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Congress vs. The White House: There's Supposed to be a Constant Battle
Share / Recommend - Comment - Print - Sunday, Jan 15, 06, 10:34PM
This piece in the Boston Globe today is well worth spending some time reading and thinking through.
To share the beginning of the article:
In 1973 the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. published a book called The Imperial Presidency, tracing the way in which the White House had, over the course of American history, grabbed more and more power until it threatened to overwhelm the rest of the federal government.Then-president Richard Nixon-who carried out a secret bombing campaign of Cambodia, eavesdropped on his domestic rivals, and impounded federal funds that Congress had earmarked for programs he didn't like-was to Schlesinger only the latest and most brazen example.
President George W. Bush, say his Democratic critics (and even a few Republicans), has demonstrated Caesar-like proclivities of his own. The past week's confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. reflected increasing concerns in Congress that Bush is pushing the envelope of presidential power like few before him. He has approved warrantless surveillance of Americans by the National Security Agency, issued a "signing statement" reserving the right to waive a congressionally mandated ban on torture, and attempted to game the federal courts in cases involving terror detainees.
With John Roberts, a former White House lawyer known for an expansive view of presidential prerogative, now presiding as chief justice, the widely-predicted confirmation of Alito, whose record suggests a similar bent, could well make the Supreme Court even more accommodating of executive power.
Yet the branch of government Schlesinger exhorted to resist the executive's slow-motion coup was not the Supreme Court. It was Congress. And although throughout most of Bush's presidency the legislative branch has been, in the words of Thomas Mann, a government scholar at the Brookings Institution, "remarkably weak and supine," there are signs that the president's assertions of power have finally roused the nation's legislature. The same day that it overwhelmingly approved the defense bill including the anti-torture amendment, Congress refused to give the administration its desired extension of the USA Patriot Act. And several members of Congress, most importantly Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, have called for hearings on the NSA's surveillance program.
But even as Congress bestirs itself to seek limits on the president's power, the question remains: How much can it do? Over the last half century, historians and political scientists observe, Congress's clout has waned as dramatically as the executive's has grown, especially in national security matters. And Congress itself is largely to blame.
Instead of jealously guarding its institutional prerogatives, Congress has been complicit in the diminution of its powers, in a way that seems to run counter to the very logic of the Constitution's system of checks and balances. Whether Congress manages to impose its power over the executive branch, then, depends on whether the body has the will to reverse its own history.
This is an interesting article and poses questions not unlike others that have been pursued in TWN posts. However, while I believe that Congress has been complicit in its own decline, the Executive Branch's surge in relative power is not explainable just by the collapse and corruption of Congressional leadership.
I do believe that Tom DeLay and his machine took Washingtonian structual corruption to new heights, but the fact is that Bush, Cheney, Rove, Libby, Gonzales, and other close cronies also warped the way the administration itself works. They cut out dissent inside the administration.
One of the most disturbing but rarely acknowledged aspects of the NSA warrantless wiretap scandal is that it was not the FISA court approvals that were the problem for the administration. Bush's problem was holding his own team together on the requests. The Deputy Attorney General thought they were wrong and perhaps illegal. State got cut out of the loop. Some in NSA were outraged. Even John Ashcroft did not want to sign off on the order.
Bush avoided the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court because the Executive Branch was not cohesive on this issue. Checks and balances usually occur between branches of government, with civil society as an added check on the behavior and performance of government. However, the NSA case is one in which checks and balances external and internal to the Executive Branch failed to work -- because of the perversion of the system of law and process that Bush and his team engineered.
We are four and a half years late in rectifying the problem of an out of control presidency. Congress, the media, NGOs, and others engaged in our democratic system must forcefully knock back the expansive powers of a wannabe monarchy.
The White House will not self correct; it's not designed to. But it's absolutely essential that the White House be curtailed.
-- Steve Clemons
Ed. Note: Thanks to GS for sending this piece.
One of the reasons that the founding fathers choose to give us a Presidency rather than a Monarchy is the difficulty with dealing with a monarch who is not only a fool, but is incompetant. Bushco has given us new meaning to the terms fool, and incompetant. It remains to be seen whether we can end the Imperial Presidency in the 2008 election (assuming it takes place), or before, with Impeachment.
How many of us long to wake from the nightmare to find the day sunny outside? It is like a stultifying fog has descended on those who praise freedom and reason. The desecration of the Constitution must end soon. If not, the long night will continue indefinitely and that, for our sakes, and the world's, would be a very dangerous thing.
Frank Rich, yesterday, hoped for that "money-shot" on the covers of Time and Newsweek -- Bush and Abramoff together, just short of Brokeback. That's what I'm hoping for too -- clear links between Congressional corruption and the White House.
