The imperial presidency v. 2.0
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Published: January 8, 2007
The New York Times said in an editorial:
Observing President Bush in action lately, we have to wonder if he actually watched the election returns in November, or if he was just rerunning the 2002 vote on his TiVo.
That year, the White House used the fear of terrorism to scare American voters into cementing the Republican domination of Congress. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney then embarked on an expansion of presidential power chilling both in its sweep and in the damage it did to the constitutional system of checks and balances.
In 2006, the voters sent Bush a powerful message that it was time to rein in his imperial ambitions. But we have yet to see any sign that Bush understands that — or even realizes that the Democrats are now in control of the Congress. Indeed, he seems to have interpreted his party's drubbing as a mandate to keep pursuing his fantasy of victory in Iraq and to press ahead undaunted with his assault on civil liberties and the judicial system. Just before the Christmas break, the Justice Department served notice to Sen. Patrick Leahy — the new chairman of the Judiciary Committee — that it intended to keep stonewalling congressional inquiries into Bush's inhumane and unconstitutional treatment of prisoners taken in anti-terrorist campaigns. It refused to hand over two documents, including one in which Bush authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to establish secret prisons beyond the reach of American law or international treaties. The other set forth the interrogation methods authorized in these prisons — which we now know ranged from abuse to outright torture.
Also last month, Bush issued another of his infamous "presidential signing statements," which he has used scores of times to make clear he does not intend to respect the requirements of a particular law — in this case a little-noticed Postal Service bill. The statement suggested that Bush does not believe the government must obtain a court order before opening Americans' first-class mail. It said the administration had the right to "conduct searches in exigent circumstances," which include not only protecting lives, but also unspecified "foreign intelligence collection."
The law is clear on this. A warrant is required to open Americans' mail under a statute that was passed to stop just this sort of abuse using just this sort of pretext. But then again, the law is also clear on the need to obtain a warrant before intercepting Americans' telephone calls and e-mail. Bush began openly defying that law after Sept. 11, 2001, authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without a court order on calls and e-mail between the United States and other countries.
News accounts have also reminded us of the shameful state of American military prisons, where supposed terrorist suspects are kept without respect for civil or human rights, and on the basis of evidence so deeply tainted by abuse, hearsay or secrecy that it is essentially worthless.
Deborah Sontag wrote in The Times last week about the sorry excuse for a criminal case that the administration whipped up against Jose Padilla, who was once — but no longer is — accused of plotting to explode a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States. Padilla was held for two years without charges or access to a lawyer. Then, to avoid having the Supreme Court review Bush's power grab, the administration dropped those accusations and charged Padilla in a criminal court on hazy counts of lending financial support to terrorists.
But just as the government abandoned the "dirty bomb" case against Padilla, it quietly charged an Ethiopian-born man, Binyam Mohamed, with conspiring with Padilla to commit that very crime. Unlike Padilla, Mohamed is not a U.S. citizen, so the administration threw him into Guantanamo. Now 28, he is still being held there as an "illegal enemy combatant" under the anti-constitutional military tribunals act that was rushed through the Republican-controlled Congress just before last November's elections.
Mohamed was a target of another favorite Bush administration practice: "extraordinary rendition," in which foreign citizens are snatched off the streets of their hometowns and secretly shipped to countries where they can be abused and tortured on behalf of the American government. Mohamed — whose name appears nowhere in either of the cases against Padilla — has said he was tortured in Morocco until he signed a confession that he conspired with Padilla. The Bush administration clearly has no intention of answering that claim, and plans to keep Mohamed in extralegal detention indefinitely.
The Democratic majority in Congress has a moral responsibility to address all these issues: fixing the profound flaws in the military tribunals act, restoring the rule of law over Bush's rogue intelligence operations and restoring the balance of powers between Congress and the executive branch. So far, key Democrats, including Leahy and Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, chairman of a new subcommittee on human rights, have said these issues are high priorities for them.
We would lend such efforts our enthusiastic backing and hope Leahy, Durbin and other Democratic leaders are not swayed by the absurd notion circulating in Washington that the Democrats should now "look ahead" rather than use their new majority to right the dangerous wrongs of the last six years of Bush's one-party rule.
This is a false choice. Dealing with these issues is not about the past. The administration's assault on some of the nation's founding principles continues unabated. If the Democrats were to shirk their responsibility to stop it, that would make them no better than the Republicans who formed and enabled these policies in the first place.
