think Monica Lewinsky's blow job was an obscenity. It is nothing compared to the one the NYT gave KKKarl and the bush** administration.