Because in the minds of the average local paper reader, Congress is so dirty you wouldn't want to rearrange power, giving some back to them, would you? Whereas sunny-boy Bush looks so... clean... so willing to defend America from the more important problems of gay marriage and abortion... to the reader of the Kerrville Daily Times or the Middleton Post.
No. We need Abramoff and Bush almost sharing a hot-tub.
I believe that the Congressional corruption has a LOT to do with the ascension of the exec. branch. With as much bribery, graft, money laundering that takes place, simply losing one's seat in Congress doesn't just mean an unemployment line anymore. Nowadays, it could very well expose such criminal activity and set oneself up for prosecution. Therefore, it becomes THAT much more important to not lose one's seat. Deferrence to the WH and the unwillingness to challenge (read:piss off) the WH concerning their activities is rooted in congressional members' need--no, requirement--to stay in power. Because not only does "power" equate with riches, for Republicans it also means avoidance of time in the big house.
The ties that bind Congress and the Executive are based on criminal activity, or possible exposure thereof, and thus this inability for Congress to wield an independant mind.
I think one of the problems is that the GOP machine is based on profound disrepsect for our government. At the very least, many GOP congressmen have bought into the plan to bury the Federal government in a bathtub. But in other cases, they're actually paid consultants to give over the governance of the country to corporate entities.
Whether or not the Dems win the midterms, they're giong to need to work in concert with a fair number of Republicans to reassert congressional power. But the problem is, disrespect for the mission of the federal government has been one of the selection criteria for gaining Republican support for so long, there are few with which to work with.
This White House understands how to curtail Congress. Bribes, intimidation, blackmail, and it's remarkable the effect that a few letters full of weaponized anthrax had. That, and every Democrat in Congress thinks that Wellstone and his family were killed. They got the frat-boy message: "Here's what happens when you fuck with us." No telling what they have from the wiretaps...no telling what future Congress will prove able to correct anything the chimperialists do, but it certainly isn't this one.
What's missing are figures from the left who'll stand up and say, We need a leaner, cleaner government, not a government which leaves room for the kind of corrupt handouts the Republicans are so dependent on, a government which will do our business, not theirs.
We need to turn the tables on the right, making it clear that it's not the poor who are milking the system and expanding government, but the rich and powerful -- and they must not be allowed to accumulate more power at our expense.
And we're going to have to be willing to face and understand the tremendous anger, particularly on the right, coming from people who are fearful of change and well aware that America is no longer sheltered by the umbrella of a massive, secure economy nor guaranteed an easy future.
(NB -- I'm fresh from reading Madrick's review in the NYRB of economist Benjamin Friedman's latest book which lays out very clearly the economic pattern since the end of the Civil War and gives a good sense of where anger and fear may be coming from, at least in part.)
When the economy tanks, the plan is to blame the new scary terrorist threat: immigrants. Coming over the border! Taking our jobs!
Watch for this to be a fake issue in the 2006 and 2008 "elections". Fear and crooked voting machines, great combination.
In the case of the Bush WH, I don't think the problem is institutional or involves process. It boils down to the personalities of Bush and Cheney (especially him), their beliefs in the rightness of what they're doing and the single-minded ruthlessness with which they pursue their beliefs. Dissent plays no role because it's beside the point.
And as far as Congress goes, it's clear that those in the majority place maintaining party power above governing principals. Were a Democratic president to engage in the type of behavior in which Bushco has engaged, there'd be no end to cries about an imperial presidency and executive overreach. But even then such criticism would only be in the service of gaining party power.
What's amazing is how relatively unconcerned the GOP has been with regard to the dangerous precedents that Bushco are setting and the possibility that Bushco has established SOP for the executive, whatever party happens to hold it. A very unconservative perspective, I'd say.
Excerpt from a Geov Parrish interview of Noam Chomsky:
Geov Parrish: Is George Bush in political trouble? And if so, why?
Noam Chomsky: George Bush would be in severe political trouble if there were an opposition political party in the country. Just about every day, they're shooting themselves in the foot. The striking fact about contemporary American politics is that the Democrats are making almost no gain from this. The only gain that they're getting is that the Republicans are losing support. Now, again, an opposition party would be making hay, but the Democrats are so close in policy to the Republicans that they can't do anything about it. When they try to say something about Iraq, George Bush turns back to them, or Karl Rove turns back to them, and says, "How can you criticize it? You all voted for it." And, yeah, they're basically correct.
Along these lines, a major speech today from Al Gore wherein he kicks a hundred butts. Preliminary transcript here:
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Text_of_Gore_speech_0116.html
But watch the speech itself if you can. Or read the final transcript that includes Gore's ad hoc commentary.
