Glenn Greenwald: Will Congress cede its powers to the Obama administration?

[babylonsister]

Tuesday Nov. 11, 2008 07:40 EST
Will Congress cede its powers to the Obama administration?

(updated below)

There is much discussion about the signals Barack Obama is sending regarding whether Senate Democrats should strip Joe Lieberman of his powerful position as Chairman of Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Reports yesterday indicate that Obama is telling Senate leaders he wants Lieberman to remain in the Democratic caucus, but it's unclear whether or not that means Obama wants Lieberman to keep his Chairmanship, how much of this is designed to distance Obama from any eventual confronatation, whether this is all just for show to pretend they're considering doing something about Lieberman, and how accurate these anonymous reports really are.

More reliably, key Obama ally Chris Dodd last week was dispatched to announce that Obama does not want a fight over Joe Lieberman's status. Dodd informed us that the key question that should be guiding the decision-making process is: "What does Barack Obama want?" Dodd's instruction was at least slightly less deferential than the formulation used by this commenter here yesterday, who actually said -- with no irony -- that, in political controversies, we should be guided by this question: "What would Obama do?" That sentiment tracks this unbelievably creepy website which exists -- as its own banner proudly proclaims -- "to encourage supporters to always think, 'What Would Obama Do?' in their political dealings, so we, too, can create a new form of politics."

I've written very recently about my reasons for emphatically believing that Lieberman should be stripped of his Homeland Security Chairmanship, but whatever the outcome here is, it's vital that it be the Senate's decision, not Barack Obama's. How the Senate organizes itself and which members chair its Committees is about as purely within the legislative domain as it gets. It makes sense that Senate Democrats want to cooperate with Obama and that they have good feelings towards him in light of his election victory. Still, if the Senate has any sense of its own institutional integrity and any intention to defend its constitutionally assigned prerogatives, the last thing Senators would be doing is allowing Obama to interfere with, let alone dictate to them, how they proceed in deciding what to do about Lieberman. If they don't jealously safeguard that arena from executive intrusion, what do they safeguard?

Sarah Palin's campaign remarks that the Vice President "is in charge of the U.S. Senate" brought back into the spotlight the highly instructive treatment by Lyndon Johnson of his former Senate colleagues once Johnson became Vice President. Before joining the Kennedy administration, Johnson, in essence, was the U.S. Senate; as Majority Leader, he exerted DeLay-like control over its proceedings. Johnson expected to continue to exert great influence in the Senate as Vice President. But his former Democratic Senate colleagues vehemently resisted those efforts on the ground that, as a member of the Executive Branch, Johnson no longer had any role to play in how the affairs of the Senate were conducted. He was all but frozen out and rendered powerless (see this brief though illuminating history <.pdf> by Sen. Mark Hatfield and the Senate Historical Office).

That is what "separation of powers" means, and it's at least as vital -- probably more so -- for it to be honored when the same party controls the White House and both houses of Congress. What fueled the abuses of the last eight years as much as anything else was the ongoing (and several accelerated) abdication of power by Congress to a bordering-on-omnipotent presidency. It's critically important that an Obama administration reverse the substantive transgressions of the Bush era -- closing Guantanamo, ending torture and rendition, restoring habeas corpus, rejuvenating surveillance oversight, withdrawing from Iraq, applying the rule of law to political leaders past and present -- but it's at least as important that this be accomplished in the right way, that our constitutional framework be restored. That means restricting the President's role to what the Constitution prescribes and having Congress fulfill its assigned duties and perform its core functions.

more...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/11/11/lieberman/

[indepat]

1. Jesus, let's hope Congress doesn't cede it power to Obama, something it never would have done to

junior. :P

[BR_Parkway]

2. "if the Senate has any sense of its own institutional integrity" they would have

voted against illegal wiretapping, against the war, against so many things that BushCo wanted. They'd have also pressured the House to go ahead and bring Kucinich's Impeachment articles up for a vote