"Imperial presidency can ... only be empowered by an invisible Congress"

[omega minimo]

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/jan-june06/power_01-02.html



PBS Jim Lehrer NewsHour
A RENEWED IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY?
January 2, 2006

For a historical look at how executive powers have been wielded and its impact on governance, we're joined by Richard Norton Smith, director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill.; Ellen Fitzpatrick, a professor of history at the University of New Hampshire; and Andrew Rudalevige, professor of political science at Dickinson College and author of "The New Imperial Presidency: Renewing Presidential Power after Watergate".

A Constitutional basis for power?
RAY SUAREZ: Professor Fitzpatrick, the president, in a recent news conference, cited Article 2 of the Constitution as the platform he was standing on, more or less, for these authorities, for his privileges in doing the kinds of things he was doing in wartime. What does Article 2 say and does he have a good case?

ELLEN FITZPATRICK: Well, the Constitution gives the president power as executive and as Commander in Chief and in the Federalist Papers, Madison made the point that one of the reasons for transferring power from the state government to the president, to the central government, was to protect against foreign enemies, to really protect the security of the country. But originally the notion of being Commander in Chief was not-- was explicitly divided from the notion that the president would decide when it was appropriate to wage war, that power very explicitly went to the Congress. So, the Constitution is very clear on this point. What has happened historically, however, in times of war is that the Congress has ceded authority -- enormous authority in many cases -- to the president to take on powers during times of war because of this unusual situation and the importance of protecting the security of the nation. I think the historical context for what is going on now is really the expansion in the post-World War Two period of the national security state. It is the idea of national security, the doctrine of national security, that is being invoked now to justify a range of actions on the part of the Bush administration in the context of a proclaimed war on terror that has no endpoint.



RAY SUAREZ: Is this part of a general erosion of Congressional power?

ELLEN FITZPATRICK: It is certainly the case that very few times in American history, in fact, when military intervention has been undertaken has it happened as a result of a congressional declaration of war and increasingly in the post-World War Two period, what the idea of national security does is to put the United States in a state of permanent military readiness. It redefines foreign policy problems as threats to the security of the nation and it turns foreign policy goals or aspirations into necessities for the nation's survival and once that happens, what we've seen in the last 50-plus years, is that repeatedly the president invokes that idea, that doctrine, to take unilateral action and to consult the Congress belatedly, if at all.

Part of a cycle?

RAY SUAREZ: Professor Rudalevige, is this a zero-sum game, that if the executive is gaining power it is almost, by definition, Congress that is losing it?

ANDREW RUDALEVIGE: Well, I don't buy that quite. Over time you have seen certainly the growth of a large American state, something that didn't exist in the 18th century, not only the military establishment that Professor Fitzpatrick talked about, but also a large executive establishment in domestic affair, a regulatory state, and as that grows, the government's power grows and the practical necessity of centralized leadership grows. The president has, in fact, been that person. Really under our Constitutional system, he is the only focal point of national leadership. But, that said, Congress needs to be defining the goals of that leadership, right? Where should it be going? In what direction should the country be going? Congress has been, I think, asleep at the switch in recent years. The imperial presidency can really only be empowered by an invisible Congress and so, right now, I think we do have a zero-sum game. That's not a necessity.



The Nixon precedent
 
RAY SUAREZ: But I guess one recent past example, that's the counter-example, is, Ellen Fitzpatrick, the Nixon presidency where executive privilege almost got a bad name--

ELLEN FITZPATRICK: It not only almost got a bad name, it did get a bad name and I agree with Richard largely, but I would also note that, one thing that I think is important is we have a recent historical memory, both in the case of Vietnam and in the case of Watergate, of what excessive use of the doctrine of national security and the state of permanent warfare -- the Cold War before, the war on terror now -- the dangers of it. What it can do to us domestically. What the civil liberties risks are. What overweening executive authority can lead to, the dangers of that. And that is relatively fresh in the minds of the generations of Americans living today, at least of a certain age. And in that sense, I think history is very, very much with us and as it well ought to be. An important point in all of this to emphasize I think is the decision on the part of the Bush administration to decide in the aftermath of 9/11 to characterize our response to the terrorist attack as a war. Because once the state of warfare is invoked as an ongoing reality, then the president can make the case, or try to, that virtually anything necessary to protect national security can be pursued and that to me strikes me as a dangerous state of affairs. If there is, particularly, no endpoint in sight, that becomes highly problematic.




Swamp Rat art used with permission :patriot:

[Inland]

1. "No endpoint in sight."

Both in terms of time and in terms of the power claimed by the man in the (self described) ONLY PERSON WHO IS GIVEN THE DUTY TO PROTECT AMERICA.

The endless "wartime", the powers of the "war time president", the undefined enemy, the threat to everything everywhere.....Now we know why Bush scorned the idea of using law enforcement tactics as a completment to the war on terror. There's no commander in chief invested with command power over us all in a national security state in a law enforcment.