BIPARTISANSHIP AS THE FIRST RESORT?
The House's new Democratic majority is mounting a legislative blitzkrieg meant to leave the displaced Republicans gasping in the dust. In successive working days, the Democrats plan to enact legislation to bolster homeland security, raise the minimum wage, encourage embryonic stem cell research, require the government to bargain for lower Medicare drug prices, recoup lost royalties on offshore oil and gas leases, and lower interest rates on student loans.
These are all commendable goals. Equally commendable is the pledge by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to restore some pay-as-you-go fiscal discipline to a budget process bloated out of control by President Bush's deficit spending. But what is sorely lacking is the oft-invoked, more often abused ideal of bipartisanship — despite the Democrats' campaign pledge to end the practice of relegating minority lawmakers to the legislative wilderness.
The Democrats have the votes to impose their way. But quickly turning any of these measures into law is dicier given the more complicated rules in the Senate and the Democrats' blade-thin majority there. In scoring early political notches, House Democrats had better keep in mind the promise of bipartisanship for securing larger victories.
For years, bipartisanship has been the missing ingredient in the sour stew of Washington. It was lacking during the Democrats' long House reign that ended in 1994. But during the last 12 years, the Republicans virtually eliminated Democratic participation. Chronically invoked by Bush, this political ideal has been reduced to rhetorical ashes.
Of necessity, perhaps, the new Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, is making a considerable show of promising to reach across the aisle. In the House, Pelosi promises bipartisanship will be in evidence after the Democrats get past their opening agenda. That is like saying the checks and balances are in the mail. If Democratic candidates were smart enough during the campaign to realize that the voters demand bipartisanship, they should be quick enough to try it from the start.
LOOKING DOWN THE ROAD THAT LEADS ACROSS THE U.S.A.
Sooner or later the pickup will be packed and the dogs loaded. We'll roll down the driveway and around the corner and onto the highway. With any luck it will still be early in the morning. The horses will be standing over a bale of hay, and the chickens and geese and ducks will be wondering why they weren't let out of the poultry yard. The dogs, too, will have some questions, especially as the day of driving grows longer and longer and we don't seem to be getting to the vet or the dog sitter's house.
By next week this time, we will be well down the road to Southern California again, angling across the country however winter lets us.
I don't know how it came to seem so natural to load up and set out. My parents certainly had the habit. My dad especially has always liked the thought of being packed and ready to go — and then going at first light. In the early '90s, Lindy and I hauled the dogs and horses west every summer, and when we got there we found ourselves among people who made a living hauling horses all across the country.
For these people, five days in any one spot was a good, long time. But if you asked around, it was almost as easy to find people who had never been out of the county, born and raised practically within earshot of where they still lived.
I try to imagine what it would have been like driving cross-country about the time I was born — 1952. I find that I cannot. Once, when I was 7 or 8, I rode home from my grandparents' house in my grandparents' car — 100 miles with my grandfather behind the wheel. His top speed was 35 miles an hour. It nearly killed me.
I wanted to be anywhere but the back seat of that old Dodge plodding down the highway. Now, of course, I would love to see all over again what I must have seen on that trip, the hogs in the fields, the creek-bottom pastures, the windmills and farmhouses. Iowa was not yet a tyranny of soybeans and corn.
I am struck this time by the change in how I imagine the trip across the country. It has become so easy to look down the road. The last time we made this trip — two years ago — I spent what seemed like weeks staring at the road atlas, pondering the mysteries of the American highway system. We set off with a clear sense of how we were going to go — south-southeast out of the winter and then due west — only to be pushed off course by a major ice storm in Arkansas.
The weather is still the major variable. Now, instead of the road atlas, I find myself contemplating the National Weather Service Web site — the page displaying a map, updated every five minutes, of all the weather warnings, watches, alerts and advisories across the country. Right now, the only good weather slot across the West is near El Paso.
Just this morning I ran through the whole trip on the GPS, mile by mile, turn by turn. I plotted out some driving distances on Google Maps, wondering how long we'll want to drive each day.
I scouted a couple of Web sites that list dog-friendly lodgings along the way. Between the GPS and the BlackBerry, I realize that we're driving west this time in a cloud of information — the exact opposite, I suppose, of that trip with my grandparents, when all the information worth gleaning would have come in conversation with the two old people in the front seat, born in the late 1880s after all, and with the world that lay beyond the highway ditches.
— VERLYN KLINKENBORG
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