Verbosities

Imperial presidency declared null and void | Salon.com

In private, Bush administration sub-Cabinet officials who have been instrumental in formulating and sustaining the legal "war paradigm" acknowledge that their efforts to create a system for detainees separate from due process, criminal justice and law enforcement have failed. One of the key framers of the war paradigm (in which the president in his wartime capacity as commander in chief makes and enforces laws as he sees fit, overriding the constitutional system of checks and balances), who a year ago was arguing vehemently for pushing its boundaries, confesses that he has abandoned his belief in the whole doctrine, though he refuses to say so publicly. If he were to speak up, given his seminal role in formulating the policy and his stature among the Federalist Society cadres that run it, his rejection would have a shattering impact...

Remember the Chutzpah post from Daily Kos I linked to yesterday? The post argued that the Republican rhetorical hypocrisy of the last six months has put Democratic leaders on the defensive, as America's short-term memory seems willing to accept the Republican's premise that the system is broken because the Democrats are uniquely taking advantage of it. Now, I'm not putting a value on what the Democrats are doing in contrast with the last twelve years of Republican congressional leadership. That's really not the point. What the post discussed was how effective this rhetorical hypocrisy has been, and how they're setting the table effectively to position themselves as the responsible opposition party to the excesses of the majority.

The Kos diarist quotes a post from a blogger named John Emerson:

I think that when the "honest conservatives" reject Bush they're just setting up their assault on the Democratic president they expect to see elected next year. Their way of digging themselves out from under the Bush disaster (and obscuring their own massive role in that disaster) will be to swear that "Never again can an American President be allowed that kind of free hand!" This will justify their fighting the new Democratic President tooth and nail for every inch of ground.

They don't mean "never again," they mean "not so long as it's a Democrat in office."

Conservatives have spent most of the last six years rabidly defending this president's push of his Article II powers, have brayed loudly about the overreach of "judicial activism" every time the courts challenge the president's powers, have told dissenters they should watch what they say (and have suggested freedom of speech might be too much for us at this point of history), have willingly advocated torture, and have tried to claim as "no big deal" the efforts to seed the department responsible for enforcing our laws with the most politically loyal right-wing careerists, illegally creating an established bureaucracy intended to extend the reach of politics into flexible, partisan interpretations of the rule of law.

Okay, to be fair they've done a lot of other things too. Point being, with an unpopular president and an upcoming election, the party that has served as a barely-leashed angry guard dog for the excesses of this administration (and the last twelve years of congress, lest we forget) is now carving out rhetorical space to disassociate themselves from what they had worked so hard to build*.

*Incidentally, this same sort of game is being played with the immigration reform being bandied about in congress. It's something the GOP candidates can slap Bush around on without being accused of hypocrisy. I think the timing of this bill - I mean, did we really talk about immigration reform as a top priority a year or two ago? - isn't at all coincidental, but I also don't think it's out of character for Bush's long-held position on the issue either.

The Blumenthal op-ed, therefore, strikes me as an early warning shot. The "rats are jumping ship," but it's not because they disagree with the captain all of a sudden. It's because they need the room to make the argument that they opposed the power grab under Bush, and they'll be goddamned if they let a Democrat woman in office trample our noble constitution in a remotely similar way.

Look, it's not as if I ever thought this "unitary executive theory" was anything but radical and dangerous to the republic, and it's something that I want relegated to the dustbin of history now. I want the next president taking the oath to make his/her first priority to dismantle the Patriot Act, scrap the despicable MCA, restore habeus corpus, and work to restore the checks and balances our framers wanted us to respect (I guess that's four priorities).

I'm just cynical enough, however, to believe that the opposition party's noise machine will have America focused on keeping the Democratic president constantly on the defensive, with the public concerned (all of a sudden) about the overreaching powers of the presidency. The president and the DOJ will have differing priorities, and the Christian-right careerists that Gonzales, Goodling and McNulty have put in place will at times be just obstinate enough to leadership to give the GOP talking points about the Democratic president's ability to control his own bureaucracy and how he/she isn't strong enough to be a serious leader.

And god forbid it's Hillary. Seriously. Gore or Obama, Biden or Dodd - any of those guys would be subject to the hypocrisy, but if it's Hillary? I can't imagine a scenario where the fear of god is instilled in middle America by the noise machine more than if she's the nominee. If you thought the way conservatives disowned the validity of the Bill Clinton presidency was bad, just wait until Hillary steps off the podium in January, 2009. It'll be a whole new ballgame on talk radio and in op-eds.

So this administration official who helped build the argument for enhanced Article II powers, and now - all of a sudden - thinks it's a bad idea? You'll know his name around November, you'll start reading his op-eds next summer, and he'll be a regular hand-wringer on "Hannity & Colmes" in 2009 who just can't believe we let our constitution be put in danger by those dirty fucking hippie Democrats, and that it's a GRAVE AND SERIOUS issue that RESPONSIBLE CITIZENS should make sure they never let the Democrat president use against them in the names of fearmongering and national security.

Until, of course, we see President Jeb in 2016, the administration official gets his old job back, and the warrantless wiretapping resumes. Business as usual, I suppose...

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