[omega minimo]

2. "Highly problematic"

Like father, like son:

"It redefines foreign policy problems as threats to the security of the nation and it turns foreign policy goals or aspirations into necessities for the nation's survival and once that happens, what we've seen in the last 50-plus years, is that repeatedly the president invokes that idea, that doctrine, to take unilateral action and to consult the Congress belatedly, if at all."

[newswolf56]

3. What is unique about this incarnation of the Imperial Presidency is...

that it reigns as the fulfillment of a corporate conspiracy dating back to the failed banker/industrialist conspiracy to depose President Roosevelt: Bush truly is the ultimate achievement of American capitalism. Thus the Bush Administration is enthusiastically supported by the oligarchy (for whom it represents the ongoing triumph of not only worker disempowerment but the re-legitimization of all other traditional expressions of capitalist savagery); by the corporate media (in obedience to oligarchic direction); by the Republicans (who have always been the party of Big Business and thus embodiment of American fascism); and by most of the Democratic Party leadership (who have been totally compromised and/or co-opted by the Republican Fifth Column known as the Democratic Leadership Council) -- all this the ugly and terrifying truth behind the present-day versions of "the doctrine of national security" and "Congress...asleep at the switch."

But there is an even greater and more horrifying truth that becomes apparent only when one stops looking at the so-called "War on Terror" as a cause and begins to ask if it might be another symptom instead: the genuine conceptual breakthrough (which the oligarchy views as the worst sort of heresy and would therefore like to suppress at any cost) behind the LIHOP/MIHOP debate. Setting aside the distraction of the debate itself and instead looking at the implicit question of how the alleged "War on Terror" might serve corporate goals and objectives, the probable answer becomes clear when one acknowledges the forthcoming and unavoidable shortages of raw materials summarized in the concept "Peak Oil" and realizes that the only way capitalism can maintain its twin shibboleths of "profit"and "growth" is by re-enslaving the global working class. Which is not to deny the reality of the threat of Islamic Fundamentalism, but rather to note how it (like Christian Fundamentalism) has been harnessed to corporate purposes.

Hence (though it is really a separate discussion) the greater-than-ever relevance of the historical truth of class-struggle. Likewise -- depending entirely on how viciously capitalism resists demands for economic justice and attempts at control -- the renewed relevance of Marx in general. In which discussion it would be a worse-than-fatal error to assume (as the Soviet Union did in its failed Middle Eastern policy) that Abrahamic fundamentalists of any ilk could ever be incorporated into a proletarian movement.


Edit: for completeness (sorry; I was thinking this out as I wrote it).

[omega minimo]

4. "...say something heretical, we historians are complicit, to some degree"

RAY SUAREZ: Richard Norton Smith, is this a game of ebbs and flows as well? When the crisis passes, when the war is over, other forces in the country reassert their power and chip away at the expanded presidency?

RICHARD NORTON SMITH: Actually that is what's been the case for most of our history, Ray. If you look at-- If you look at the 19th century after the Mexican-American War and Polk presidency, the presidency was in many ways downsized, perhaps tragically in the years before the Civil War. There was a reaction after the Civil War to the enormous concentration of personal power that had flowed to the White House and you had a series of relatively weak presidents. After World War One in the 1920s, likewise, there was this reversal of power -- a lot of it back to Congress, a lot of it back to the states and the localities.

Picking up off what my colleagues have said, this is a game of Constitutional see-saw, what changed that dynamic really was the permanent Cold War. Just a few years after we witnessed the surrender of Japan and Nazis Germany, we undertook a whole different kind of foreign policy. It was called Communist containment. Harry Truman fought a war in Korea that he called a police action, not a war. Truman and Eisenhower and other presidents used the CIA and other instruments to overthrow hostile governments around the world -- all in the name of protecting the United States from this constant menace. It was, in effect, a permanent state of siege. And I do agree with Ellen, there are some parallels with the current war on terror.

But if I can say something heretical, we historians are complicit, to some degree. You know Teddy Roosevelt a hundred years ago had what he called his Stewardship Theory of the presidency, which said the president could do anything the Constitution did not explicitly prevent him from doing, and for most of the last century, most historians have almost reflexively celebrated the powerful, strong, energetic, agenda-setting, Congress-dominating president and, to some degree, the chickens have come home to roost.

[newswolf56]

5. No, not "all in the name of protecting the United States," but...

merely in the interest of protecting Big Business -- the suppression of which truth is the greatest atrocity in which far too many historians "are complicit."

[omega minimo]

6. "the chickens have come home to roost."

:yoiks:

[newswolf56]

7. Exactly -- though more like vultures. Memo to cartoonist:

Vultures labeled "global corporations" perched waiting on the shoulders of the Statue of Liberty as Bush, below, strips the flesh off the corpse of the Constitution while Cheney and Gonzales chisel the "Give us your tired, your poor..." off the statue base and replace it with "Step Right Up."

(Somehow I believe Our Lady of the Harbor would not only forgive us but applaud.)

[omega minimo]

8. Thank you Swamp Rat

:bounce: