Bush and Cheney’s Tortured Secrecy

[babylonsister]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/11/2473/

Bush and Cheney’s Tortured Secrecy
Can The White House Win a Constitutional Showdown With Congress Over Executive Privilege After Shredding The Nation’s Trust?
by David Cole

The Bush administration, already arguably the most aggressive advocate of unchecked executive power in the history of the American presidency, has done it again. President Bush has defied a congressional subpoena for testimony and documents related to his politically and legally suspect firing of a group of U.S. attorneys. Invoking “executive privilege,” Bush directed two former White House employees — Sara Taylor, who was his political director, and Harriet Miers, who was his White House counsel — not to testify about any “White House consideration, deliberations or communications” on the matter. Taylor said little of substance before lawmakers on Wednesday, while Miers retreated from testifying at all. Bush has refused not only to turn over any documents, but even to delineate which documents he claims the privilege protects. Congress claims constitutional authority to demand the documents; the president claims a constitutional privilege to refuse that demand.

If history is any guide, the resolution to this constitutional clash is likely to be political, not legal. Ordinarily, that would be good news for the president, because when claims of executive privilege and immunity have reached the Supreme Court, the results have not always been to the president’s liking. In 1974, the Supreme Court ruled that President Nixon had to turn over tapes related to the Watergate burglaries, and Nixon resigned in disgrace shortly thereafter. In 1997, the court rejected President Clinton’s claim of executive immunity from a sexual harassment suit by Paula Jones — and we all remember where that led. Given that record, the Bush administration might prefer the political forum.

But it has precious little political capital, and not only because Bush is a lame duck, and responsible for an unnecessary, unpopular and disastrous war. This administration has played so fast and loose with claims of confidentiality and privilege over the last six years that it has lost all credibility. And in the political arena — particularly where the public by definition cannot know what the White House is trying to hide — credibility is everything.

Start with the headlines. Would you believe an administration that so confidently told us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction? Or a president who proclaimed the “mission accomplished” in Iraq in May 2003? Or who broke from his own tradition of denying all requests for commutations or pardons except where there was evidence of actual innocence to commute the sentence of the vice president’s chief of staff, who was convicted of lying to cover up the apparent wrongdoing of his boss?

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The Bush administration has lost the confidence of the American public, nowhere more so than on claims of unchecked executive power and privilege. Its chief proponent of executive supremacy, Vice President Cheney, now has an approval rating of 13 percent, the lowest of any vice president in the nation’s history.

With these circumstances, the Bush administration may ultimately prefer a resolution through the courts. At least it has a majority there.