JA
I just read something about a computer system (?) that can reveal actual voting patterns to see if cheating has occured.
It would be interesting to see what the general public would do if this test proved what most of us already suspect -- BushCo cheated. Three times no less.
Get the public to see the truth out of this... then hit them with the 9/11 conspiracy -- blood in the streets, boy, blood in the streets.
One obvious thing that the Senate could do, starting this week: Vote no on Alito.
The confirmation hearings may not have smoked him out on the issues that separate Democrats from Republicans, but they should have confirmed the indications that, beyond conceding that the president is not above the law (whether he is equal or below it to be determined later), he supports the executive power grab. That's an issue that should unite Democratic and Republican senators, who should have enough attachment to their institution, their consituents, and the Constitution to refuse to cooperate in their neutralization.
Bush's reasons for nominating Roberts, Miers, and now Alito are equally obvious: He's taken some big chances by ignoring the law, and he may need protection.
If the Judiciary Committee can't bring itself to reject Alito's nomination, the Senate could still recognize its duty and vote, firmly and politely, no. Advice and consent are constitutional responsibilities and constitutional powers. The Senate has the right and the duty to insist that the president nominate justices who show clear and vocal respect for Congress and the Constitution.
Evasiveness shouldn't be the supreme qualification to sit on the highest court.
Perhaps, I'm being a bit dense here, but there are two key graphs in this post that are not crystal clear to me. The paragraphs begining with "One of the most disturbing..." and "Bush avoide the Foreign Intelligence Court...", respectively. This really is a request for clarification, not a criticism. You say that Bush avoided the FISA court becasue the Executive Branch was not cohesive on this issue. Help me connect the dots here. What exactly weren't they cohesive about: the order skirting the FISA courts or the FISA court process? How does this lack of cohesiveness lead to skirting FISA?
I'm watching Hardball--the early version--and Matthews has a military (or CIA?) interrogator on talking about how torture doesn't work. He said we're doing ourselves harm by tacitly allowing our troops to abuse the Iraqis in custody.
I highly recommend that folks watch the re-broadcast of Hardball at 7 (EST).
Please drop the "monarchy" frame. It is unenlightening and twee. Mr. Bush is not behaving like a king. He is behaving like something much more dangerous: a county sheriff.
Here's a line of events that might re-assure most of the posters here, although not in the short run. During the conservative revolution in the 1980s and the early 1990s the conservative party in the UK looked much like the Republican Party in today's United States. All powerful but in the end too conservative and corrupt a party - to a nation wich it had changed - that it was no longer able to offer a positive world view to the generations to come. It might very well be that the Republican Party - in creating this enormous coalition between the Christian movement, neo-conservative ideologues, business and many of the intellectuel elites - will face a huge backlash.
Although it's an iffy comparison and history hardly ever repeats itself, it might be a line of thought that comforts perhaps some of you across the Atlantic apalled by this White House and the US congress.
Thanks liesbeth, it does give some hope!
absolute power, corrupts absolutly..
If Congress fails to stop Bush's warrantless spying on Americans after next month Senate hearings, then there'll be no stops to keep his abuses of office in check. We might as well dismantle FISA. Because if he escapes accountability, he'll be able to justify future abuses that violate the Constitutional rights of any American who criticizes his demented sense of judgement and record of incompetency. In other words, US!
An imperial president could not exist without the Congress abdicating its responsibilities. This Congress is corrupt and under corrupt leadership. Congressional leaders like Tom DeLay have put together a corrupt fundraising machine that trades political contributions for influence. We now have two branches of government, the Executive and the Legislative that have been bought by monied interests.
The national debt is exploding because of tax breaks to the monied interests along with corporate welfare. Iraq was done to end the sanctions surrounding Iraq oil and installing an Iraqi government friendly to US business interests. The whole Iraq project has been a failure in part because of corrupt contracts to provide Corporate Welfare for US monied interests instead of rebuilding Iraqi infrastructure.
The judiciary has also been corrupted by monied interest and their support of organizations such as the Federalist Society. Lawyers who are beholden to monied interests and rule in their favor are rewarded with plum positions (Ken Starr to Pepperdine for instance). We see both Roberts and Alito were members of the Federalist Society. When Bush nominated Meyers (not a Federalist Society insider) a firestorm erupted.
These monied interests own most of the newspapers in the US and the Television stations. The internet is one of the few places that they do not control, but they are seeking legislation to control that as well. The problem is far deeper than an imperial executive. The problem is the steady creep of corrupt monied interests exerting control over government and society.
Al Gore got it right in today's speech.
How does Congress go about rescinding the authorization to use military force that Bush claims gives him the right to wiretap American citizens?
Is there such a thing as an "unauthorization" to use military force?
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