Rudy Awakening: Giuliani would grab even more executive power than Bush and Cheney.

[laststeamtrain]

Rudy Awakening
As president, Giuliani would grab even more executive power than Bush and Cheney. His mayoralty tells the story.
By Rachel Morris

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President Giuliani

During his time as the mayor of New York, Giuliani's operating style became so ingrained, so pervasive, that we can imagine with some confidence what he might do with the power he would inherit as president. Already, he has surrounded himself with a group of accomplished legal advisors with especially muscular views of executive power and close ties to the Bush administration. Chief among them is Ted Olson, the solicitor general in Bush's first term. As head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Reagan Justice Department, Olson helped develop the "unitary executive theory," which envisions a constrained role for Congress in regulating the executive branch.

By Giuliani's own admission, he would, as president, perpetuate many of Bush's boldest assertions of presidential authority. In 2006, Giuliani told the Wall Street Journal that he would probably keep the detention center at Guantanamo Bay open, saying that its conditions had been "grossly exaggerated." This year, at a New Hampshire town hall meeting, he refused to say whether the Bush administration had gone too far in denying the protection of the Geneva Conventions to terrorist suspects. Giuliani has also indicated that presidents have the power to indefinitely detain American citizens without trial. At a debate, he declared himself opposed to torture but refused to say whether he would outlaw waterboarding, instead offering that interrogators should perform "any method they can think of."

What is most disturbing is the likelihood that a Giuliani administration would venture beyond the expansive claims of executive authority staked out by the Bush White House. For instance, though Bush has demanded that Congress fund the war in Iraq, he has never openly questioned Congress's power of the purse. Giuliani, however, told a reporter that the president has the right to provide money for the troops to stay in Iraq even if Congress withdraws funding. Similarly, Bush has implied that critics of his Iraq policy are unpatriotic, but he has not declared that the government can silence their voices. This September, echoing the sentiments that he repeatedly attempted to enforce as mayor, Giuliani said that the "General Betray Us" ad paid for by the left-wing group MoveOn "passed a line that we should not allow American political organizations to pass."

One might minimize the significance of these kinds of statements as the loose talk of a candidate trying to impress conservative primary voters—indeed, that is how the press has generally treated them. To believe that Giuliani is merely grandstanding, however, is to ignore his history. If he reaches the White House, he will almost certainly do what he did at City Hall: punish dissent, circumvent the law, conceal the workings of the government in secrecy, and use his litigator's gifts to obstruct mechanisms of oversight and accountability.

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http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0711.morris.html

[bullimiami]

1. dont believe it. cheney and bushie are of a whole other breed.

not only does giuliani not have the balls he wouldnt have the help needed to do it.

[aquart]

2. Now that's the Rudy we know and love.

Not to mention the man who was a complete embarrassment for two years before 9/11.